Overview

The Victorians worried about many things, prominent among their worries being the 'condition' of England and the 'question' of its women. Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England revisits these particular anxieties, concentrating more closely upon four 'crimes' which generated especial concern amongst contemporaries: adultery, bigamy, infanticide and prostitution. Each engaged questions of sexuality and its regulation, legal, moral and cultural, for which reason each attracted the considerable interest not just of lawyers and parliamentarians, but also novelists and poets and perhaps most importantly those who, in ever-larger numbers, liked to pass their leisure hours reading about sex and crime. Alongside statutes such as the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act and the 1864 Contagious Diseases Act, Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England contemplates those texts which shaped Victorian attitudes towards England's 'condition' and the 'question' of its women: the novels of Dickens, Thackeray and Eliot, the works of sensationalists such as Ellen Wood and Mary Braddon, and the poetry of Gabriel and Christina Rossetti. Sex, Crime and Literature in Victorian England is a richly contextual commentary on a critical period in the evolution of modern legal and cultural attitudes to the relation of crime, sexuality and the family.

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9781849462945

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Reviews

Ward successfully provides a legal and legislative context to texts that both shaped and reflected the Victorian psyche...this book would be an excellent addition to an academic library as it has broad appeal to those studying law, literature, history, and gender studies. -- Alexia Loumankis Canadian Law Library Review ...Ward's book provides law students and scholars alike not only with an interesting exploration of mid-Victorian fiction and legal reform, but also an insight into how literature may be used to challenge existing scripts and engender alternative ways of viewing and thinking about the law's attempt to regulate female sexuality. -- Anna Carline Legal Studies Through the interweaving of issues of law, violence, sex, criminality and misogyny, Ward produces a book 'about' much more than a nation's salaciousness. -- Sophie Franklin LSE Review of Books

Ward successfully provides a legal and legislative context to texts that both shaped and reflected the Victorian psyche...this book would be an excellent addition to an academic library as it has broad appeal to those studying law, literature, history, and gender studies. -- Alexia Loumankis Canadian Law Library Review

Author Information

Ian Ward is Professor of Law at Newcastle University, and the author of a number of books on law, literature and history including 'Law and Literature: Possibilities and Perspectives' (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 'Shakespeare and the Legal Imagination' (Cambridge University Press, 1999), The English Constitution: Myths and Realities' (Hart Publishing, 2004), 'Law, Text, Terror' (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and most recently 'Law and the Brontes' (Palgrave, 2011).

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