Transatlantic Sensations

Bringing together sensation writing and transatlantic studies, this collection makes a convincing case for the symbiotic relationship between literary works on both sides of the Atlantic. Transatlantic Sensations begins with the "prehistories" of the genre, looking at the dialogue and debate generated by the publication of sentimental and gothic fiction by William Godwin, Susanna Rowson, and Charles Brockden Brown. Thus establishing a context for the treatment of works by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Dion Boucicault, Wilkie Collins, George Lippard, Charles Reade, and George Thompson, the volume takes up a wide range of sensational topics including sexuality, slavery, criminal punishment, literary piracy, mesmerism, and the metaphors of foreign literary invasion and diseased reading. Concluding essays offer a reassessment of the realist and domestic fiction of George Eliot, Charlotte Yonge, and Thomas Hardy in the context of transatlantic sensationalism, emphasizing the evolution of the form throughout the century and mapping a new transatlantic lineage for this immensely popular literary form.