No Defense

Jamaica and Ireland at the turn of the eighteenth century: a man convicted of a killing he did not do, transported, and a woman who will not accept the verdict. Parker was Canadian-born, settled in England, sat in Parliament for eighteen years and was knighted; he wrote the colonial world as an administrator's son rather than a tourist, and the court-martial here is procedurally exact. Fifty-four plates after painters including Maclise and Raeburn carry the trials, courtships and interiors of the period from 1769 to 1902.