Sensation Novel

The sensation novel, also called sensation fiction, was a literary genre of fiction that reached peak popularity in Great Britain from the mid-1850s to the 1890s, centered on taboo material shocking to its readers and used as a means of exploring contemporary social anxieties. Its literary forebears included the melodramatic novel and the Newgate novel, which built stories around criminal biographies, and it also drew on the Gothic, romance and mass-market genres, its popularity paralleling the expanding book market and growing reading public that came with the Industrial Revolution. The genre is commonly seen as having emerged as a definable form in the wake of three novels, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, Mrs. Henry Wood's East Lynne and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret, and its recurring theme of lost or uncertain identity reflected Victorian anxieties amplified by increased recordkeeping. The sensation novel is generally regarded as a precursor to pulp fiction, the inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 until around 1955.