The Newgate Calendars

From the later eighteenth century, these collected calendars gather moralizing lives of men and women who passed through Newgate Prison or died on the gallows. Typical pieces recount highwaymen, housebreakers, forgers, and murderers, mixing last speeches, trial matter, and warnings against drink, theft, and bad company. Famous names such as Dick Turpin sit beside obscure offenders whose cases were sold as chapbooks. The book is an anthology of criminal biography for household reading, not a legal code and not a history of prison reform.

Quarter bound in black cloth, brown paper boards with a repeat pattern in black and gold by Daniel Norman. Brown endleaves. Brown two-volume slipcase. A photolithographic reprint of two volumes first published in 1951 and 1960 respectively.