Abstract
Neo-Victorian fiction reflects a persistent interest in encounters with deep time and the ancient past—mirroring, in part, Victorian cultural and scientific interests, and reflecting both nineteenth-century and contemporary anxieties about identity, origins, the past, and the future. This chapter explores the plethora of historical tropes in neo-Victorian, and specifically neo-sensation fiction, contending that these serve as a metaphor for the narrative’s ‘unearthing’ of the (Victorian) past. In particular, it offers a critical interrogation of representations of archaeology in popular historical fiction, including Victoria Holt’s Shivering Sands (1969) and Elizabeth Peabody’s Crocodile on the Sandbank (1975), and argues that these works force a reconsideration of the role of popular fiction within neo-Victorianism.
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- 1.
The setting of the novel is largely pre-Victorian, so Chevalier’s novel fits the broadest definition of neo-Victorianism , as ‘literature re-imagining and engaging the nineteenth century’—not necessarily specific to the exact dates of the Victorian period (Kohlke and Gutleben , eds, ‘Introduction: Bearing After-Witness to the Nineteenth Century’, Neo-Victorian Tropes of Trauma, p. 10).
- 2.
Tracey Chevalier, Remarkable Creatures (London: HarperCollins, 2009), pp. 119–120.
- 3.
Whilst Remarkable Creatures provides a useful illustration of the effectiveness of the trope of palaeontology in neo-Victorian fiction, it cannot accurately be classed as a neo-sensation novel.
- 4.
A. S. Byatt, On Histories and Stories: Selected Essays (London: Vintage, 2001), p. 72.
- 5.
John Glendening, Science and Religion in Neo-Victorian Novels: Eye of the Ichthyosaur (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), p. 57.
- 6.
Charles Dickens, Bleak House (London: Penguin, 1996), p. 3.
- 7.
Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes (London: Penguin, 1998), p. 213.
- 8.
Amelia Edwards is a possible influence on Peters’s Amelia Peabody. See Elizabeth Steere , ‘Fictionalised History and Fabricated Artefacts: The Amelia Peabody Mystery Series’, Neo-Victorian Studies, 10:2 (2018), pp. 19–20.
- 9.
Maunder includes Barbara’s History in his ‘Bibliography of Sensation Fiction’ but its engagement with the genre is somewhat ambiguous. See Anne-Marie Beller, ‘Amelia B. Edwards’ in Gilbert, ed., A Companion to Sensation Fiction, pp. 349–360.
- 10.
Amelia Edwards, Barbara’s History, Vol. 1 (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1864), p. 271.
- 11.
See Mia Chen, ‘“To Face Apparent Discrepancies with Revelation”: Examining the Fossil Record in Charlotte Yonge’s The Trial’, Women’s Writing, 17:2, p. 149.
- 12.
Chen, ‘To Face Apparent Discrepancies with Revelation’, p. 363.
- 13.
Virginia Zimmerman, Excavating Victorians (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), p. 2.
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Rosario Arias, ‘Traces and Vestiges of the Victorian Past in Contemporary Fiction’ in Boehm-Schnitker and Gruss, eds., Neo-Victorian Literature and Culture, p. 111.
- 16.
Zimmerman, Excavating Victorians, p. 10.
- 17.
Ibid., p. 3.
- 18.
See Mike Pitts, ‘Unearthing Manchester’s Victorian Slums’, The Guardian (28 August 2009), n.p.
- 19.
Arias, ‘Traces and Vestiges of the Victorian Past in Contemporary Fiction’, p. 114.
- 20.
Boehm-Schnitker and Gruss, ‘Introduction’, p. 5.
- 21.
Zimmerman, Excavating Victorians, p. 10.
- 22.
Laurence Talairach-Vielmas, ‘Sensation Fiction: A Peep Behind the Veil’ in Andrew Smith and William Hughes, eds., The Victorian Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, pp. 31, 33, my emphasis.
- 23.
Lawrence Frank explores at length the relationship between Victorian detective fiction and various developing scientific discourses, including geology , palaeontology , and archaeology , in Victorian Detective Fiction and the Nature of Evidence: The Scientific Investigations of Poe, Dickens, and Doyle (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Archaeologists also feature in several of Agatha Christie’s novels, including Death on the Nile (1937), Murder in Mesopotamia (1936), and They Came to Baghdad (1951), possibly influenced by Christie’s husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan.
- 24.
Talairach-Vielmas, ‘Sensation Fiction’, p. 34.
- 25.
Some sensation novelists produced historical novels—notably Charles Reade (The Cloister and the Hearth [1861]) and Collins (Antonina [1850])—but these cannot be considered sensation novels.
- 26.
Zimmerman, Excavating Victorians, p. 20.
- 27.
Peters published works on ancient Egypt under her real name Barbara Mertz . Steere comments on the significance of this in relation to the Amelia Peabody series, suggesting that ‘Through the oppression Peabody faces as a Victorian woman in Egyptology , Mertz draws a parallel to the sexism she experienced herself as an Egyptologist in academia in the mid-twentieth century’ (Steere, ‘Fictionalised History and Fabricated Artefacts’, p. 1).
- 28.
Simon Goldhill, Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity: Art, Opera, Fiction, and the Proclamation of Modernity (Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 1. See also Norman Vance, The Victorians and Ancient Rome (Hoboken: Wiley, 1997).
- 29.
Zimmerman, Excavating Victorians, pp. 11–12.
- 30.
Holt’s various pseudonyms included Elbur Ford, Jean Plaidy, and Kathleen Kellow. Mertz published under her own name and Barbara Michaels, as well as Peters . Albert has also published under her own name , and as Paige and Carolyn Keene.
- 31.
Steere, ‘Fictionalised History and Fabricated Artefacts’, p. 2.
- 32.
See Clive Bloom , Bestsellers: Popular Fiction Since 1900 (2nd edition; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 364.
- 33.
Robin Paige, Death at Bishop’s Keep (New York: Avon Books, 1998), p. 18.
- 34.
Sally Shuttleworth , ‘From Retro- to Neo-Victorian Fiction and Beyond’, in Boehm-Schnitker and Gruss, eds., Neo-Victorian Literature and Culture, p. 190.
- 35.
Steere also notes the series’ indebtedness to the sensation novel (‘Fictionalised History and Fabricated Artefacts’, p. 1), citing Collins and Haggard as particular influences (ibid., p. 3).
- 36.
The narrative makes explicit reference to ‘Rider Haggard’s tales’ (Elizabeth Peters, Crocodile on the Sandbank [London: Constable & Robinson, 2006], p. 138)—indeed, he is referenced three times in the novel.
- 37.
She complains about ‘the abominable garments forced on women by the decrees of fashion’ (238).
- 38.
She describes herself thus: ‘My nose is too large, my mouth is too wide, and the shape of my chin is positively masculine’ (5). The description seems to parody Victorian physiognomical heroine description, with unfeminine features often indicating an unconventional heroine .
- 39.
Barbara Mertz, MPM: A Bulletin on the Doings and Undoings of Barbara Mertz/Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels, 41 (2002/2003), p. 4. Names of minor characters in the series are borrowed from Collins , including Alan Armadale in Curse of the Pharaohs (1981) and Inspector Cuff in Deeds of the Disturber (1988). The Moonstone is explicitly referenced in The Last Camel Died at Noon (1991). Steere considers these influences, although she identifies Haggard as a more significant influence (see ‘Fictionalised History and Fabricated Artefacts’, pp. 3–9).
- 40.
Edwards (Mertz) claimed this aspect of the texts as historically accurate. Steere notes that ‘Mertz was clearly cognisant of the neo-Victorian risks of recycling pejorative stereotypes and ideologies under the exonerating guise of historical “fact” but expected her readers to be self-conscious enough to adopt a critical stance to some of her protagonist’s less acceptable attitudes’ (Steere, ‘Fictionalised History and Fabricated Artefacts’, p. 25).
- 41.
Zimmerman, Excavating Victorians, p. 2.
- 42.
Maspero (1846–1916) was a French Egyptologist and Director of Antiquities in Egypt.
- 43.
See Diana Wallace , Female Gothic Histories: Gender, History, and the Gothic (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013), pp. 132–133.
- 44.
The character of Alice ‘wants to write stories like Wilkie Collins … the sort that make you shiver’ (p. 219).
- 45.
See Chap. 2.
- 46.
The names , as is referenced in the novel itself, recall Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, ‘The Children’s Hour’ (1860).
- 47.
Mrs Lincroft, engaged in tutoring the girls, sets them the task of reading and analysing Brontë’s novel (p. 178).
- 48.
Kohlke, ‘Mining the Neo-Victorian Vein’, p. 34. See Chap. 1.
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Cox, J. (2019). Excavating the Victorians: Digging Up the Past. In: Neo-Victorianism and Sensation Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29290-4_6
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