Author Who Outsold Dickens… Stephen Carver’s “Author Who Outsold Dickens” (2020): Biography of a Crime Novelist 23 Mar 202023 Mar 2020 By Stephen Basdeo When I was doing my MA dissertation on the cultural history of crime, my supervisor, Dr Heather Shore, advised me to read two now largely forgotten novels:…
19th Century… Pernicious Trash? “The Prince of Archers, or, The Boyhood Days of Robin Hood”(1883) 16 Oct 2016 There is now before us such a veritable mountain of pernicious trash, mostly in paper covers, and “Price One Penny”; so-called novelettes, tales, stories of adventure, mystery and crime; pictures…
19th Century… Judging Robin Hood: Negotiating Outlawry in Nineteenth-Century Texts 25 Jun 2016 Paper Read at Plymouth University Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference 23-24 June 2016. Abstract. Robin Hood needs no introduction. He is the noble outlaw who steals from the rich to give to…
18th century… Edgworth Bess, a Prostitute (fl. 1723-24) 12 Mar 201616 Mar 2016 This is a blog post written for my friend, Dr. Kate Lister, and her 'Whores of Yore' project. All illustrations featured in the article are from original nineteenth-century books in…
18th century… The Victorian Underworld 24 Feb 2016 This is the text of a public talk given at Abbey House Museum, Kirkstall, Leeds on 1 March 2015 to complement their Crime and Punishment Exhibition. Introduction The history of…
18th century… Jack Sheppard (1702-1724) 16 Nov 20153 May 2018 Jack Sheppard (1702-1724) is one of my favourite thieves, second only, in my opinion, to Robin Hood. He was rather like an eighteenth-century Artful Dodger, a proper cheeky chappie who…