Cult criminals : the Newgate novels (1830-47)

Cult Criminals is a set of early Victorian crime novels 'sensationally' popular with readers and of immense influence on the development of the novel form.

All six novels, commonly labelled 'Newgate' novels, scandalized the Victorians by appearing to glamorize criminals, and led to the literary controversy between Dickens and Thackeray, who damned the former's Oliver Twist as a 'Newgate' novel.

These new editions are accompanied by a lengthy critical introduction and bibliography, in addition to important critical prefaces written by the Newgate novelists.

At the heart of the 'Newgate debate' lay crucial questions concerning the ethical, social and ideological function of the novel, the relationship between romance and realism in fiction, and whether crime should be portrayed in fiction at all.

The Newgate novels function as a bridge between the burgeoning eighteenth century tradition of crime fiction and the detective and crime novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as encapsulating many of the social and cultural shifts that took place in the early Victorian period.