ABSTRACT
The appearance of stage detectives and detective drama was striking and swift. Following the ground-breaking performance of Horace Wigan as Detective Jack Hawkshaw in Tom Taylor's The Ticket-of-Leave Man in 1863, stage detectives proliferated. While many actors and actresses would go on to perform stage detectives in the theatres of London's East and West End, there are a handful of artists who played a particularly significant role in the formation of this new stage type. The character of the detective was established as his function was culturally codified. In short, the creation of centralized policing in the capital was not only a procedural development but also a cultural one, just as the method was established so was the man. The nineteenth-century ‘detective’ is much more familiar today as a literary construct than as a dramatic conceit. This introduction also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book.
