Victorian Sensation: Or, the Spectacular, the Shocking and the Scandalous in Nineteenth-Century Britain

by Michael Diamond

Book Overview

A captivating look at the origins of our own tabloid culture in the salacious and titillating media of the Victorian era.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 184331150X
• ISBN13: 9781843311508
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Length: 329 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Popular culture in VIctorian times

As in our own day, with the press's prolific growth in Victorian times, it turned to the infinite phenomena of popular culture to sustain itself. And as in our own day, this was tied in with the curiosity and voyeurism of the public for sensationalistic stories about crimes, celebrities, politicians, royalty and other public figures, including their scandalous sexual improprieties. Such stories found their way into public entertainment as well, primarily the stage. Diamond does not so much critique the Victorian press and stage, but goes into the cultural milieu for the stories and describes how they were treated in the press and in some cases on stage. In doing so, he brings the perspective of contemporary media studies and cultural studies to his varied subjects. "Dickens' 'Oliver Twist'...would have been called a 'sensational novel', had the term existed then." If the names of the persons in the stories and their dates were changed, one would hardly be able to distinguish them from ones found in today's media. Diamond abundantly evidences that the public and the media it supported in the supposed straight-laced English Victorian culture was not essentially different from today's.