HISTORICAL FICTION
Sleuth truths
Hannah Dolby’s new novel stars a Victorian lady detective. Here, she looks at the intrepid women of the Victorian era – in fiction and reality – and offers tips for historical fiction writers wanting to challenge assumptions
©Tricia Keracher-Summerfield
When I began writing my novel about the Victorian era’s funniest lady detective, Violet Hamilton, I hit a wall. I wanted Violet to be bold, daring, ground-breaking and free, but it went against all I was reading about women’s real lives at the time. How do you give a woman glorious adventures when she would have been expected to stay at home and behave?
Fiction gave me the answer, when I fell into the rich world of Victorian lady detectives. Victorian male detectives are well known in fiction, but female ones less so – even though they appeared in stories over twenty years before Sherlock Holmes. These intrepid fictional ladies had a freedom and a level of excitement real women must have longed for.
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