Literary Executions: Capital Punishment and American Culture, 1820-1925

"Rich with historical detail . . . examines the figure and theme of the death penalty in imaginative literature from Cooper to Dreiser." —Gregg Crane, Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Michigan

Drawing from legal and extralegal discourse but focusing on imaginative literature, Literary Executions examines representations of, responses to, and arguments for and against the death penalty in the United States over the long nineteenth century. John Cyril Barton crea...