SOURCE: "The Novel Experience," in Deadly Encounters: Two Victorian Sensations, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986, pp. 145-58.

In the following essay, Altick provides a general overview of the sensation novel and its components and origins.

The "sensation" in the melodrama of the 1860s involved not only the addition of athletic and mechanical devices as sources of excitement but the historical context in which these were presented. In deference to a shift in the audience's tastes, playwrights had been gradually turning away from stories laid in the past and making a point and virtue of locating their actions in the present time. This intensified interest in using the stage as a mirror of contemporary life affected the melodrama as much as it did other theatrical genres. Now that realistic sets were available to reproduce the visual aspects of modern everyday life, sensation dramatists were able to present melodramatic events, new...