Rogue Scholar: The Sinister Life and Celebrated Death of Edward H. Rulloff

by Richard W. Bailey

This is the tale of the insalubrious and utterly failed life of the notorious nineteenth-century thief, murderer, professional impostor, and would-be philologist Edward Rulloff, who was condemned to die and hanged for his crimes. The life of Rulloff is a sordid account of misguided genius and abysmal consequences. Those who loved him courted disaster, and, in every case, the courtship flowered into catastrophe. Richard Bailey's narrative, calm and impartial yet spiked with wit and suspense, captures perfectly the slightly haunted and overwrought air of Victorian rural America, calling on newspaper accounts, interviews, and eyewitness reports of the day. Inevitably, the quiet accumulation of details builds to a story that transcends its individual events to touch on the universal themes of any age. Rogue Scholar is about the evil of one man who lived a life of deception and crime. Yet in a larger sense it is also the portrait of a condemned soul in its final hours, an examination of the death penalty, and a reminder that media sensationalism is nothing new.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0472113372
• ISBN13: 9780472113378
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Length: 275 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

True Crime!

It isn't often that you find a book that's credible history and can't-put-down reading, but this tale of upstate New York murderer Edward Rulloff is both. If you liked The Professor and the Madman or The Devil in the White City, you'll love this one.