Peepshows: Love Letters and the Death Penalty in a Sensation Trial and its Cultural Legacies

Criminal trials are primarily studied by cultural historians and legal scholars without reference to eachother. My aim is to produce a feminist cultural history of a sensation trial and its legacies that addresses the legal, historical and cultural dimensions of the case. The monograph will explore how a woman was hanged on the flimsy evidence of her love letters, and how later critics and cultural producers used popular forms to speak back to law. The project significance stems from its multi-disciplinary approach, and the innovative synchronic and diachronic framewor, which will provide a model for later cultural studies of trials.