Stories of True Crime in Tudor and Stuart England by Ken Macmillan

Stories of True Crime in Tudor and Stuart England by Ken Macmillan

Now in its second edition, Stories of True Crime in Tudor and Stuart England has been updated to include more texts about witchcraft, murder, and sexual deviance and discussions about the historical climate within which crimes occurred; voice and print culture; and types of crime and criminals.

This volume contains modernized and annotated chapbooks related to crimes such as murder, theft, infanticide, rape, and witchcraft with accompanying illustrations that depict the acts and punishments of criminals in Tudor and Stuart England. In this edition, special attention has been paid to demonstrating significant overlaps and encouraging students to question authors’ reasonings behind including multiple crimes in a single work. Alongside this, further useful prompts have been included to stimulate discussion about why parables were used to open chapbooks, the historical context underpinning certain criminal acts, the value of these sources to scholars, and how certain texts compare and contrast with others.

With five new chapters and an updated introduction and bibliography, the second edition of Stories of True Crime in Tudor and Stuart England is an essential resource for all students of crime and punishment in early modern England.

Ken MacMillan is Professor of History at the University of Calgary, Canada, where he researches and teaches about law and society in early modern England. He is the author of Death and Disorder: A History of Early Modern England, 1485–1690 (2020).