Criminality and the Common Law Imagination in the 18th and 19th Centuries

Erin Sheley is an Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Her legal research considers how the law should account for subjectivity in measuring and punishing criminal and tort harm. Her work has appeared in such journals as the North Carolina Law Review, the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, the Wake Forest Law Review, and the Indiana Law Review. Her literary scholarship has appeared in the Byron Journal, the Southern Literary Journal, Law and Literature, and Law, Culture and the Humanities. She holds an A.B. and J.D. from Harvard University and a PhD in English from the George Washington University.

• Introduction: The Tolbooth DoorPart I: Adultery as Actus Reus1. Adultery, Criminality, and the Myth of English Sovereignty2. The Gothic Law of MarriagePart II: Child Criminality as Mens Rea3. ‘The Faerie Court’ of Child PunishmentPart III: The Rape Victim as Evidence4. The Rape Novel and Reputation Evidence5. Literary Rape Trials and the Trauma of National IdentityCoda: Leaving MidlothianBibliography