Modern Literature and the Death Penalty, 1890-1950

This book examines how the cultural and ethical power of literature offered early twentieth-century readers opportunities for thinking through capital punishment in the UK, Ireland and the US in the period between 1890 and 1950. Modern Literature and the Death Penalty, 1890-1950 therefore considers how connections between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture seem particularly inextricable where the death penalty is at stake. This book will consider a range of forms, including: short stories; pulp fiction; detective fiction; plays; polemic; criminological and psychoanalytic tracts; letters and memoirs by condemned persons and by executioners; and major works of canonical literature by authors including James Joyce, Theodore Dreiser, Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Flann O’Brien. Cases of the death penalty that sparked particular public debate and had substantial literary influence are explored, including the Roger Casement Case (UK (Ireland) 1916), the Edith Thompson case (UK,1923) and the Leopold and Loeb case (USA, 1924).