Literature and Crime in Augustan England

Eighteenth-century England saw an explosion of writings about deviance. In literature, in the law, and in the press, writers returned again and again to the question of crime and criminals.

While the extension of the legal system formalised the power of the state to categorise and punish ‘deviance’, writers repeatedly confronted the problematic nature of legal authority and the unstable idea of ‘the criminal’. Some of this commentary was supportive, some was subversive and resistant, uncover...