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
Poor Pearl, Poor Girl!: The Murdered-Girl Stereotype in Ballad and Newspaper

Poor Pearl, Poor Girl!: The Murdered-Girl Stereotype in Ballad and Newspaper

Cohen, Anne B.

Paperback

Series: American Folklore Society Memoir, Book 58

Literary CriticismMythology & FolkloreTrue Crime

ISBN10: 0292764685
ISBN13: 9780292764682
Publisher: Univ Of Texas Pr
Published: Jan 1 1973
Pages: 148
Weight: 0.45
Height: 0.50 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.40
Language: English

The year was 1896, and nineteenth-century journalists called the murder of Pearl Bryan the Crime of the Century. From the day Pearl's headless body was found to the execution of her murderers on the gallows, the details of the murder fascinated newspaper reporters and ballad composers alike.

Often glossing over the facts of the case, newspaper accounts presented the events according to stereotypes that were remarkably similar to those found in well-known murdered-girl ballads, such as Pretty Polly, Omie Wise, and The Jealous Lover. Events, characters, motivations, and plot were presented through this framework: the simple country girl led astray by a clever degenerate. Nearly all variants of the Pearl Bryan ballad point the same moral:

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