Poison(s) and Poisoning in Nineteenth-Century Popular Fiction
A special issue of Victorian Popular Fictions Journal
Guest-edited by Manon Burz-Labrande and Sarah Frühwirth
Proposal Deadline: April 30, 2025
Full Article Deadline: October 31, 2025

Poison was ubiquitous in the nineteenth century. Arsenic or, as Charles Dickens called it in an 1851 article in Household Words, the Victorians’ “‘favourite’ poison” (279), could be found in clothing, wallpaper, lampshades, paint, children’s toys, medicine, and many other nineteenth-century household goods. It could be purchased in grocery stores and was sold over the counter at the chemist’s shop. “A lady in full dress”, the British Medical Journal wrote in 1862, “carrie[d] in her skirt poison enough to slay the whole of the admirers she may meet with in half a dozen ball-rooms” (“The Week” 1862: 177). Arsenic was by no means the only toxicant widely in use at the time. Mercury, prussic acid and belladonna were used for cosmetic purposes; chloride of zinc, nitrate of silver and oil of vitriol were used by doctors to treat a variety of ailments and could be found in most medical cabinets; strychnine was used for pest control; and lead was a popular means to extend food. Virtually all aspects of everyday life therefore involved some sort of poisonous substance as either an ingredient or a remedy.
At the same time, the public discourse surrounding poison took a sensational turn: increasing medical knowledge in toxicology brought to light the poisonous potential of the Victorians’ daily life, creating fascination and widespread concern at the same time. Periodicals and newspapers soon latched onto this topical issue, targeting an audience that craved for sensation and publishing sensationalised accounts of trials of poisoners and food-adulteration scandals. Meanwhile, the development of modern toxicology led to the passing of several acts attempting to regulate access to various poisons (e.g. the Arsenic Act in 1851 and the Pharmacy Act in 1868) as well as a number of innovations intended to help protect the public (such as Young’s Patent Poison Cabinet or Lynch’s New Poison Bottle). This omnipresence of poisons both in daily life and in everyday discourse fired the imagination of contemporary authors of popular fiction, and nineteenth-century literature is unsurprisingly rife with poisonous substances functioning as plot devices. From the works of renowned authors to anonymously published popular fiction such as Newgate novels and penny dreadfuls, the connection between poison and literature clearly bore a particular interest in the Victorian period, especially within sensation and detective fiction.
This special issue aims to explore the manifold ways nineteenth-century texts dealt with the ubiquity of poison in society and the growing awareness brought about by toxicology. Defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “a substance that is capable of causing the illness or death of a living organism when introduced or absorbed”, poison also has a figurative sense as “something that has a destructive or corrupting influence”. The latter meaning rapidly became a staple of literary criticism at the time, tightening the connection between poison and literature as penny dreadfuls were for example labelled “penny packets of poison” (Greenwood 1874: 158) and sensation novels were referred to as “poisoned stimulants” (Porter 1871: 232), and many popular-fiction texts seem to revel in justifying this widespread health anxiety by including poison in their plots. In this special issue, the journal encourages both literal and metaphorical interpretations of ‘poison’.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- poison in the domestic sphere and in everyday life, and the representation of the following topics in popular literature: mercury poisoning (‘mad as a hatter’), lead makeup, arsenic (used as green dye for clothes, curtains, wallpaper, but also used in candles and flower wreaths)
- medical usage of poison; poison vs antidote – “No one can draw a definite boundary between a poison and a medicine” (Swaine Taylor 1859: xiv); Jacques Derrida’s theorising of writing as a ‘pharmakon’, which means both poison and remedy in Greek
- poisoners in nineteenth-century popular literature: in the domestic sphere (for example murderous wives); poison and detection; poisoning doctors, (un)intentional poisoning of patients and medical gothic
- poisonous and/or venomous animals
- culinary poisons; food-adulteration panics (e.g. following the 1858 Bradford sweets poisoning scandal)
- alcohol and/or drugs as poison (Swaine Taylor mentions opium, tobacco and alcohol in his
treatise on poisons); orientalised poisons and the Empire (for example, opium or tobacco) - the gendering of the discourses surrounding poisons: patriarchal order vs female empowerment
- the proximity of literature and poisons on the physical page, for example, advertisements for rat poison in periodicals that also featured literature
- the representation of poison in Punch caricatures such as “The Arsenic Waltz” (1862)
- ‘poisonous’ texts and the critical discourse surrounding sensation novels and penny dreadfuls famous (female) poisoners (for example, Madeleine Smith, William Palmer, Florence Maybrick), the Essex poisoning trials, the Bravo mystery
- miasma theory and poisonous air, the “cholera poison” (Snow 1849: 6)
- the 1851 Arsenic Act, the 1868 Pharmacy Act, etc.
Please send a proposal of no more than 400 words and a 50-word biographical note to Manon BurzLabrande (manon.burz-labrande@univie.ac.at) and Sarah Frühwirth (sarah.fruehwirth@univie.ac.at) by 30 April 2025. The submission deadline for full articles is 31 October 2025. Full articles should be between 7,000 and 8,000 words and follow the VPFJ Style Guide, which is available on the website and downloadable here: https://victorianpopularfiction.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/VPFJournalStyle-Guide-updated-June-2021.pdf. All articles are subject to peer review. Only previously unpublished work will be considered.
Please do not hesitate to contact the guest editors, Manon Burz-Labrande and Sarah Frühwirth, at the above e-mail addresses with any further questions or inquiries.
References
- Dickens, Charles. 1851. “Household Crime.” Household Words: A Weekly Journal, 90 (13 December): 277-281.
- Greenwood, James. 1874. “A Short Way to Newgate.” The Wilds of London: 158-172. London: Chatto and Windus.
- “Poison.” n.d. Oxford English Dictionary Online. http://www.oed.com
- Porter, Noah. 1871. Books and Reading; or, What Books Shall I Read and How Shall I Read Them? New York: Charles Scribner & Co.
- Snow, John. 1849. On the Mode of Communication of Cholera. London: John Churchill, Princes Street, Soho.
- Swaine Taylor, Alfred. 1859. On Poisons in Relation to Medical Jurisprudence and Medicine. 2nd edition. Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lea.
- “The Week.” 1862. British Medical Journal, 15 February: 177-179.