The Boy Detective In Early British Children S Literature

This book maps the development of the boy detective in British children’s literature from the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century. It explores how this liminal figure – a boy operating within a man’s world – addresses adult anxieties about boyhood and the boy’s transition to manhood. It investigates the literary, social and ideological significance of a vast array of popular detective narratives appearing in ‘penny dreadfuls’ and story papers which were aimed primarily at working-class boys. This study charts the relationship between developments in the representation of the fictional boy detective and changing expectations of and attitudes towards real-life British boys during a period where the boy’s role in the future of the Empire was a key concern. It emphasises the value of the early fictional boy detective as an ideological tool to condition boy readers to fulfil adult desires and expectations of what boyhood and, in the future, proper manhood should entail. It will be of particular importance to scholars working in the fields of children’s literature, crime fiction and popular culture.

This book explores contemporary children’s and young adult novels writing back to history and oppression. Divided into three distinct yet interconnected parts, this thematic study analyses selected novels from across the globe, drawing on current critical debates to investigate how these narratives raise vital questions about identity, power and language. Examinations of children’s and young adult novels from Britain, Ireland, Sweden, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand offer fresh readings of established texts, and provide important critical perspectives on lesser-known works. The book also examines the use of genre in children’s and young adult literature, including crime fiction, dystopia, coming-of-age, and historical fiction. Addressing vital social justice themes in contemporary children’s and young adult novels, such as human trafficking, postcolonialism, disaster, trauma, and gender and race inequality, the book presents a critically informed analysis of these compelling literary works and their engagement with social and cultural debates.

History is constantly evolving, and the history of children’s literature is no exception. Since the original publication of Emer O’Sullivan’s Historical Dictionary of Children’s Literature in 2010, much has happened in the field of children’s literature. New authors have come into print, new books have won awards, and new ideas have entered the discourse within children’s literature studies. Historical Dictionary of Children's Literature, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 700 cross-referenced entries. This book will be an excellent resource for students, scholars, researchers, and anyone interested in the field of children’s literature studies.

Little is known about the boy detective in Japanese detective fiction despite his popularity. Who is he, and what mysteries does he unveil about cultural understandings of youth in Japanese society? Manga, Murder and Mystery answers these questions by exploring the figure of the shonen (boy) detective in commercially successful manga series such as Detective Conan, The Case Files of Young Kindaichi, Death Note and Moriarty the Patriot. The book explores how these popular works tackle the crisis of young adult culture within the socioeconomic climate of Japan's 'lost decade' and Heisei era, broadly speaking. Mimi Okabe shows how detective manga materialized in a nation undergoing a state of crisis and how the boy detective emerged as a site of national trauma to address perceived youth problems but in thematically different ways.

This book aims to establish the position of the sidekick character in the crime and detective fiction literary genres. It re-evaluates the traditional view that the sidekick character in these genres is often overlooked as having a small, generic or singular role—either to act as the foil to the detective in order to accentuate their own abilities at solving crimes, or else to simply tell the story to the reader. Instead, essays in the collection explore the representations and functions of the detective’s sidekick across a range of forms and subgenres of crime fiction. By incorporating forms such as children’s detective fiction, comics and graphic novels and film and television alongside the more traditional fare of novels and short stories, this book aims to break down the boundaries that sometimes exist between these forms, using the sidekick as a defining thread to link them together into a wider conceptual argument that covers a broad range of crime narratives.

100 British Crime Writers explores a history of British crime writing between 1855 and 2015 through 100 writers, detailing their lives and significant writing and exploring their contributions to the genre. Divided into four sections: 'The Victorians, Edwardians, and World War One, 1855-1918; 'The Golden Age and World War Two, 1919-1945; 'Post-War and Cold War, 1946-1989; and 'To the Millennium and Beyond, 1990-2015, each section offers an introduction to the significant features of these eras in crime fiction and discusses trends in publication, readership, and critical response. With entries spanning the earliest authors of crime fiction to a selection of innovative contemporary novelists, this book considers the development and progression of the genre in the light of historical and social events.

This unique and timely book presents nine compelling essays on contemporary crime fiction, bringing innovative and fresh perspectives to the analysis of this most popular and vibrant literary genre. Investigating contemporary crime fiction and the critical debates surrounding its reception and production, the introductory chapter sets the scene for the subsequent analyses of distinct crime fiction topics, themes and authors. The topics include the experimental detective narrative, race and ethnicity, historical crime fiction, domestic noir, feminism and crime, environmental crime, and the poetics of place. Authors examined here range from Ian Rankin, Gillian Flynn, Val McDermid, Denise Mina, Robert Galbraith, Nancy Bilyeau, and Martha Grimes, to Tana French, Dale Furutani, and J.G. Ballard, and more. Informed by the latest critical debates and theoretical perspectives in the field, this volume presents an invaluable source of information and criticism on crime fiction for students, researchers and academics alike.