The Forgotten Beginnings of the Detective Novel

Описание: In the mid-Victorian period, doctors warned that reading novels could wreck the human nervous system, causing symptoms ranging from heart palpitations to hysteric paralysis. But did you know that the invention of the detective hero was actually a literary solution to this medical anxiety?.

While Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin are famous for their sharp minds and eccentric habits, we argue in this episode that the true father of the modern detective novel is actually Wilkie Collins!

We take a deep dive into Collins’ masterpiece, The Moonstone, examining how it established the tropes we know today—from the "least likely suspect" to the "locked room". We also analyze the novel's three unique detectives: the sharp Sergeant Cuff, the gentleman amateur Franklin Blake, and the complex, opium-addicted Ezra Jennings, whose outsider status allows him to solve the crime!

Join us as we discuss:
1. Why Victorian doctors feared "novel reading frenzy".
2. The detective as both genius and addict.
3. How The Moonstone critiques empire and race through the character of Jennings.
4. Why T.S. Eliot called The Moonstone the "best modern detective novel".

📚 Books & Stories Mentioned:

1. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (Recommended: Broadview Edition)
2. The Heart and Its Diseases by J. Milner Fothergill
3. Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers
4. A Stolen Letter & The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins

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00:00 - Intro: Was Fiction a Poison or an Antidote?
00:56 - The "Novel Reading Frenzy" and Nervous Disease
02:29 - The Birth of the Detective: Making Fiction Respectable
03:22 - Characteristics of the Detective: Physiognomy & Poison
05:08 - The Detective's Pathological Mind
06:19 - Wilkie Collins and The Moonstone
06:36 - Tropes Invented by Collins (Red Herrings & Reconstructions)
08:52 - The Three Types of Detectives
09:12 - Sergeant Cuff: The Police Procedural
10:56 - Ezra Jennings: The Opium-Addicted Outsider
13:48 - Franklin Blake: The Gentleman Amateur
14:36 - How Detective Fiction Saved the Novel
15:23 - The "Cozy" Mystery vs. Social Critique (Sayers & Chandler)
16:36 - Further Reading Recommendations

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