Nicholas Daly, Sensation and Modernity in the 1860s

Over the last decades, the mid-Victorian era has been under close academic scrutiny. Since W. L. Burn’s 1964 text, The Age of Equipoise, the idea of consensus, in particular, has been widely explored, giving rise to a number of seminal interpretations and reassessments. Central to this interest lies the issue of social conflict which, in those days when Reform seemed to blur class distinctions, undermined the “fragile, fractured and fragmentary” Victorian social fabric, constantly threatening..