Cash for questions: Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett’s female detectives, journalism, and the case of the missing income

This article explores the work of Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett (1846–1930), a prolific and successful journalist and novelist who nonetheless struggled to earn a living. It argues that her writing is deeply informed by her financial experiences and her political view of the relationship between capital and labour. Burgoyne Corbett’s detective stories, published as a series in many local papers, interrogate capitalism from a feminist and socialist viewpoint. Her female detective, Dora Bell, resembles the female investigative journalists of the 1890s. Dora exposes wealthy men as frequently the originators of crime and women as its direct and indirect victims.