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The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer
by Summerscale, Kate
- Used
- Very Good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good/very good
- ISBN 10
- 1594205787
- ISBN 13
- 9781594205781
- Seller
-
Carrollton, Georgia, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: Penguin Press, 2016. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/very good. First Edition. Hardcover. First Edition with full number line indicating first printing. 8 1/2" X 5 3/4". 378pp. Blue cloth over boards with spine backed in black and lettered in silver. Pages are clean and unmarked. Binding is firm and sound.
ABOUT THIS BOOK:
In the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12) were seen spending lavishly around the docklands of East London -- for ten days in July, they ate out at coffee houses and took trips to the seaside and the theater. The boys told neighbors they had been left home alone while their mother visited family in Liverpool, but their aunt was suspicious. When she eventually forced the brothers to open the house to her, she found the badly decomposed body of their mother in a bedroom upstairs. Robert and Nattie were arrested for matricide and sent for trial at the Old Bailey.
Robert confessed to having stabbed his mother, but his lawyers argued that he was insane. Nattie struck a plea and gave evidence against his brother. The court heard testimony about Robert's severe headaches, his fascination with violent criminals and his passion for 'penny dreadfuls', the pulp fiction of the day. He seemed to feel no remorse for what he had done, and neither the prosecution nor the defense could find a motive for the murder. The judge sentenced the thirteen-year-old to detention in Broadmoor, the most infamous criminal lunatic asylum in the land. Yet Broadmoor turned out to be the beginning of a new life for Robert--one that would have profoundly shocked anyone who thought they understood the Wicked Boy.
At a time of great tumult and uncertainty, Robert Coombes's case crystallized contemporary anxieties about the education of the working classes, the dangers of pulp fiction, and evolving theories of criminality, childhood, and insanity. With riveting detail and rich atmosphere, Kate Summerscale recreates this terrible crime and its aftermath, uncovering an extraordinary story of man's capacity to overcome the past.(Publisher).
ABOUT THIS BOOK:
In the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12) were seen spending lavishly around the docklands of East London -- for ten days in July, they ate out at coffee houses and took trips to the seaside and the theater. The boys told neighbors they had been left home alone while their mother visited family in Liverpool, but their aunt was suspicious. When she eventually forced the brothers to open the house to her, she found the badly decomposed body of their mother in a bedroom upstairs. Robert and Nattie were arrested for matricide and sent for trial at the Old Bailey.
Robert confessed to having stabbed his mother, but his lawyers argued that he was insane. Nattie struck a plea and gave evidence against his brother. The court heard testimony about Robert's severe headaches, his fascination with violent criminals and his passion for 'penny dreadfuls', the pulp fiction of the day. He seemed to feel no remorse for what he had done, and neither the prosecution nor the defense could find a motive for the murder. The judge sentenced the thirteen-year-old to detention in Broadmoor, the most infamous criminal lunatic asylum in the land. Yet Broadmoor turned out to be the beginning of a new life for Robert--one that would have profoundly shocked anyone who thought they understood the Wicked Boy.
At a time of great tumult and uncertainty, Robert Coombes's case crystallized contemporary anxieties about the education of the working classes, the dangers of pulp fiction, and evolving theories of criminality, childhood, and insanity. With riveting detail and rich atmosphere, Kate Summerscale recreates this terrible crime and its aftermath, uncovering an extraordinary story of man's capacity to overcome the past.(Publisher).
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Details
- Bookseller
- Underground Books, ABAA
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 7189
- Title
- The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer
- Author
- Summerscale, Kate
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- very good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First Edition
- ISBN 10
- 1594205787
- ISBN 13
- 9781594205781
- Publisher
- Penguin Press
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2016
Terms of Sale
Underground Books, ABAA
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Underground Books, ABAA
Biblio member since 2009
Carrollton, Georgia
About Underground Books, ABAA
Underground Books is an online rare and antiquarian bookshop as well as a brick and mortar general bookstore of the same name in downtown Carrollton, Georgia. Sister store Hills & Hamlets Bookshop is located in the nearby planned eco-community of Serenbe.
Co-owners Josh Niesse and Megan Bell met in 2011, just 10 days or so after Josh opened the doors of Underground Books, literally underground, several steps below street level in a 100-year-old basement in our historic downtown. Megan, an English student at the University of West Georgia, walked in, fell down the rabbit hole, and never left! Reader, we married in May of 2014, under the book arch that now resides at the bookshop. We are both proud alumni of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS), and Megan additionally of Rare Book School at the University of Virginia and of the ABAA Women's Initiative Mentorship Program.
We have two open bookshops that carry new, used, bargain, rare, and antiquarian books, as well as our online office, impossible without our incredible team of booksellers, including two fellow CABS graduates, Miranda McMillan and Suzanne Carnes.
Like many booksellers with open brick-and-mortar stores, we are passionate generalists, but our specialties are in decorative publisher's cloth bindings; fairy tales, folklore, and mythology; popular science and natural history; the occult; and fine press books.
Co-owners Josh Niesse and Megan Bell met in 2011, just 10 days or so after Josh opened the doors of Underground Books, literally underground, several steps below street level in a 100-year-old basement in our historic downtown. Megan, an English student at the University of West Georgia, walked in, fell down the rabbit hole, and never left! Reader, we married in May of 2014, under the book arch that now resides at the bookshop. We are both proud alumni of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS), and Megan additionally of Rare Book School at the University of Virginia and of the ABAA Women's Initiative Mentorship Program.
We have two open bookshops that carry new, used, bargain, rare, and antiquarian books, as well as our online office, impossible without our incredible team of booksellers, including two fellow CABS graduates, Miranda McMillan and Suzanne Carnes.
Like many booksellers with open brick-and-mortar stores, we are passionate generalists, but our specialties are in decorative publisher's cloth bindings; fairy tales, folklore, and mythology; popular science and natural history; the occult; and fine press books.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Number Line
- A series of numbers appearing on the copyright page of a book, where the lowest number generally indicates the printing of that...
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- A.N.
- The book is pristine and free of any defects, in the same condition as ...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
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