Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction, Medicine and Anatomy

Anna Gasperini received her PhD from the National University of Ireland Galway. She specialises in Victorian popular fiction, Victorian medical history, and spatial and discourse theory. She is the current Membership Secretary of the UK-based Victorian Popular Fiction Association (VPFA).

• 1. Preface: Dissecting a Literary Monster.- 2. Penny Bloods, The Anatomy Act, and a Common Ground for Analysis.- 3. Manuscripts from the Diary of a Physician: Power, Ethics, and the Super-Doctor.- 4. Coping with the Displaced Corpse: Medicine, Truth, and Masculinity in Varney the Vampyre.- 5. Underground Truths: Sweeney Todd, Cannibalism, and Discourse Control.- 6. The Unknown Labyrinth: Radicalism, The Body, and the Anatomy Act in The Mysteries of London.- 7. Dissection Report: Patterns of Medicine and Ethics.

“In addition to being a fascinating read, it is an extremely welcome stepping-stone in the scholarly analysis of penny bloods by contributing to a better understanding of their place in early-Victorian culture and their legitimisation as a key literary phenomenon within a historical, social and artistic context.” (Manon Labrande, The Wilkie Collins Journal, wilkiecollinssociety.org, Vol. 19, 2021)“Gasperini frames elaborate connections between the depiction of medical men, graveyard and subterranean geospaces, and the 1832 Anatomy Act in her penny blood ‘specimens’ to demonstrate that ‘the massive body of the penny blood genre can be analysed, with the correct tools, as a literary phenomenon inscribed within a historical, social, and artistic context much like other genres’ … . Gasperini rightly positions us to recognize the penny blood as an original site of such discourse and a good place from which to start.” (Rae X. Yan, Victorian Studies, Vol. 63 (1), 2020)