The History of Crime Fiction

Texts

• Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (Oxford)
• James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (Oxford)
• Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (Penguin)
• Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (Oxford)
• Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Penguin)
• Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Oxford)
• E.C. Bentley, Trent's Last Case (Oxford)

(These books are available at the Penn Book Center, 3726 Walnut Street)

Readings from the Newgate Calendar will be handed out in class.

Arrangements will be made in class for screening the film "Witness for the Prosecution" by Agatha Christie.

Additional background readings will be provided in class each week due the following week.

Requirements

• 2 three to four page "close-reading" papers
• 1 final seven to ten page paper, due on the final day of class
• final exam
• occassional quizzes and reading assignments

Schedule

I. Eighteenth-Century Gallows Literature and Criminal Biography

1/20 The Newgate Calendar (short readings provided in handout)

1/27 Defoe, Moll Flanders, (1722)

2/3 Defoe, Moll Flanders, (1722)

II. Nineteenth-Century Crime Novels

2/10 James Hogg, Confessions, (1824)

2/17 Dickens, Oliver Twist, (1838) Short Paper Due

2/24 Dickens, Oliver Twist, (1838)

3/3 Hardy, Tess, (1891)

3/10 Spring Break

3/17 Hardy, Tess, (1891)

III. Detective Fiction

3/24 Collins, Moonstone, (1868) Short Paper Due

3/31 Collins, Moonstone, (1868)

4/7 Doyle, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, (1892)

4/14 Bentley, Trent's Last Case, (1913)

4/21 Agatha Christie, "Witness for the Prosecution," (1957)

Final Paper Due

Final Exam, to be scheduled, May 1-9

Jonathan Grossman
Office: 215 Bennett Hall
Office Hours: Thursday 4-6
Office Phone: 898-7339
email:jgrossma@dept.english.upenn.edu

Return