'This is an impressively intelligent work of investigation, which makes good use of late Victorian imperial history and criminology' - Chris Baldick, TLS This book examines the rise of the femme fatale as a prominant fictional type in late 19th-century British culture. As a stereotype she has been 'fabricated', that is to say constructed as a 'figure in the carpet' of the fin-de-siecle. The book argues that Rider Haggard's She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, Bram Stoker's female vampires and Conrad's destructive Malayan or African women, even Hardy's Tess, are all caught up in a series of late 19th-century contexts: biological determinism, imperialism, race, theories about female sexuality, degeneration and evolutionary theory.