Turned to Account - 9780521326728

Turned to AccountThe Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England\nAuthor(s): Lincoln B. Faller\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521326728, 978-0521326728\nSynopsis\nIn the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, widespread fear of criminal assault motivated the publication of hundreds of pamphlets tracing the lives and misdeeds of London's most notorious rogues. Turned to Account is a study that focuses on the popular genre of criminal biography, examining how it played upon and reflected English society's fears and interest in aberrant behaviour. The author has not produced a criminal history, but an intriguing distillation of some 2,000 separate narratives describing the lives, deeds, and dying words of thieves, murderers, and various scoundrels. Lincoln Faller examines ways in which ordinary Englishmen read, wrote, and presumably thought .