The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective [Paperback]

A revelatory history of the women who brought Victorian criminals to accountand how they became a cultural sensation

Shortlisted for The Wolfson History Prize 2025
 
From Wilkie Collins to the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the traditional image of the Victorian detective is male. Few people realise that women detectives successfully investigated Victorian Britain, working both with the police and for private agencies, which they sometimes managed themselves.
 
Sara Lodge recovers these forgotten womens lives. She also reveals the sensational role played by the fantasy female detective in Victorian melodrama and popular fiction, enthralling a public who relished the spectacle of a cross-dressing, fist-swinging heroine who got the better of love rats, burglars, and murderers alike.
 
How did the morally ambiguous work of real women detectives, sometimes paid to betray their fellow women, compare with the exploits of their fictional counterparts, who always save the day? Lodges book takes us into the murky underworld of Victorian society on both sides of the Atlantic, revealing the female detective as both an unacknowledged labourer and a feminist icon.

Shortlisted for The Wolfson History Prize 2025

“Academic rigour paired with vivid storytelling. . . . A joy to read.”—Alice Loxton,The Telegraph

“A revelation, upending assumptions about women’s supposedly marginal presence in the investigation of 19th-century crime.”—Joan Smith,Sunday Times

“Ms. Lodge has a way with witty turns of phrase—one woman is ‘wise-cracking and safe-cracking.’ This book, too, is worth cracking if you want to know more about the forerunners of women in crime fiction.”—Katrina Gulliver,Wall Street Journal

“Lodge has marshalled the treasures of her research with enormous skill and sl“z