“From the Top of Newgate to the Bottom”: An Album of Victorian Murderers

Abstract

The next two articles are part of a broader research trajectory on Victorian murderers. The essays by Joseph Crawford and Carolyn Oulton present an excellent introduction to the topic. The Victorian period provides an unforgettable gallery of magnificent murderers. From the Newgate Novel tradition at the beginning of the century, through De Quincey’s aesthetic musings on the fine art of murder, to Arthur Machen’s decadent impostors/assassins at the end of the century, ingenious killers have been represented on stage, in song and ballads, all the various forms of material culture and, of course, literature and the popular press. Further contributions will follow, with the aim of reconstructing a multimedia map of the archipelagic narrative of murder across the nineteenth-century.