Word Crimes: Blasphemy, Culture, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century England

by Joss Marsh

Book Overview

In 1883 the editor of a penny newspaper stood trial three times for the "obsolete" crime of blasphemy. The editor was G. W. Foote, the paper was the Freethinker, and the trial was the defining event of the decade. Foote's "martyrdom" completed blasphemy's nineteenth-century transformation from a religious offense to a class and cultural crime.

From extensive archival and literary research, Joss Marsh reconstructs a unified and particular...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226506916
• ISBN13: 9780226506913
• Release Date: August 1998
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 362 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.1"