In his sensational dynamite novel of 1886, For Maimie's Sake: A Tale of Love and Dynamite, Grant Allen addressed the influence that political violence exercised over the late Victorian popular imagination by drawing attention to the fascinating quality of its shocks. Part melodrama, part political yarn and part romance, as well as a satire on British imperialism, the novel initially centres on the efforts of an ambitious scientist, Sydney Chevenix, to invent a noiseless high explosive which he plans to donate to the British government for use as a stealth weapon against anti-colonial insurgencies in Africa. This occurs against the background of Chevenix's pursuit of the titular and amoral heroine, Maimie Llewellyn, the daughter of an anarchist, artist and ‘madman’ whom he eventually marries. Like Isabel Meredith in A Girl Among the Anarchists, Maimie has experienced a ‘shocking’, even ‘heathenish’ upbringing at the hands of her bohemian father (pp. 9–10). The novel opens with criticism of British coercion in Ireland but this is as far as Allen, himself the son of an Irishman, pursues the Irish question, which he conflates with anarchism, like many other authors of dynamite fiction. Early on in the novel, Chevenix marvels at the possible application of his silent weapon against the ‘uncivilized enemies’ and ‘unsophisticated savages’ that Britain is encountering in Africa (p. 22), but his Polish assistant, Stanislas Benyowski, has other ideas.