In 1860, the West of England is reeling from one of the most mysterious criminal cases, the case of Road Hill House. A small boy is found murdered in the home of his parents in Wilthshire Road. Soon, it appears that the culprit may be a member of the household: parents, servants, brothers and sisters, are suspected. Then a new character enters: Detective Jack Whicher, one of the first detectives in history known to have solved complex cases through his intuition, arrives straight to Scotland Yard. The contemporary press seizes this incident disturbing. But especially the case reacted, passion and influence major contemporary authors including Dickens and Wilkie Collins.
"The Case of Road Hill House" by Kate Summerscale recounts this incident with fascinating detail. The confines of history, literature and literary history, this book belongs to a new kind. Besides a very precise reconstruction and documented the lives of middle classes in Victorian England, the story of the survey is constructed as the best thrillers. But mostly succeeds Kate Summerscale to illuminate the beginnings of English detective fiction in the light of the news item: the originality of this story lies in the way the author examines the appropriation of this story by English authors, and highlights the influence of this news story on the early novels as "The Moonstone" by Wilkie Collins, but also more widely on texts by Dickens or even "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James.
"The Case of Road Hill House" by Kate Summerscale recounts this incident with fascinating detail. The confines of history, literature and literary history, this book belongs to a new kind. Besides a very precise reconstruction and documented the lives of middle classes in Victorian England, the story of the survey is constructed as the best thrillers. But mostly succeeds Kate Summerscale to illuminate the beginnings of English detective fiction in the light of the news item: the originality of this story lies in the way the author examines the appropriation of this story by English authors, and highlights the influence of this news story on the early novels as "The Moonstone" by Wilkie Collins, but also more widely on texts by Dickens or even "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James.
The Case of Road Hill House "by Kate Summerscale, Christian Bourgois, 496 p., 25 €
0 comments:
Post a Comment