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Referred to by G A Sala as “that remarkable and eminently disagreeable fiction”, Caroline Clive’s Paul Ferroll is a rare example of a unique novel. Published in 1855, it could be described as an early sensation novel with a strong element of psychological drama. Although the eponymous Ferroll is the embodiment of a successful Victorian gentleman – he is an eminent author, respected magistrate and friend of the local gentry – there is a cold-blooded killer lurking beneath the respectable exterior. The reader gradually learns that he murdered his first wife in order to marry his true love, Elinor, with whom he goes on to have a daughter. Although his neighbours gossip about the unseemly haste with which he re-marries, they cannot imagine that a man of his standing could have committed such a crime. Instead, a servant is charged then acquitted, and subsequently emigrates to Canada in order to escape the scandal. It is the return of this servant after eighteen years that prompts Ferroll to publicly confess his crime. Although sentenced to death at the conclusion of a dramatic trial, he manages to escape to a new life in Boston. ...

I was prompted to seek out The Mysterious Marie Corelli: Queen of Bestsellers after reading The Sorrows of Satan. Quite apart from the astonishingly narcissistic writing style, I was tantalised by the short accompanying biography, which suggested a fascinating and contradictory life. Although an independent and successful woman, she vehemently opposed women’s suffrage, referring to the Suffragettes as “Ladies who scream”. Her novels portray marriage as the desideratum of all girls, yet she chose to share her life with another woman, Bertha Vyer. ...

Antonio Melechi’s Servants of the Supernatural is an eclectic selection of accounts describing the Victorians’ fascination with the supernatural, what he calls a “gallery of contrasting thumbnail portraits”. Perhaps the most intriguing portrait is that of Franz Anton Mesmer, an Austrian who took the continent by storm with his theory of animal magnetism, which he believed was capable of “curing directly all disorders of the nervous system, and indirectly all other maladies.” People were queuing up to be healed, and Mesmer built a makeshift infirmary in an oak tree, personally magnetised by him. Incredibly, it housed up to 100 patients, who were tied in by a rope. The popularity of this bizarre treatment enabled Mesmer to franchise animal magnetism throughout France. Franchisees would be instructed by Mesmer and then receive a diploma authorising them to practice. One can but wonder how he would have fared on Dragons’ Den. ...

Marie Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan (1895) is possibly the oddest novel I’ve ever read. And that’s saying something. The plot concerns Geoffrey Tempest, a struggling novelist, who unexpectedly inherits £5 million from a distant relative. This stroke of good fortune coincides with a visit from Prince Lucio Raminez, who the reader soon realises is the eponymous Satan. Tempest unwittingly makes a Faustian pact, and the life of which he could once only dream finally becomes a reality. He marries a much-celebrated society beauty, Lady Sybil Elton, and is able to buy them an idyllic home in the countryside. His new-found wealth also brings fame, thus ensuring an eager market for his novel. ...

George Grossmith (1847-1912) is, of course, cherished by the nation for having penned the inimitable The Diary of a Nobody with his younger brother Weedon. It is less well known that he was a talented entertainer, appearing in a number of Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and also touring with his own show. Tony Joseph, in George Grossmith: Biography of a Savoyard, illuminates all areas of his life and career, giving a sense of his inestimable contribution to nineteenth-century culture. ...

When Aubrey Beardsley died in 1898, he was aged just 25. Although his career was tragically short, his work epitomises the Fin de Siècle, with its decadent, and sometimes shocking, figures. Beardsley was born in Brighton in 1872, in the home of his maternal grandparents. Although his immediate family moved to London soon afterwards, he retained his affinity with Brighton, attending the Grammar School while staying with his aunt. His school days are described as being unusually happy, and he benefited from the tutelage of the dynamic and progressive headmaster Ebenezer Marshall. Marshall pushed both pupils and teachers to achieve their full potential, and he had the reputation of a slave driver: “He refused to countenance the establishment of a ‘staff room’, considering that his teachers should be out among their pupils, not skulking in a den consuming tea and digestive biscuits.” ...

John Sutherland described Ella Hepworth Dixon’s The Story of a Modern Woman as “the greatest unread novel of female struggle of the century”. Published in 1894, it is in Dixon’s own words “a somewhat gloomy study of the struggles of a girl alone in the world and earning her own living”. When her father dies, Mary Erle is left to fend for herself without guidance or money. She initially follows her dream of studying at the Central London School of Art, only to repeatedly fail entry to the Royal Academy. She instead tries her hand at hack writing, churning out magazine articles and penny novels. She is given little latitude to employ any artistic vision, as the publisher demands books that will be accepted by Mudie’s circulating library. Mary cannot understand why her fiction must be bowdlerised so as not to offend her readers, when the most sensational details of divorce cases are reported in the daily newspapers. Presumably, her readers are mainly women, whereas men would be more likely to read the lurid newspaper articles and disseminate a sanitised version deemed suitable for delicate feminine ears. ...

Mary Augusta Ward (1851-1920) is one of the many intriguing Victorian personalities who make the nineteenth century such a perfect place for academic rummaging. John Sutherland’s biography manages to successfully evaluate both the writer and the woman, with just the right balance between it being scholarly and accessible. Ward was born in Hobart, Tasmania into a veritable Victorian dynasty: the Arnolds. Her grandfather was the infamous Dr Thomas Arnold of Rugby and her uncle was Matthew Arnold, affectionately known as Uncle Matt. Dr Arnold had an astonishingly strong work ethic, much parodied by Lytton Strachey in Eminent Victorians, and this both inspired and alarmed his family. Although he rather undermined his own teachings by dying at the age of just 47, he continued to exert a powerful influence over the other Arnolds. According to Sutherland, his “dead but inextinguishable presence loomed over their subsequent lives like some deity in a Greek tragedy.” ...

Having long been a firm advocate of Lady Audley’s Secret and defended it against charges of anti-feminism, I am delighted to discover that Mary Elizabeth Braddon has reworked some of its themes in her later novel, Thou Art the Man. Originally published in 1894, this work takes account of the prevailing discourses on heredity, degeneration and madness. This time, however, it is the male characters who are shown to be degenerate, and the female heroines turn detective in order to unmask the villain. ...

I think Trollope is just showing off. Apparently, he wrote Dr Wortle’s School (1881) in just three weeks. Admittedly, it’s a fairly slim volume, but even so, he’s still a pesky overachiever. The eponymous Doctor runs a successful private school and enjoys a good reputation in the fictional county of Broughtonshire. His life is severely disrupted, however, by the arrival of a new schoolmaster, Mr Peacocke, and his beautiful American wife. Although outwardly a perfectly respectable, yet enigmatic, couple, the appearance of a stranger at the school gates heralds the revelation that Mrs Peacocke is a bigamist. Now, I’m not spoiling anything here, as Trollope ruins this plot element himself in the opening pages. He wanted to avoid the plot-driven style of the sensation novel and instead focus on the psychological drama. ...