Violent Victorians

'Anyone who thinks violent entertainment is a recent development needs to read Rosalind Crone's book. This is an important study that marks a new generation of historians interpreting Victorian popular culture in exciting new ways.' Rohan McWilliam, Senior Lecturer in History, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK -- Rohan McWilliam 'In Violent Victorians Rosalind Crone successfully complicates and enriches the too-simple story that historians have told of the steady spread of "respectability" in Victorian England. By looking closely at a broad range of forms of popular culture, she shows how nineteenth-century creations such as Punch and Judy shows and Sweeney Todd the homicidal barber reveal the adaptability, rather than the abolition, of an older "unrespectable" popular culture.' Martin Wiener , Professor of History, Rice University -- Martin Wiener

First book to bring together the wide range of violent entertainments that characterised popular culture in nineteenth-century London and seriously assesses their origins, functions and impact. Draws upon the methodologies of social and cultural history to better understand the texture of Victorian society, and the mental world of the lower orders.By drawing attention to the wide range of gruesome, bloody and confronting amusements patronised by ordinary Londoners this book challenges our understanding of Victorian society and culture. From the turn of the nineteenth century, graphic, yet orderly, ‘re-enactments’ of high level violence flourished in travelling entertainments, penny broadsides, popular theatres, cheap instalment fiction and Sunday newspapers. This book explores the ways in which these entertainments siphoned off much of the actual violence that had hitherto been expressed in all manner of social and political dealings, thus providing a crucial accompaniment to schemes for the reformation of manners and the taming of the streets, while also serving as a social safety valve and a check on the growing cultural hegemony of the middle class.