Around 1847, an author describinghimself as "A Discharged officer with twenty years' experience" published a book entitledThe Mysteries of the Madhouse. It commences as a novel: the third-person narrative tells a thrilling tale complete with a harmless heir, conniving step-mother, and gormless step-brother. But after the heir of Howarth House is committed to a madhouse by his step-mother, the genre of the text changes abruptly. With no transition, the language of the novel is suddenly

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... d by extended, first-person, ostensibly factual accounts of what conditions are like inside madhouses.