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  • Published: 29 October 2018
  • ISBN: 9780241315224
  • Imprint: Viking
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $35.00

Murder by the Book

A Sensational Chapter in Victorian Crime




A gripping investigation into the crime that scandalized literary London, from Dickens to Thackeray

On a spring morning in 1840, on an ultra-respectable Mayfair street, a household of servants awoke to discover that their unobtrusive master, Lord William Russell, was lying in bed with his throat cut so deeply that the head was almost severed.

The whole of London, from monarch to maidservants, was scandalized by the unfolding drama of such a shocking murder, but behind it was another story, a work of fiction. For when the culprit eventually confessed, he claimed his actions were the direct result of reading the best-selling crime-novel of the day. This announcement amazed the key literary figures of the time, from Thackeray to Dickens, and posed the question: can a work of fiction do real harm?

  • Published: 29 October 2018
  • ISBN: 9780241315224
  • Imprint: Viking
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $35.00

About the author

Claire Harman

Claire Harman is the award-winning biographer of Sylvia Townsend Warner, Fanny Burney, Robert Louis Stevenson and Charlotte Bronte, as well as the bestselling Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World and the Victorian crime investigation Murder by the Book. She is also a prizewinning poet and short story writer. She lives in Oxford.

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