“when our happy credulity in all things is woefully abated, and our faith in the supernatural fled, we still retain our taste for the adventurous deeds and wild lives of brigands.”
A Brief History of Crime Literature | Stephen Basdeo
The Victorian Underworld
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.
Highwaymen as Heroes and Social Critics: “Paul Clifford” (1830) by Edward Bulwer Lytton
By the 1830s, the figure of the highwayman had almost vanished from Britain’s roads, but in a series of novels during the 1830s they were romanticised, and some authors adapted their stories to critique early Victorian society.