The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective Event with Sara Lodge - Thursday 10th October 2024

Join us in the bookshop to hear Sara Lodge discuss her new book, The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective.

6.30pm on Thursday 10th October at Golden Hare Books, 68 St Stephen Street EH3 5AQ.

Order your copy of The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective and receive a free ticket to our event! Alternatively, our ticket-only option is available for £5 (which can be used towards a purchase of the book at the event).

We will follow up on your booking with a confirmation email - please be sure to check your junk folder!

Please note that The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective is due to be published on 24th September. Your copy of the book will be sent out/made available for collection after this date.

About The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective

A revelatory history of the women who brought Victorian criminals to account—and how they became a cultural sensation   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 women’s 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? Lodge’s 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.