ABSTRACT
Critics of sensation fiction drew attention to the ideological conflict between domestic settings and the criminal acts portrayed in the novels. In company with female authors such as Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Mrs Henry Wood, Wilkie Collins was credited as an originator of the genre. 1 Using the domestic text of a diary to enhance sensation effects, Collins exploits reactions to the genre by creating internal female authors. In this context, the acts of diary-writing presented in The Woman in White and Armadale can be re-examined along with diary narrative in Collins's later fiction leading up to The Legacy of Cain and finally to Bram Stoker's Dracula. Jonathan Loesberg observes that by 1870 sensation fiction had 'lost its definition and ... ceased to be controversial'. 2 Although sensation had itself been defused, the elements of its impact through diary narrative can still be traced through the latter years of the nineteenth century.
