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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'A lost classic of Australian crime. This astonishing proto-modern thriller was first published in 1887. It opens with Adams' brilliant description of how Madeline Brown, a beautiful temptress and toast of Melbourne society, met her ghastly fate. David Stuart, a journalist and an admirer of the doomed siren, is consumed by the circumstances of her death. He turns sleuth, piecing together the last days of her life, and the result is a riveting psychological portrait of both victim and detective. Madeline Brown is also a wonderful profile of polite society in 19th century Australia.'
Source: Trove. (Sighted: 6/3/2014)
Contents
- Sex and Drugs and Opera Bouffe, single work criticism biography (p. v-xiv)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Francis Adams : Realism and Sensation in the 1880s
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 31 October vol. 30 no. 3 2015;'The English-born traveller and writer Francis Adams, who was in Australia from 1884 to 1890, was a cultural activist and a conduit in both directions for the late-Victorian migration of ideas. His book The Australians (1893) was an important source for the ‘Legend of the Nineties’, but there was a good deal more than the celebration of the Bush in his Australian writing. He was a keen critic of Britain’s management of its empire, and a sensitive observer and analyst of social and cultural life in the colonies. Stephen Murray-Smith described Adams’ impact on his contemporaries as that of an ‘active intellectual […] who brought something of “modernity,” of sophisticated European modes, to the discussion of Australian problems’ (14). He expressed progressive views on sex, marriage, and the rights of women; Marxist theories on class war, property and power; a huge amount of sympathy for the working class (whose poverty he sometimes shared, but to which he did not belong); and ‘advanced’ notions about art, literature and science. His respect for science came in part from his father, Andrew Leith-Adams, an army surgeon and natural historian who corresponded with and greatly admired Charles Darwin.
'The focus of this essay is on how Adams’ first two novels can be read in relation to late nineteenth-century categories of literary and popular fiction, via two terms ubiquitous in reviews and publishing of the day: ‘realistic’ and ‘sensational’. The phrase may seem tautological to twentieth- or twenty-first century readers, whose ideas about realism may align it with representation of the everyday. However this was not the case in the late nineteenth century: British newspaper reviews and advertising feature the phrase frequently in relation to novels, plays, and other forms of entertainment, the emphasis being on spectacle as well as verisimilitude. Such generic flexibility as Adams demonstrates in his fictional output between 1886 and 1889 calls for a nuanced understanding of literary culture in Australia in the 1880s. This is particularly true with regard to definitions of ‘realism’, but it applies also to ideological and gender-based assumptions about popular genres such as ‘sensation’ and ‘romance’. Adams’ 1888 essay on ‘Realism’, and contemporary debates about realism within which it was published, remind us that colonial press and literary establishments were both responsive and hostile to ideas and trends from the northern hemisphere – not simply British, French, and American, but filtered versions, such as British accounts of French naturalism.'
Source: Abstract.
-
Reflecting the Detectives : Crime Fiction and the New Journalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Australia
2005
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 22 no. 1 2005; (p. 61-72) Examines patterns in the relationship between newspaper accounts of sensational crimes and crime fiction published in the late 1880s. -
Untitled
2001
single work
review
— Appears in: Crime Factory , no. 1 2001; (p. 60)
— Review of Madeline Brown's Murderer 1887 single work novel -
Thrills of Old Melbourne
2001
single work
review
— Appears in: The West Australian , 12 May 2001; (p. 7)
— Review of Madeline Brown's Murderer 1887 single work novel -
Sex and Drugs and Opera Bouffe
2000
2000
single work
criticism
biography
— Appears in: Madeline Brown's Murderer 2000; (p. v-xiv)
— Appears in: The Age , 9 September 2000; (p. 9)
-
Francis Adams' Novel, "Madeline Brown's Murderer"
1887
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 31 December vol. 8 no. 413 1887; (p. 9)
— Review of Madeline Brown's Murderer 1887 single work novel -
Untitled
1887
single work
review
— Appears in: The Boomerang , 19 November 1887; (p. 8)
— Review of Madeline Brown's Murderer 1887 single work novel -
Madeline Brown's Murderer
1887
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 3 December 1887; (p. 6)
— Review of Madeline Brown's Murderer 1887 single work novel -
Thrills of Old Melbourne
2001
single work
review
— Appears in: The West Australian , 12 May 2001; (p. 7)
— Review of Madeline Brown's Murderer 1887 single work novel -
Untitled
2000
single work
review
— Appears in: Imago : New Writing , vol. 12 no. 3 2000; (p. 136-137)
— Review of Madeline Brown's Murderer 1887 single work novel -
Reflecting the Detectives : Crime Fiction and the New Journalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Australia
2005
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 22 no. 1 2005; (p. 61-72) Examines patterns in the relationship between newspaper accounts of sensational crimes and crime fiction published in the late 1880s. -
Sex and Drugs and Opera Bouffe
2000
2000
single work
criticism
biography
— Appears in: Madeline Brown's Murderer 2000; (p. v-xiv)
— Appears in: The Age , 9 September 2000; (p. 9) -
Francis Adams : Realism and Sensation in the 1880s
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 31 October vol. 30 no. 3 2015;'The English-born traveller and writer Francis Adams, who was in Australia from 1884 to 1890, was a cultural activist and a conduit in both directions for the late-Victorian migration of ideas. His book The Australians (1893) was an important source for the ‘Legend of the Nineties’, but there was a good deal more than the celebration of the Bush in his Australian writing. He was a keen critic of Britain’s management of its empire, and a sensitive observer and analyst of social and cultural life in the colonies. Stephen Murray-Smith described Adams’ impact on his contemporaries as that of an ‘active intellectual […] who brought something of “modernity,” of sophisticated European modes, to the discussion of Australian problems’ (14). He expressed progressive views on sex, marriage, and the rights of women; Marxist theories on class war, property and power; a huge amount of sympathy for the working class (whose poverty he sometimes shared, but to which he did not belong); and ‘advanced’ notions about art, literature and science. His respect for science came in part from his father, Andrew Leith-Adams, an army surgeon and natural historian who corresponded with and greatly admired Charles Darwin.
'The focus of this essay is on how Adams’ first two novels can be read in relation to late nineteenth-century categories of literary and popular fiction, via two terms ubiquitous in reviews and publishing of the day: ‘realistic’ and ‘sensational’. The phrase may seem tautological to twentieth- or twenty-first century readers, whose ideas about realism may align it with representation of the everyday. However this was not the case in the late nineteenth century: British newspaper reviews and advertising feature the phrase frequently in relation to novels, plays, and other forms of entertainment, the emphasis being on spectacle as well as verisimilitude. Such generic flexibility as Adams demonstrates in his fictional output between 1886 and 1889 calls for a nuanced understanding of literary culture in Australia in the 1880s. This is particularly true with regard to definitions of ‘realism’, but it applies also to ideological and gender-based assumptions about popular genres such as ‘sensation’ and ‘romance’. Adams’ 1888 essay on ‘Realism’, and contemporary debates about realism within which it was published, remind us that colonial press and literary establishments were both responsive and hostile to ideas and trends from the northern hemisphere – not simply British, French, and American, but filtered versions, such as British accounts of French naturalism.'
Source: Abstract.
- Melbourne, Victoria,