Mary Ann Cotton - Dark Angel: Britain's First Female Serial Killer by Martin Connolly

Mary Ann Cotton - Dark Angel: Britain's First Female Serial Killer by Martin Connolly

A female thief, with four husbands, a lover and, reportedly, over twelve children, is arrested and tried for the murder of her step-son in 1872, turning the small village of West Auckland in County Durham upside down. Other bodies are exhumed and when they are found to contain arsenic, she is suspected of their murder as well. The perpetrator, Mary Ann Cotton, was tried and found guilty and later hanged on 24 March 1873 in Durham Goal. It is claimed she murdered over twenty people and was the first female serial killer in England. With location photographs and a blow by blow account of the trial, this book challenges the claim that Mary Ann Cotton was the 'The West Auckland Borgia', a title given to her at the time. It sets out her life, trial, death and the aftermath and also questions the legal system used to convict her by looking at contemporary evidence from the time and offering another explanation for the deaths. The book also covers the lives of those left behind, including the daughter born to Mary Ann Cotton in Durham Goal.

Martin Connolly is Irish, from Belfast. He is a professor of literature at a university in Japan. He has published extensively on medieval English literature, Irish poetry (including Seamus Heaney) and the work of James Joyce, most recently working on Joyce's poetry. In 2015 he published a novella, 'Eri, a Japanese ghost story'. Snowchild Press. CRITICAL COMMENTARY: From eminent British poet, Gavin Bantock (author of Just Think of It, Eirenikon, Christ: A Poem in twenty six parts, etc.): Martin Connolly has an acute eye for observation, a canny ear for sound and a unique way with words in expressing what he sees, hears and feels about things in the world high and low. His poems cover a wide range of topics from absolute realism to quaint fantasy, as titles like Elegy for a Convenience Store and The Snowchild testify. Open his book at almost any page and you will find an unexpected gem of an image or a pithy turn of phrase. He has a distinct voice of his own in a poetic world of fascinating interweavings of English, Celtic and Japanese fibres. From acclaimed Irish poet Lorna Shaugnessy (author of Torching the Brown River & Anchored, etc): LABOURNIGHT & OTHER POEMS, Martin Connolly's first collection, takes the reader on a series of geographic, emotional and sensory journeys from 'The Helicopters' in North Belfast to the intercultural reflections inspired by 'Eating an apple on a commuter train in Japan', the poet's adopted home. In the collection's centrepiece, the long poem 'labournight', 'taut lines' are not only a feature of the mother's face but of the poem itself: gripping, real, it rollercoasters through the shifting rhythms and moods of a long labour from the expectant father's perspective. This is honest poetry, self-mocking rather than self-absorbed; it captures moments of absurdity and self-consciousness, exhaustion, fear and above all, intimacy. In many poems the world is rediscovered, as is language, aided by the company of toddler sons. But the reality of 'routine in among the wonder' is here too; the 'choreography' of the commuter, 'scrummaging for a seat'. Observations of the everyday are acutely captured in language that is fresh and flexible, as poems move fluently between the particular and Connolly's philosophical probing of 'the giant constructs of community'. Snowchild Press Official Website: https: //snowchildpress.weebly.com/

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781473876200
ISBN 10	1473876206
Title	Mary Ann Cotton - Dark Angel: Britain's First Female Serial Killer
Author	Martin Connolly
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Pen & Sword Books Ltd
Year published	2016-11-01
Number of pages	192
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.