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A review by berlinbibliophile
Murder by the Book: A Sensational Chapter in Victorian Crime by Claire Harman
4.0
I really enjoyed this book. It takes an interesting moment from history, a brutal murder, and uses it as an occasion to not only talk about the murder itself, but about the influence of the emerging mass media and the way the event influenced public opinion on popular culture.
The murderer in this case, in one of his many contradictory statements about his crime, said that he had been driven to commit the murder by a popular book about a criminal, Jack Sheppard. A media frenzy about morality in popular culture followed. I thought it was especially interesting in comparison to today, when the new mass medium of video games is often blamed for violence, instead of popular novels, as it was then. The more things change, the more they stay the same. And one thing that stays the same is that Claire Harman writes excellent and entertaining books.
2021 re-read: There are so many unanswered questions at the end of this book, but it's still an excellent examination of popular culture in the early Victorian era. I guess that's one of the frustrations of reading about a murder that was never really solved.
The murderer in this case, in one of his many contradictory statements about his crime, said that he had been driven to commit the murder by a popular book about a criminal, Jack Sheppard. A media frenzy about morality in popular culture followed. I thought it was especially interesting in comparison to today, when the new mass medium of video games is often blamed for violence, instead of popular novels, as it was then. The more things change, the more they stay the same. And one thing that stays the same is that Claire Harman writes excellent and entertaining books.
2021 re-read: There are so many unanswered questions at the end of this book, but it's still an excellent examination of popular culture in the early Victorian era. I guess that's one of the frustrations of reading about a murder that was never really solved.