Murder by Candlelight

by Michael Knox Beran

Overview

In the early nineteenth century, a series of murders took place in and around London which shocked the whole of England. The appalling nature of the crimes—a brutal slaying in the gambling netherworld, the slaughter of two entire households, and the first of the modern lust-murders—was magnified not only by the lurid atmosphere of an age in which candlelight gave way to gaslight, but also by the efforts of some of the keenest minds of the period to uncover the gruesomest details of the killings.These slayings took place against the backdrop of a London in which the splendor of the fashionable world was haunted by the squalor of the slums. Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Thomas De Quincey, Thomas Carlyle, and Percy Bysshe Shelley and others were fascinated by the blood and deviltry of the macabre. In their contemplations of the most notorious murders of their time, they discerned in the act of killing itself a depth of hideousness that we have lost sight of, now living in an age in which murder has been reduced to a problem of social science and skillful detective work. Interweaving these cultural vignettes alongside criminal history, acclaimed author Michael Beran paints a vivid picture of a time when homicide was thought of as the intrusion of the diabolic into ordinary life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681772318
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	10/25/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	1,084,232
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Michael Knox Beran's previous books include Forge of Empires, 1861-1871 and The Last Patrician, a study of Robert Kennedy that was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and the National Review. He lives in Westchester County, New York.

Table of Contents

Romantic Murder xi

Prologue: Horror's Romance: From the Gothic Donjon to the Metropolitan Blood-Sacrifice xv

Part 1 The Murder in the Dark Lane 1

Part 2 The Mystery of the Mutilated Corpse 71

Part 3 The Butler Didn't Do It: A Murder in Mayfair 137

Part 4 Toward the Ripper 183

Epilogue: The Decay of Murder 233

Acknowledgments 241

Notes and Sources 243

Index 257

About the Author 265

Editorial Reviews

Beran darts back to the 18th century and the arrival of Gothic literature, to authors such as Walter Scott and Coleridge, who used poetic language to convey the emotions of violence. Beyond such literary matters, Beran dwells upon real-world murder cases with a special emphasis on three. Beran relishes these stories and tells them with vigor and brio.

The Wall Street Journal

A fascinating new book. Beran asks us to consider our own hearts of darkness, why we're obsessed with murder stories, why this obsession matters, and what it suggests about us as a culture and a species. A witty and engaging narrative, Murder by Candlelight is at once psychological thriller and philosophical meditation, murder mystery and literary analysis, written in elegant and pointed prose. In one skillfully wrought volume, he cleverly feeds our appetite for horror even as he probes this appetite."

New York Times Book Review

An important civic act. Beran is such a lively writer, and such a risk-taking thinker.

George F. Will - The New York Times Book Review

Offers us an extraordinarily imaginative account of Jefferson’s inner life, an interior world that we have never seen described in quite this way before.

Gordon S. Wood - The New York Times Book Review

A fascinating new book. Beran asks us to consider our own hearts of darkness, why we're obsessed with murder stories, why this obsession matters, and what it suggests about us as a culture and a species. A witty and engaging narrative, Murder by Candlelight is at once psychological thriller and philosophical meditation, murder mystery and literary analysis, written in elegant and pointed prose. In one skillfully wrought volume, he clevely feeds our appetite for horror even as he probes this appetite.

The New York Times Book Review

A fresh, stylish and captivating examination.  Original and provocative.

The Chicago Tribune

A luminous look at Kennedy and the country he wanted to lead.

The Boston Globe

In Beran’s skilled hands, the similarities and differences between the situations these statesmen faced and the consequences of their decisions gradually build up to form a revealing and insightful portrait of a vital historical era.

Foreign Affairs

"A profound and exquisitely written meditation on the mind of America's most enigmatic Founder." ---The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher