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The Introduction prefaces a double special issue of Critical Survey examining the work of controversial popular author, journalist and amateur spy William Le Queux from 1880 to 1920. Known as the ‘master of mystery’, Le Queux was prominent in transmitting exaggerated fears about British national security before, during and after the First World War. The Introduction provides a historical and literary framework for the special issue and outlines its central premises: that cultural production in Le Queux’s era was intimately connected with contemporary socio-political forces; that this relationship was well understood by authors such as Le Queux, and often exploited for propagandist purposes; and that the resulting literary efforts were sometimes successful in influencing public opinion. The Introduction also outlines the overall finding that Le Queux’s work tended to distort his subject matter, misinform his readership, and blur the lines between fact and fiction in pursuit of his defencist agenda.

In the late-nineteenth century the origins of the modern concept of child sexual abuse (CSA) started to emerge in a set of intersecting medical and legal theories concerning the notion of sexual harm to children, especially in the new science of sexology. The concept was also shaped in sensational journalism and popular fiction which dramatically exploited the medico-legal theories in works that reached a wide audience. Within this set of overlapping discourses, this article identifies the developing characterisation of the abuser, or ‘paedophile’, as an outsider or stranger in order to provide distance from the uncomfortable reality that CSA is typically perpetrated by family members or others well known to the victims. The article also argues that much writing about sexual harm to children, including the factual treatments, often drew on the dark metaphors of gothic writing to avoid addressing this difficult subject explicitly. In this way the figure of the monster came to stand in for the perpetrator of sexual crimes against children, with the result that the paedophile was portrayed not just as a social outsider, but as a monstrous stranger – creating a persistent, detrimental myth which kept social attention away from the most common types of abuse. Royal Irish Academy (RIA) 2021-04-08 JG: Unpublished when uploaded -- double-check citation info and issue date on check date; DOI; set -text.