Sex Crime and Literature in Victorian England

The Victorians worried about many things prominent among their worries being the 'condition' of England and the 'question' of its women. <i>Sex Crime and </i><i>Literature in Victorian England</i> 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 <i>Sex Crime and Literature in Victorian England </i>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. <i>Sex Crime and Literature in Victorian</i><br/><i>England</i> 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.<br/><br/>Review<br/>'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'.<br/>Alexia Loumankis <i>Canadian Law Library Review</i>