Portland Public Library

The art of the English murder, Lucy Worsley

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-306) and index

contains biographical information

facsimilesplatesillustrationsportraits

index present

non fiction

The art of the English murder

bibliography

870098467

Lucy Worsley

Murder -- a dark, shameful deed, the last resort of the desperate or a vile tool of the greedy. And a very strange obsession. But where did this fixation develop? And what does it tell us about ourselves? In The Art of the English Murder, Lucy Worsley explores this phenomenon in forensic detail, revisiting notorious crimes like the Ratcliff Highway Murders, which caused a nationwide panic in the early nineteenth century, and the case of Frederick and Maria Manning, the suburban couple who were hanged after killing Maria's lover and burying him under their kitchen floor. Our fascination with crimes like these became a form of national entertainment, inspiring novels and plays, prose and paintings, poetry and true-crime journalism. At a point during the birth of modern England, murder entered the popular psyche, and it's been a part of us ever since

A connoisseur in murder -- The highway -- The watchmen -- The murder circuit -- House of wax -- True crime -- Charles Dickens, crime writer -- The ballad of Maria Marten -- Stage fright -- The Bermondsey Horror -- Middle-class murders and medical gentlemen -- The good wife -- Detective fever -- A new sensation -- "It is worse than a crime, Violet ..." -- Monsters and men -- The adventure of the forensic scientist -- Revelations of a lady detective -- The women between the wars -- The duchess of death -- A life less ordinary -- The great game -- Snobbery with violence -- The dangerous edge of things -- Postscript: The decline of English murder