What Exactly Is Sensation Fiction? - Jennifer

I thought Michael Denning did a very efficient job of not only discussing the history of the dime novel but showing us, his readers, many different cases of dime novels in existence throughout working class America at the turn of the century. My main question, however, was why he kept referencing dime novels as sensation fiction. I think he was very thorough with all of his explanations of terms and ideas, yet this is the one that escaped. I'm confused because I have always associated sensation novels with British literature a few decades before American dime novels are being discussed by Denning, much well known to be the masterwork of Wilkie Collins and to a lesser extent Lady Elizabeth Braddon among others who adopted the sensation novel and its characteristics to use in their works. I have always known sensation novels and sensation fiction to involve mysterious plots, some sort of murder or kidnapping involving poisons or opiates, as well as contrasting female characters, an intermingling of middle and upper class characters, and even sometimes the aspects of the country verses the city. As we have all read the description of the dime novel or the American sensation novel is quite different mostly involving working class and sometimes middle class characters and the events and excitement revolve around working class events.

I would have liked to have known where Denning decided to call American dime novels sensation fiction or seen him explain why he uses the term when it was coined before dime novels and was coined for a British genre of literature. I think when looking at the term "sensation" it refers much more to the British genre because of the sensational plot twists and sensational characters of the novels. I even looked up American sensation fiction and was confronted with the works of Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe, not the works of the dime novelists which just simply leads me to wonder why Denning continues to use the terms dime novel and sensation fiction as interchangeable in his book. The use of sensation fiction in American literature characterizes many of the same plot themes as the British and notes that the scandalous and mosterous events of the story were what made these works sensation novels. The one common denominator between sensation fiction as characterized by Denning and by what I have read is George Lippard who is well documented by Denning. Lippard's dime novels are of the few in Denning's book that fall into the time frame for what is considered sensation fiction. The Quaker City, Lippard's novel, and his other novels seem to have many of the aspects we would associate with sensation fiction such as a large manor house, an intricate inheritance plot, and seduction. In this case Denning classifies Lippard's novels as dime because they deal with the urban plot setting, but I do not necessarily see the connection between these sensation novels and the later dime novels most prevalent in Denning's book.