The Cambridge Companion to Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is the most famous fictional detective in history, with a popularity that has never waned since catching the imagination of his late-Victorian readership. This Companion explores Holmes' popularity and his complex relationship to the late-Victorian and modernist periods; on one hand bearing the imprint of a range of Victorian anxieties and preoccupations, while on the other shaping popular conceptions of criminality, deviance, and the powers of the detective. This collection explores these questions in three parts. 'Contexts' explores late-Victorian culture, from the emergence of detective fiction to ideas of evolution, gender, and Englishness. 'Case Studies' reads selected Holmes adventures in the context of empire, visual culture, and the gothic. Finally, 'Holmesian Afterlives' investigates the relationship between Holmes and literary theory, film and theatre adaptations, new Holmesian novels, and the fandom that now surrounds him.

Author: Janice M. Allan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 05/02/2019
Pages: 284
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.30h x 8.50w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781107155855

Review Citation(s):
Choice 12/01/2019

About the Author
Allan, Janice M.: - Janice M. Allan is Associate Dean Academic, at the School of Arts and Media, University of Salford. She has published widely on nineteenth-century popular fiction as well as constructions of gender and literary value and is Executive Editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection.Pittard, Christopher: - Christopher Pittard is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Portsmouth. He is the author of Purity and Contamination in Late Victorian Detective Fiction (2011), and numerous articles and chapters on Victorian popular culture and detective fiction.