19th Century… Outlaws vs. Vampires 22 Jun 2018 By Stephen Basdeo Vampires first appeared in English popular culture with the publication of Robert Southey’s epic narrative poem Thalaba the Destroyer (1801). Thalaba’s bride, Oneiza, dies on their wedding…
19th Century… An English Republican’s View of Crime and its Causes 19 May 201819 May 2018 By Stephen Basdeo George William MacArthur Reynolds (1814-79) was one of the Victorian era’ most prolific novelists. Inspired by Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris (1843), Reynolds’s famous The Mysteries of…
19th Century… Pierce Egan’s “Robin Hood Ballads” (1840) 6 Jan 2018 This post is not one of my usual essay style posts, with an introduction and conclusion, etc., but more of a research note after having got hold of a first…
19th Century… Post-Apocalyptic Bandits: Mary Shelley’s “The Last Man” (1826) 7 Aug 20171 Sep 2017 I am the native of a sea-surrounded nook, a cloud-enshadowed land, which, when the surface of the globe, with its shoreless ocean and trackless continents, presents itself to my mind,…
18th century… The First Robin Hood Novel: Robert Southey’s “Harold, or, The Castle of Morford” (1791) 13 Jun 2017 (This is an updated version of an earlier post I made) Scholars generally point to 1819 as the year that the first Robin Hood novels appeared, these being the anonymous…
19th Century… When “Upperworld” and “Underworld” Meet: Social Class and Crime in “The Mysteries of London (1844-46) 15 Mar 2017 [The following is the text of a talk given at Lancaster University's 'Class and the Past Conference' on 16 March 2017]. Introduction George William MacArthur Reynolds’ The Mysteries of London,…
