Victorian literature, according to W. David Shaw, gives rise to a wealth of questions and mysteries. Addressing crises of representation in poetry, fiction, and nonfictional prose in light of similar crises in philosophical, theological, and scientific literature, Shaw here examines the sources of Victorian mystery.

Using rhetorical analysis, historical scholarship and the methods of contemporary deconstruction and hermeneutics, Shaw explores three major categories of mystery in a wide cross-section of Victorian literature: mysteries of the unconscious; mysteries of identity; and mysteries closely connected with nineteenth-century theories of knowledge. His discussion ranges from mysteries of repressed or subliminal knowledge in Dickens, Hardy, and Charlotte and Emily Brontë, through Newman's classic analysis of the mysteries of faith, to mysteries of criminal detection and historical reconstruction in Collins and Browning. Shaw demonstrates how the topic of mystery transcends the boundaries of literary criticism, implying contemporary questions of epistemology, theology, and metaphysics. He identifies a distinction between so-called mysteries that can be solved as philosophical puzzles or scientific problems, and mysteries proper, for which there are no explanations. Shaw concludes that contrary to what modern science usually assumes, many Victorian writers believe that knowledge does not dispel mystery but rather reveals it.