{"product_id":"progress-determinism-and-agency-in-victorian-sensation-fiction","title":"Progress, Determinism and Agency in Victorian Sensation Fiction","description":"Progress, Determinism and Agency in Victorian Sensation Fiction: Between Optimism and Pessimism explores how Victorian sensation fiction grappled with the defining tensions of its age – faith in advancement and fear of decline, belief in free will and the weight of deterministic forces – and the competing visions of optimism and pessimism they created. By examining the genre’s engagement with a wide range of discourses that fed these debates – adaptation, nature and nurture, sexual selection and fate and free will – it reveals sensation fiction as a critical space where the pressing intellectual questions of the Victorian era were not only reflected but actively shaped. Analysing both canonical and neglected texts – Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), Wilkie Collins’s Armadale (1866), Rhoda Broughton’s Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867) and James Payn’s Bred in the Bone (1871) – the book demonstrates that sensation fiction, despite emerging during a period of growing pessimism, retained an optimistic belief in human perfectibility and the capacity for self-determination. Its dual structure bridges rigorous intellectual history with close readings of the four novels. This book will appeal to a broad interdisciplinary readership, including scholars of Victorian (popular) fiction and researchers of the history of science, medicine and ideas.","brand":"Taylor \u0026 Francis Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58455312597327,"sku":"9781041277064","price":292.95,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0061\/0372\/8217\/files\/9781041277064_1-progress-determinism-and-agency-in-victorian-sensation-fiction.jpg?v=1786516421","url":"https:\/\/www.suomalainen.com\/products\/progress-determinism-and-agency-in-victorian-sensation-fiction","provider":"Suomalainen.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}