Richard Marsh, popular fiction and literary culture, 1890–1915: Rereading the fin de siècle (Interventions: Rethinking the Nineteenth Century)

This collection of essays seeks to question the security of our assumptions about the fin de siècle by exploring the fiction of Richard Marsh, an important but neglected professional author. Richard Bernard Heldmann (1857–1915) began his literary career as a writer of boys’ fiction, but, following a prison sentence for fraud, reinvented himself as ‘Richard Marsh’ in 1888. Marsh was a prolific and popular author of middlebrow genre fiction including Gothic, crime, humour, romance and adventure, whose bestselling Gothic novel __The Beetle: A Mystery__ (1897) outsold Bram Stoker’s __Dracula__. Building on a burgeoning interest in Marsh’s writing, this collection of essays examines a broad array of Marsh’s genre fictions through the lens of cutting-edge critical theory, including print culture, New Historicism, disability studies, genre theory, New Economic Criticism, gender theory, postcolonial studies, thing theory, psychoanalysis, object relations theory and art history, producing innovative readings not only of Marsh but of the fin-de-siècle period. Marsh emerges here as a versatile contributor to the literary and journalistic culture of his time whose stories of shape-shifting monsters, daring but morally dubious heroes, lip-reading female detectives and objects that come to life helped to shape the genres of fiction with which we are familiar today. Marsh’s fictions reflect contemporary themes and anxieties while often offering unexpected, subversive and even counter-hegemonic takes on dominant narratives of gender, criminality, race and class, unsettling our perceptions of the fin de siècle. 'This collection of essays questions our assumptions about the fin de siècle by exploring the fiction of Richard Marsh (1857-1915), one of the most prolific and popular authors of the period, whose bestselling Gothic novel The Beetle: A Mystery (1897) outsold Bram Stoker's Dracula for several decades. Born Richard Bernard Heldmann, he began his literary career penning boys' stories under his real name but, following a prison sentence for fraud, reinvented himself as 'Richard Marsh' in 1888. A versatile contributor to the literary and journalistic culture of his time, Marsh produced middlebrow genre fiction including Gothic, crime, humour, romance and adventure. His stories of shape-shifting monsters, daring but morally dubious heroes, lip-reading female detectives and objects that come to life helped to shape the genres with which we are familiar today. Building on a burgeoning interest in Marsh's writing, this volume makes a significant contribution to Victorian and Edwardian literary studies by examining a broad array of Marsh's genre fictions through a variety of critical lenses, including print culture, New Historicism, disability studies, genre theory, New Economic Criticism, gender theory, postcolonial studies, thing theory, psychoanalysis and object relations theory, producing innovative readings not only of Marsh but of the fin-de-siècle period. The essays explore how Marsh's fictions reflect contemporary themes and anxieties while often providing unexpected, subversive and even counter-hegemonic takes on dominant narratives of gender, criminality, race and class, unsettling our perceptions of the fin de siècle' --Back cover This collection of essays questions our assumptions about the fin de siècle by exploring the fiction of Richard Marsh (1857-1915), one of the most prolific and popular authors of the period, whose bestselling Gothic novel The Beetle: A Mystery (1897) outsold Bram Stoker's Dracula for several decades. Born Richard Bernard Heldmann, he began his literary career penning boys' stories under his real name but, following a prison sentence for fraud, reinvented himself as 'Richard Marsh' in 1888. A versatile contributor to the literary and journalistic culture of his time, Marsh produced middlebrow genre fiction including Gothic, crime, humour, romance and adventure. His stories of shape-shifting monsters, daring but morally dubious heroes, lip-reading female detectives and objects that come to life helped to shape the genres with which we are familiar today. Building on a burgeoning interest in Marsh's writing, this volume makes a significant contribution to Victorian and Edwardian literary studies by examining a broad array of Marsh's genre fictions through a variety of critical lenses, including print culture, New Historicism, disability studies, genre theory, New Economic Criticism, gender theory, postcolonial studies, thing theory, psychoanalysis and object relations theory, producing innovative readings not only of Marsh but of the fin-de-siècle period. The essays explore how Marsh's fictions reflect contemporary themes and anxieties while often providing unexpected, subversive, and even counter-hegemonic takes on dominant narratives of gender, criminality, race and class, unsettling our perceptions of the fin de siècle. Book jacket Front matter Contents List of figures List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Part I: Richard Marsh and topical discourses of crime Tall tales and true: Richard Marsh and late Victorian journalism Mrs Musgrave’s stain of madness: Marsh and the female offender ‘The most dangerous thing in England’? Detection, deviance and disability in Richard Marsh’s Judith Lee stories Part II: Richard Marsh, masculinity and money Speculative society, risk and the crime thriller: The Datchet Diamonds ‘The crowd would have it that I was a hero’: populism, New Humour and the male clerk in Marsh’s Sam Briggs adventures Part III: Richard Marsh and the imperial Gothic ‘In that Egyptian den’: situating The Beetle within the fin-de-siècle fiction of Gothic Egypt Automata, plot machinery and the imperial Gothic in Richard Marsh’s The Goddess Part IV: Richard Marsh and object relations ‘Something was going from me – the capacity, as it were, to be myself’: ‘transformational objects’ and the Gothic fiction of Richard Marsh Decadent aesthetics and Richard Marsh’s The Mystery of Philip Bennion’s Death ‘Something on which you may exercise your ingenuity’: diamonds and curious collectables in the fin-de-siècle fiction of Richard Marsh Index Richard Marsh was one of the most popular and prolific authors of the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods. His bestselling The Beetle: A Mystery (1897) outsold Bram Stoker's Dracula. A prolific author within a range of genres including Gothic, crime, humour and romance, Marsh produced stories about shape-shifting monsters, morally dubious heroes, lip-reading female detectives and objects that come to life. However, while Marsh's work appealed to a public greedy for sensationalist fiction, both the cultural elite of the day and twentieth-century literary critics looked askance at his popular middlebrow fiction. In the wake of the recent rediscovery of Marsh's fiction, this essay collection builds on burgeoning scholarly interest in the author. Marsh emerges here as a fascinating writer who helped shape the genres of popular fiction and whose stories offer surprising responses to issues of criminality, gender and empire in this period of cultural transition. Annotation This volume explores the novels and short stories of the popular author Richard Marsh through a range of critical lenses. An exemplary figure of the New Grub Street, Marsh was an important presence within fin-de-siècle literary culture, whose middlebrow genre fiction simultaneously reinforces and challenges the dominant discourses of the period