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sherlock60This week, the canon story we’re looking at is The Boscombe Valley Mystery and the chosen topic is Victorian Literature and Authors.
A few facts:
✍ While in the preceding Romantic period poetry had been the dominant genre, it was the novel that was most important in the Victorian period. Charles Dickens (1812–1870) dominated the first part of Victoria's reign… William Thackeray's (1811–1863) most famous work Vanity Fair appeared in 1848, and the three Brontë sisters, Charlotte (1816–55), Emily (1818–48) and Anne (1820–49), also published significant works in the 1840s. A major later novel was George Eliot's (1819–80) Middlemarch (1872), while the major novelist of the later part of Queen Victoria's reign was Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)... [Wikipedia]
✍ Victorian Literature Characteristics: Serialization, Industrialization, Class, Science Vs. Religion, Progress, Nostalgia, The Woman Question, Utilitarianism. [Shmoop]
✍ The novel in the Victorian era is so abundant and prolific that it is usual to divide the Victorian novelists into (a) Early Victorian Novelists, and (b) the Later Victorian Novelists… The former were at one with their public to a quite remarkable degree… They identified themselves with their age and were its spokesmen. They may criticise their age as do Dickens and Thackeray, but on the whole they accept the prevalent customs and social institutions. The later novelists, however, were writing in some sense against their age; they were critical, even hostile, to its dominant assumptions.
Thus Hardy attacks Victorian morality and the institution of marriage; Samuel Butler scandalised his age by flouting Victorian taboos and conventions, and Henry James went against the literary canons of the age by his advocacy of the novel as an art-form. George Eliot’s novels reflect the rationalism of the age. The relation of these novelists to the reading public was nearer to that of the twentieth-century novelists than to that of the early Victorians. [Muhammad Naeem]
✍In the Victorian era, Gothic fiction had ceased to be a dominant literary genre. However, the Gothic tropes used earlier… were transported and interwoven into many late-nineteenth century narratives. These tropes included psychological and physical terror; mystery and the supernatural; madness, doubling, and heredity curses.
The Victorian Gothic moves away from the familiar themes of Gothic fiction - ruined castles, helpless heroines, and evil villains - to situate the tropes of the supernatural and the uncanny within a recognisable environment. [Charlotte Barrett]
✍ The features commonly associated with the publishing phenomenon of the 1860s known as the Sensation Novel include the following:
bigamous marriages
misdirected letters
romantic triangles
heroines placed in physical danger
drugs, potions, and/or poisons
characters adopt disguises
trained coincidences
aristocratic villains
heightened suspense detailism [Philip V. Allingham]
✍ In the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries… books were very expensive items and most of the population were unable to afford them… In the 1830s and 1840s a new form of printed text emerged: a lengthy prose fiction serialised in one-penny or twopenny weekly parts. These were usually stories involving adventure or Gothic-like elements. Many had no planned, pre-written end; they just continued until the public were no longer interested in the story. Some penny weekly novels in the 1850s and 1860s were serialized over four or more years. [Charlotte Barrett]
✍ Most Victorian novels were published in three volumes called the triple-decker or three-volume novel at 31s. 6d, or 10s. 6d per volume. This price… enabled the publisher to cover their costs whilst allowing for a reasonable payment to go to the author… The particular style of mid-Victorian fiction - a complicated plot reaching its conclusion through marriage and the acquisition of property - was well adapted to the form… Those who could not afford to buy new novels used the circulating libraries newly established across the country. [Charlotte Barrett]
✍ Dickens was one of a number of authors who tried to break through the rigid system of the three-decker novel. Using the idea of the lower-class form of the weekly-part novel as a model, he started to publish his fiction on a monthly basis at a shilling per instalment. Unlike the previous serialised fiction, there was a limited number of twenty parts serialised over nineteen months (the final part was a double issue at two shillings).
Novels issued in several monthly parts were framed by advertisements for a variety of items pitched towards the middle-class reader. They were surrounded by news reports, critical articles, and the latest reviews. This meant that for Victorian readers, the novel was not a self-contained entity but rather a text surrounded by a material framework of various fonts and images... [Charlotte Barrett]
✍ The serial publication of fiction began to change in the late 1850s with the appearance of such illustrated weeklies as Once a Week (1859) and The Cornhill (1860), which over the next decade ousted the old-style, cheap, non-illustrated literary magazines such as Bentley's, Ainsworth's, and All the Year Round. [Philip V. Allingham]
✍ In 1849 the publishing house Routledge started the first Railway Library. The books were cheap, priced at one shilling per volume, and designed to be read whilst traveling by train… Once a serial had been completed, it was often reprinted in a cheaper (usually 6 shilling) one-volume edition, and then again as a yellowback available in the Railway Libraries. The second-half of the nineteenth century saw the 6 shilling novel emerge as the preferred form for publishing new fiction.
Faced with the growth of free, government-funded libraries, the circulating libraries decided to take necessary action in an attempt to ensure their continuation. In 1894 they announced that they would pay no more than 4 shillings a volume for fiction – a declaration that signaled the beginning of the end for the pricey three-decker novel.
By the end of the nineteenth-century, railway travel, circulating libraries, and affordable serialised fiction had brought books within the reach of many members of the newly-literate working-class population, who had previously been excluded from the world of the book. [Charlotte Barrett]
✍ A yellow-back is a cheap fiction novel which was published in Britain in the second half of the 19th century… Developed in the 1840s… Yellow-Backs were marketed as entertaining reading. They had brightly coloured covers… By the late 19th century, Yellow-Backs included sensational fiction, adventure stories, 'educational' manuals, handbooks, and cheap biographies. [Jeff Kaplan]
✍ BOSC is possibly set in 1889. Some bestsellers of that year:
George Du Maurier's Peter Ibbetson
Margaret Oliphant's Lady Car
Margaret Oliphant's The Sequel of a Life
Margaret Oliphant's A Poor Gentleman
Robert Louis Stevenson's Master of Ballantrae
George Gissing's The Nether World
Wilkie Collins's The Legacy of Cain (3 vols). [Philip V. Allingham]
✍ ...the detective story as a distinct genre is a product of the nineteenth century… ...crime literature before 1800 had frequently focused on the criminal as the sympathetic hero… By the start of the nineteenth century… crime writing was not only beginning to focus more on the mechanism of justice, but was becoming constructed as a commercial literature of relaxation…
The sympathetic portrayal of criminals became increasingly controversial; for instance, in the contemporary debate over 'penny dreadfuls', a series of papers detailing the exploits of criminals of, for the most part, the previous century. Reaching a height of popularity in the 1870s, the 'dreadfuls' were seen as causing crime among juveniles… The focus shifted from the criminals to those who captured the criminals, and the rise of a literature of detection. [Christopher Pittard]
✍ The first British literary detective [appeared in] 1852. Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House, presented Inspector Bucket, the detective who solves the murder of the lawyer Tulkinghorn. With Bucket, Dickens at once created the prototype of the literary detective, and emphasised his uncertain status in society, as the figure who stands halfway between respectable society and the criminals (who would, by the end of the nineteenth century, become configured as a race apart). [Christopher Pittard]
✍ By the last fifteen years of Victoria's reign, detective fiction had become established as a genre in its own right, and one with a huge readership… [Christopher Pittard]
✍ From ‘Images of the Woman Reader in Victorian British and American Fiction’:
“Reading was damned [for females] because it was thought to damage a woman’s nervous system and reproductive health. Medical authorities linked excessive, unsupervised reading to a host of female reproductive ailments (for example, early menstruation, painful menses, infertility, etc.), insanity, and premature death. A woman’s biological differences—her greater sensitivity and sensibility—made her more susceptible to effects of a novel. Countless experts pronounced sensation novels, mysteries, and horror tales stimuli to avoid strenuously for physical well-being.” [Catherine Golden via History Buff]
✍ George Meredith [1828–1909] was a major Victorian novelist whose career developed in conjunction with an era of great change in English literature during the second half of the nineteenth century. While his early novels largely conformed to Victorian literary conventions, his later novels demonstrated a concern with character psychology, modern social problems, and the development of the novel form... [Poetry Foundation]
✍ Critics have been united in comparing Meredith with Thomas Hardy as a "poet-novelist" who considered poetry his true literary vocation but turned to writing novels for financial reasons. Meredith's poetry has received increasing attention in recent years and critics have noted that it follows the same course of development as his novels, moving from early examinations of the self in society to a later concern with broader social issues and defiance of the conventions of the form. In particular, Meredith explored new meters and stanzaic forms and experimented dramatically with syntax and grammar. [Poetry Foundation]
✍ At the time of his death Meredith was considered one of England's premier men of letters… Meredith's prose is most often identified as the barrier that makes his works inaccessible to readers [nowadays]. Meredith's narrative style, making extensive use of metaphor, allusion, and aphorism, has been described by his admirers and detractors alike as so difficult that close rereadings of passages are frequently necessary to extract the meaning. [Poetry Foundation]
Some useful resources:
Victorian Literature On Shmoop.
Authors Discussed in the Victorian Web Extensive index.
Authors 23 iconic authors from the Romantic and Victorian periods. On the British Library website.
Victorian novelists Index on Wikipedia.
A List of Victorian Writers On the A Literary Odyssey blog.
Minor Victorian Poets and Authors On gerald-massey.org.uk Biographies of these writers, and their works transcribed online.
Victorian Texts On The Victorian Web.
Literary Genre, Mode, and Style On The Victorian Web. Extensive index.
Victorian Periodicals Mentioned in the Victorian Web An extensive index.
Related WWW Resources On The Victorian Web. Links to outside resources - some relating to Victorian literature.
Victorian Literature On Wikipedia.
The Victorian Novel: main characteristics On the Graziatripodi blog.
Victorian Era Literature Characteristics On Victorian Era.
Literary Background—Trends in the Victorian Novel By Muhammad Naeem. On the NEO blog.
Themes Themes in literature in the Romantic and Victorian periods. On the British Library website.
What are common characteristics of Victorian Literature? A discussion on Goodreads.
Yellowbacks A collection of 1,256 of them. Can be read online, and there are also several download options.
The Victorian Sensation Novel, 1860-1880 "preaching to the nerves instead of the judgment" By Philip V. Allingham, Associate Professor of English, Lakehead University (Canada). On The Victorian Web.
Introduction to The Victorian Gothic By Charlotte Barrett on Writers Inspire.
Significant and Best-Selling Victorian Novels, 1837-1861, by Year of Volume Publication By Philip V. Allingham, Lakehead University (Canada), on The Victorian Web.
Victorian Best-Sellers, 1862-1901 By Philip V. Allingham, Lakehead University (Canada), on The Victorian Web.
10 Classic Victorian Novels Everyone Should Read On interesting literature.
Victorian Publishing History By Charlotte Barrett on Writers Inspire.
Victorian Detective Fiction: An Introduction By Christopher Pittard, University of Newcastle. On Crimeculture.
James McCreet's top 10 Victorian detective stories On the Guardian website.
Medicine and Public Health in Victorian Literature and the Arts Index on The Victorian Web.
Victorian Doctors Thought Reading Novels Made Women "Incurably Insane" On History Buff.
George Meredith A biography and bibliography on Poetry Foundation.
George Meredith (1828-1909) — A Brief Biography By Elvira Casal, Ph. D. On The Victorian Web.
Five Reasons Everyone Should Know George Meredith On Interesting Literature.
George Meredith's Works On The Victorian Web. Links to articles and to his work online.
The Tragedy in the Bedroom: A masterpiece of Victorian adultery By Helen Vendler. A look at Meredith’s 50-poem sequence: Modern Love.
Modern Love By George Meredith. A 50-poem sequence of 16-line sonnets. On Poets’ Corner.
An Essay on Comedy and the uses of the comic spirit By George Meredith. First published in ‘The New Quarterly Magazine’ for April 1877. This web edition published by the University of Adelaide.
Meredith As Seen By Conan Doyle A short article published in The New York Times, 10th November 1912. Abstract: LONDON, Nov. 9. -- Sir A. Conan Doyle, at the annual dinner of the Newsvenders' Institution, told some personal reminiscences of George Meredith, with whom he had a long and close friendship. The occasion was rendered unusually interesting by the presence of several prominent authors. On The New York Times website.
In order to view the newspaper article—underneath the big blue button, click on the small link: ‘Or, download a high-resolution PDF of the individual article.’
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A Biographical Introduction By Dr Andrzej Diniejko, D. Litt. On The Victorian Web. (Well, it seemed wrong to leave him out…)
Internet Archive appears to have a great many Victorian works available to read online or download for free.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
A few facts:
✍ While in the preceding Romantic period poetry had been the dominant genre, it was the novel that was most important in the Victorian period. Charles Dickens (1812–1870) dominated the first part of Victoria's reign… William Thackeray's (1811–1863) most famous work Vanity Fair appeared in 1848, and the three Brontë sisters, Charlotte (1816–55), Emily (1818–48) and Anne (1820–49), also published significant works in the 1840s. A major later novel was George Eliot's (1819–80) Middlemarch (1872), while the major novelist of the later part of Queen Victoria's reign was Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)... [Wikipedia]
✍ Victorian Literature Characteristics: Serialization, Industrialization, Class, Science Vs. Religion, Progress, Nostalgia, The Woman Question, Utilitarianism. [Shmoop]
✍ The novel in the Victorian era is so abundant and prolific that it is usual to divide the Victorian novelists into (a) Early Victorian Novelists, and (b) the Later Victorian Novelists… The former were at one with their public to a quite remarkable degree… They identified themselves with their age and were its spokesmen. They may criticise their age as do Dickens and Thackeray, but on the whole they accept the prevalent customs and social institutions. The later novelists, however, were writing in some sense against their age; they were critical, even hostile, to its dominant assumptions.
Thus Hardy attacks Victorian morality and the institution of marriage; Samuel Butler scandalised his age by flouting Victorian taboos and conventions, and Henry James went against the literary canons of the age by his advocacy of the novel as an art-form. George Eliot’s novels reflect the rationalism of the age. The relation of these novelists to the reading public was nearer to that of the twentieth-century novelists than to that of the early Victorians. [Muhammad Naeem]
✍In the Victorian era, Gothic fiction had ceased to be a dominant literary genre. However, the Gothic tropes used earlier… were transported and interwoven into many late-nineteenth century narratives. These tropes included psychological and physical terror; mystery and the supernatural; madness, doubling, and heredity curses.
The Victorian Gothic moves away from the familiar themes of Gothic fiction - ruined castles, helpless heroines, and evil villains - to situate the tropes of the supernatural and the uncanny within a recognisable environment. [Charlotte Barrett]
✍ The features commonly associated with the publishing phenomenon of the 1860s known as the Sensation Novel include the following:
bigamous marriages
misdirected letters
romantic triangles
heroines placed in physical danger
drugs, potions, and/or poisons
characters adopt disguises
trained coincidences
aristocratic villains
heightened suspense detailism [Philip V. Allingham]
✍ In the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries… books were very expensive items and most of the population were unable to afford them… In the 1830s and 1840s a new form of printed text emerged: a lengthy prose fiction serialised in one-penny or twopenny weekly parts. These were usually stories involving adventure or Gothic-like elements. Many had no planned, pre-written end; they just continued until the public were no longer interested in the story. Some penny weekly novels in the 1850s and 1860s were serialized over four or more years. [Charlotte Barrett]
✍ Most Victorian novels were published in three volumes called the triple-decker or three-volume novel at 31s. 6d, or 10s. 6d per volume. This price… enabled the publisher to cover their costs whilst allowing for a reasonable payment to go to the author… The particular style of mid-Victorian fiction - a complicated plot reaching its conclusion through marriage and the acquisition of property - was well adapted to the form… Those who could not afford to buy new novels used the circulating libraries newly established across the country. [Charlotte Barrett]
✍ Dickens was one of a number of authors who tried to break through the rigid system of the three-decker novel. Using the idea of the lower-class form of the weekly-part novel as a model, he started to publish his fiction on a monthly basis at a shilling per instalment. Unlike the previous serialised fiction, there was a limited number of twenty parts serialised over nineteen months (the final part was a double issue at two shillings).
Novels issued in several monthly parts were framed by advertisements for a variety of items pitched towards the middle-class reader. They were surrounded by news reports, critical articles, and the latest reviews. This meant that for Victorian readers, the novel was not a self-contained entity but rather a text surrounded by a material framework of various fonts and images... [Charlotte Barrett]
✍ The serial publication of fiction began to change in the late 1850s with the appearance of such illustrated weeklies as Once a Week (1859) and The Cornhill (1860), which over the next decade ousted the old-style, cheap, non-illustrated literary magazines such as Bentley's, Ainsworth's, and All the Year Round. [Philip V. Allingham]
✍ In 1849 the publishing house Routledge started the first Railway Library. The books were cheap, priced at one shilling per volume, and designed to be read whilst traveling by train… Once a serial had been completed, it was often reprinted in a cheaper (usually 6 shilling) one-volume edition, and then again as a yellowback available in the Railway Libraries. The second-half of the nineteenth century saw the 6 shilling novel emerge as the preferred form for publishing new fiction.
Faced with the growth of free, government-funded libraries, the circulating libraries decided to take necessary action in an attempt to ensure their continuation. In 1894 they announced that they would pay no more than 4 shillings a volume for fiction – a declaration that signaled the beginning of the end for the pricey three-decker novel.
By the end of the nineteenth-century, railway travel, circulating libraries, and affordable serialised fiction had brought books within the reach of many members of the newly-literate working-class population, who had previously been excluded from the world of the book. [Charlotte Barrett]
✍ A yellow-back is a cheap fiction novel which was published in Britain in the second half of the 19th century… Developed in the 1840s… Yellow-Backs were marketed as entertaining reading. They had brightly coloured covers… By the late 19th century, Yellow-Backs included sensational fiction, adventure stories, 'educational' manuals, handbooks, and cheap biographies. [Jeff Kaplan]
✍ BOSC is possibly set in 1889. Some bestsellers of that year:
George Du Maurier's Peter Ibbetson
Margaret Oliphant's Lady Car
Margaret Oliphant's The Sequel of a Life
Margaret Oliphant's A Poor Gentleman
Robert Louis Stevenson's Master of Ballantrae
George Gissing's The Nether World
Wilkie Collins's The Legacy of Cain (3 vols). [Philip V. Allingham]
✍ ...the detective story as a distinct genre is a product of the nineteenth century… ...crime literature before 1800 had frequently focused on the criminal as the sympathetic hero… By the start of the nineteenth century… crime writing was not only beginning to focus more on the mechanism of justice, but was becoming constructed as a commercial literature of relaxation…
The sympathetic portrayal of criminals became increasingly controversial; for instance, in the contemporary debate over 'penny dreadfuls', a series of papers detailing the exploits of criminals of, for the most part, the previous century. Reaching a height of popularity in the 1870s, the 'dreadfuls' were seen as causing crime among juveniles… The focus shifted from the criminals to those who captured the criminals, and the rise of a literature of detection. [Christopher Pittard]
✍ The first British literary detective [appeared in] 1852. Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House, presented Inspector Bucket, the detective who solves the murder of the lawyer Tulkinghorn. With Bucket, Dickens at once created the prototype of the literary detective, and emphasised his uncertain status in society, as the figure who stands halfway between respectable society and the criminals (who would, by the end of the nineteenth century, become configured as a race apart). [Christopher Pittard]
✍ By the last fifteen years of Victoria's reign, detective fiction had become established as a genre in its own right, and one with a huge readership… [Christopher Pittard]
✍ From ‘Images of the Woman Reader in Victorian British and American Fiction’:
“Reading was damned [for females] because it was thought to damage a woman’s nervous system and reproductive health. Medical authorities linked excessive, unsupervised reading to a host of female reproductive ailments (for example, early menstruation, painful menses, infertility, etc.), insanity, and premature death. A woman’s biological differences—her greater sensitivity and sensibility—made her more susceptible to effects of a novel. Countless experts pronounced sensation novels, mysteries, and horror tales stimuli to avoid strenuously for physical well-being.” [Catherine Golden via History Buff]
✍ George Meredith [1828–1909] was a major Victorian novelist whose career developed in conjunction with an era of great change in English literature during the second half of the nineteenth century. While his early novels largely conformed to Victorian literary conventions, his later novels demonstrated a concern with character psychology, modern social problems, and the development of the novel form... [Poetry Foundation]
✍ Critics have been united in comparing Meredith with Thomas Hardy as a "poet-novelist" who considered poetry his true literary vocation but turned to writing novels for financial reasons. Meredith's poetry has received increasing attention in recent years and critics have noted that it follows the same course of development as his novels, moving from early examinations of the self in society to a later concern with broader social issues and defiance of the conventions of the form. In particular, Meredith explored new meters and stanzaic forms and experimented dramatically with syntax and grammar. [Poetry Foundation]
✍ At the time of his death Meredith was considered one of England's premier men of letters… Meredith's prose is most often identified as the barrier that makes his works inaccessible to readers [nowadays]. Meredith's narrative style, making extensive use of metaphor, allusion, and aphorism, has been described by his admirers and detractors alike as so difficult that close rereadings of passages are frequently necessary to extract the meaning. [Poetry Foundation]
Some useful resources:
Victorian Literature On Shmoop.
Authors Discussed in the Victorian Web Extensive index.
Authors 23 iconic authors from the Romantic and Victorian periods. On the British Library website.
Victorian novelists Index on Wikipedia.
A List of Victorian Writers On the A Literary Odyssey blog.
Minor Victorian Poets and Authors On gerald-massey.org.uk Biographies of these writers, and their works transcribed online.
Victorian Texts On The Victorian Web.
Literary Genre, Mode, and Style On The Victorian Web. Extensive index.
Victorian Periodicals Mentioned in the Victorian Web An extensive index.
Related WWW Resources On The Victorian Web. Links to outside resources - some relating to Victorian literature.
Victorian Literature On Wikipedia.
The Victorian Novel: main characteristics On the Graziatripodi blog.
Victorian Era Literature Characteristics On Victorian Era.
Literary Background—Trends in the Victorian Novel By Muhammad Naeem. On the NEO blog.
Themes Themes in literature in the Romantic and Victorian periods. On the British Library website.
What are common characteristics of Victorian Literature? A discussion on Goodreads.
Yellowbacks A collection of 1,256 of them. Can be read online, and there are also several download options.
The Victorian Sensation Novel, 1860-1880 "preaching to the nerves instead of the judgment" By Philip V. Allingham, Associate Professor of English, Lakehead University (Canada). On The Victorian Web.
Introduction to The Victorian Gothic By Charlotte Barrett on Writers Inspire.
Significant and Best-Selling Victorian Novels, 1837-1861, by Year of Volume Publication By Philip V. Allingham, Lakehead University (Canada), on The Victorian Web.
Victorian Best-Sellers, 1862-1901 By Philip V. Allingham, Lakehead University (Canada), on The Victorian Web.
10 Classic Victorian Novels Everyone Should Read On interesting literature.
Victorian Publishing History By Charlotte Barrett on Writers Inspire.
Victorian Detective Fiction: An Introduction By Christopher Pittard, University of Newcastle. On Crimeculture.
James McCreet's top 10 Victorian detective stories On the Guardian website.
Medicine and Public Health in Victorian Literature and the Arts Index on The Victorian Web.
Victorian Doctors Thought Reading Novels Made Women "Incurably Insane" On History Buff.
George Meredith A biography and bibliography on Poetry Foundation.
George Meredith (1828-1909) — A Brief Biography By Elvira Casal, Ph. D. On The Victorian Web.
Five Reasons Everyone Should Know George Meredith On Interesting Literature.
George Meredith's Works On The Victorian Web. Links to articles and to his work online.
The Tragedy in the Bedroom: A masterpiece of Victorian adultery By Helen Vendler. A look at Meredith’s 50-poem sequence: Modern Love.
Modern Love By George Meredith. A 50-poem sequence of 16-line sonnets. On Poets’ Corner.
An Essay on Comedy and the uses of the comic spirit By George Meredith. First published in ‘The New Quarterly Magazine’ for April 1877. This web edition published by the University of Adelaide.
Meredith As Seen By Conan Doyle A short article published in The New York Times, 10th November 1912. Abstract: LONDON, Nov. 9. -- Sir A. Conan Doyle, at the annual dinner of the Newsvenders' Institution, told some personal reminiscences of George Meredith, with whom he had a long and close friendship. The occasion was rendered unusually interesting by the presence of several prominent authors. On The New York Times website.
In order to view the newspaper article—underneath the big blue button, click on the small link: ‘Or, download a high-resolution PDF of the individual article.’
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A Biographical Introduction By Dr Andrzej Diniejko, D. Litt. On The Victorian Web. (Well, it seemed wrong to leave him out…)
Internet Archive appears to have a great many Victorian works available to read online or download for free.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
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