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Book Cover
Book
Author Heller, Tamar, 1959-

Title Dead secrets : Wilkie Collins and the female gothic / Tamar Heller
Published New Haven : Yale University Press, [1992]
©1992

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  820.8 C71317 Z/Hed  AVAILABLE
Description ix, 201 pages : portraits ; 22 cm
Contents Introduction: Dead Secrets -- 1. Reigns of Terror: The Politics of the Female Gothic -- 2. Becoming an Author in 1848: History and the Gothic in the Early Works of Wilkie Collins -- 3. Basil: Femininity, Ressentiment, and the Male Artist -- 4. Writing after Dark: Collins and Victorian Literary Culture -- 5. The Woman in White: Portrait of the Artist as a Professional Man -- 6. Blank Spaces: Ideological Tensions and the Detective Work of The Moonstone -- Epilogue: The Haunted Narrative
Summary "Readers have long been enthralled by the novels of Wilkie Collins, whose The Moonstone is considered the first modern detective novel. This book by Tamar Heller--the most comprehensive study of Collins' work ever written--places Collins within Victorian literary history, showing how his fiction transforms the conventions of the traditionally female genre of the Gothic novel and can be read as a critique of the gender and class distinctions that structured Victorian society." "Heller offers an insightful account of the ways in which Collins' work in the female Gothic tradition influenced his characteristic themes and imagery. She also explores how this association with the genres of the Gothic and with controversial "sensation fiction" linked Collins with women writers and literary and social marginality during an era when novel writing was increasingly a male-defined and male-dominated profession. Heller argues that Collins' fictions reflect his own contradictory status as a Victorian writer; his novels focus on the relation of the writer to the literary marketplace and also on the intricate and ambivalent dialectic of masculine literary authority and feminine marginality." "This study of Collins makes an original contribution to feminist literary criticism by demonstrating its value for the reexamination of an important male writer. In addition, by exploring the complexity of the relationship of a male writer to a feminine literary tradition, the book breaks new ground in the study of literary influence and in critical discussions of the literary canon."--BOOK JACKET
Analysis English fiction
English fiction
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 169-195) and index
Subject Collins, Wilkie, 1824-1889 -- Criticism and interpretation.
Collins, Wilkie, 1824-1889.
English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
Feminism and literature.
Gothic revival (Literature) -- Great Britain.
Horror tales, English -- History and criticism.
Psychological fiction, English -- History and criticism.
Sensationalism in literature.
Women and literature -- England -- History -- 19th century.
Women and literature -- Great Britain.
LC no. 91027533
ISBN 0300045743 (alk. paper)