Overview
- Analyses four narratives within the context of the 1832 Anatomy Act and its aftermath
- Explores penny bloods’ elaboration of discourses about anatomy-related anxieties, such as cannibalism, medical voyeurism, and resurrectionism
- Develops an interconnected discussion about the inclusion in the fictional narratives of real spaces and events relating to the Anatomy Act's history
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine (PLSM)
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About this book
This book investigates the relationship between the fascinating and misunderstood penny blood, early Victorian popular fiction for the working class, and Victorian anatomy. In 1832, the controversial Anatomy Act sanctioned the use of the body of the pauper for teaching dissection to medical students, deeply affecting the Victorian poor. The ensuing decade, such famous penny bloods as Manuscripts from the Diary of a Physician, Varney the Vampyre, Sweeney Todd, and The Mysteries of London addressed issues of medical ethics, social power, and bodily agency. Challenging traditional views of penny bloods as a lowlier, un-readable genre, this book rereads these four narratives in the light of the 1832 Anatomy Act, putting them in dialogue with different popular artistic forms and literary genres, as well as with the spaces of death and dissection in Victorian London, exploring their role as channels for circulating discourses about anatomy and ethics among the Victorian poor.
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Keywords
Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
“In addition to being a fascinating read, it is an extremely welcome stepping-stone in the scholarly analysis of penny bloods by contributing to a better understanding of their place in early-Victorian culture and their legitimisation as a key literary phenomenon within a historical, social and artistic context.” (Manon Labrande, The Wilkie Collins Journal, wilkiecollinssociety.org, Vol. 19, 2021)
“Gasperini frames elaborate connections between the depiction of medical men, graveyard and subterranean geospaces, and the 1832 Anatomy Act in her penny blood ‘specimens’ to demonstrate that ‘the massive body of the penny blood genre can be analysed, with the correct tools, as a literary phenomenon inscribed within a historical, social, and artistic context much like other genres’ … . Gasperini rightly positions us to recognize the penny blood as an original site of such discourse and a good place from which to start.” (Rae X. Yan, Victorian Studies, Vol. 63 (1), 2020)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Anna Gasperini received her PhD from the National University of Ireland Galway. She specialises in Victorian popular fiction, Victorian medical history, and spatial and discourse theory. She is the current Membership Secretary of the UK-based Victorian Popular Fiction Association (VPFA).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction, Medicine and Anatomy
Book Subtitle: The Victorian Penny Blood and the 1832 Anatomy Act
Authors: Anna Gasperini
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10916-5
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-10915-8Published: 04 February 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-10916-5Published: 18 January 2019
Series ISSN: 2634-6435
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6443
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXII, 253
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations, 8 illustrations in colour
Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature, Gothic Fiction, History of Medicine, Bioethics