Catherine Crowe: Gender, Genre, and Radical Politics This is the first full-length study of the popular Victorian writer Catherine Crowe (1790–1872). Crowe is increasingly being recognised as an important and influential figure in the literary and Spiritualist circles of the nineteenth century. This monograph offers a reassessment of her major works, arguing that her writing was prescient. Best known today for her collection of “real” ghost tales The Night Side of Nature: Or Ghosts and Ghost Seers, Crowe also wrote five popular novels, as well as numerous short stories and essays. Innovative and sometimes original in their use of genre, her works covered the Newgate genre, helped to initiate detective fiction, included elements of the social problem novels of the 1840s, and pointed the way to the Sensation novels of the 1860s. Politically radical in many ways, Crowe was vocal about women’s oppression by men, social inequality, poverty, slavery, and animal rights. This volume aims to restore an author who was once famous and lauded to her proper place in the scholarly discussion of Victorian literature. Ruth Heholt is senior lecturer in English at Falmouth University, UK. Among the Victorians and Modernists Edited by Dennis Denisoff This series publishes monographs and essay collections on literature, art, and culture in the context of the diverse aesthetic, political, social, technological, and scientific innovations that arose among the Victorians and Modernists. Viable topics include, but are not limited to, artistic and cultural debates and movements; influential figures and communities; and agitations and developments regarding subjects such as animals, commodification, decadence, degeneracy, democracy, desire, ecology, gender, nationalism, the paranormal, performance, public art, sex, socialism, spiritualities, transnationalism, and the urban. Studies that address continuities between the Victorians and Modernists are welcome. Work on recent responses to the periods such as Neo-Victorian novels, graphic novels, and film will also be considered. The Socio-Literary Imaginary in 19th and 20th Century Britain Victorian and Edwardian Inflections Edited by Maria K. Bachman and Albert D. Pionke Poetry and Uselessness From Coleridge to Ashbery Robert Archambeau The Ethical Vision of George Eliot Thomas Albrecht Contemporary Rewritings of Liminal Women Echoes of the Past Miriam Borham-Puyal Catherine Crowe: Gender, Genre, and Radical Politics Ruth Heholt For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Among-the-Victorians-and-Modernists/book-series/ASHSER4035 Catherine Crowe: Gender, Genre, and Radical Politics Ruth Heholt First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Ruth Heholt to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-54332-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-08882-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC This book is dedicated to Frosk, Joseph, Lilith, and Margaret Heholt. Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgements x Introduction 1 PART ONE From Newgate to Sensation 23 1 The Newgate Novel, Crime, and Detection in Catherine Crowe’s Early Fiction 25 2 Forays Into Sensation 49 PART TWO Realism and Politics 73 3 Class, Poverty, and Realism 75 4 Radical Social Politics 98 PART THREE Gender 121 5 Women’s Position and Women’s Rights 123 6 Crowe’s Men 145 viii Contents PART FOUR Supernature and the Gothic 165 7 Ghosts of the Old and New School 167 8 The Gothic Short Stories 190 Index 213 Illustrations 1.1 Isaac Solomons 34 1.2 Detail from Dante Gabriel Rossetti. “Isaac Leckey” from “24 Characters from Catherine Crowe’s Susan Hopley.” 1841. Pen and ink and watercolour on card stock. The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Studies [special issue: A Rossetti Cabinet], 2 (Fall 1989): plate 84 35 2.1 Frederick Walker illustration from “The Herberts of Elfdale,” 20 October 1860. Once a Week. Volume 3 number 69, p. 449 68