Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Crime and the Nation: Prison and Popular Fiction in Philadelphia. 1786-1800

Crime and the Nation: Prison and Popular Fiction in Philadelphia. 1786-1800

Okun, Peter

Paperback

Series: Studies in American Popular History and Culture

Literary CriticismCriminologyGeneral United States History

ISBN10: 1138880116
ISBN13: 9781138880115
Publisher: Routledge
Published: Aug 19 2015
Pages: 208
Weight: 0.70
Height: 0.50 Width: 6.00 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
Crime and the Nation explores the correlation between fiction writing and national identity in the late eighteenth century when these two enterprises went hand in hand. The 1780s and '90s witnessed a spirited public debate on crime and punishment that produced a new kind of fiction and a new kind of prison. The world's first penitentiary-style prison opened at Philadelphia in 1790. At the same time jurists, reformers and fiction writers found new uses for the criminal. Suddenly, he was fascinating, he was edifying to the community, he was worth displaying and reforming. In a young nation whose very origins were perceived as criminal, yet clearly necessary and ultimately redeemable, crime emerged as an essential-and controversial-component of national identity. Crime and the Nation explores the nature of that identity, and the origins of America's unique and enduring love affair with crime and crime fiction.

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