Author Description

Science, sexuality and sensation novels offers the most detailed account of the prolific debate about the sensation novel published to date. Reviewers did not simply condemn and dismiss the genre; instead they theorized the sensual forms of reading the sensation novel inspired and they debated its effects on the body and the mind. Physiology in particular offered accounts of the body and the senses that aided in the formulation of theories of the physical reading that the sensation novel inspired. Sensation novelists helped to provoke reviewer attention to senses, bodies and physical stimulation through their own preoccupations with sciences centrally concerned with human physiology. Wilkie Collins and Rhoda Broughton were fascinated with trance states and wandering souls theorized in mesmerism and spiritualism. Charles Dickens, Mary Braddon and Ellen Wood investigated the tension between physiological impulse and social convention in theories of social science. This book seeks to offer a new and broader account of the influence of science in the formulation of one of the most popular and widely published genres of the Victorian period.