1PatrickMurtha
New here. Pocket bio: Retired humanities teacher, residing in Tlaxcala, Mexico, with two dogs and six indoor cats. Passionate about literature, history, philosophy, classical music and opera, jazz, cinema, and similar subjects. Nostalgic guy. Politically centrist. BA in American Studies from Yale; MAs in English and Education from Boston University. Born in northern New Jersey. Have lived and worked in San Francisco, Chicago, northern Nevada, northeast Wisconsin, South Korea.
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Several recommendations: The Tichborne Claimant: A Victorian Mystery; The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher; A Sultry Month: Scenes of London Literary Life in 1846. The second is true crime; the first has some aspect of that although, really, the story is sui generis; the third is catnip for literary history buffs.
If this topic is duplicative, mods, please merge!
Several recommendations: The Tichborne Claimant: A Victorian Mystery; The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher; A Sultry Month: Scenes of London Literary Life in 1846. The second is true crime; the first has some aspect of that although, really, the story is sui generis; the third is catnip for literary history buffs.
2PatrickMurtha
The Dr. Johnson-as-detective stories of Lillian de la Torre (1902-1993) were widely admired, and she served as President of the Mystery Writers of America. Her non-fiction true crime books are wrongly listed as novels in her Wikipedia entry, no doubt because they are presented novelistically. The Heir of Douglas is available in my Scribd subscription, so I started in on it this morning. A handful of reviews that made the book sound arcane were naturally enticing for me. 😏
Actually, the story is not that arcane at all. The “Douglas Cause” was a major scandal and media sensation in 18th Century Britain, about which everyone had an opinion; comparable to the case of the Tichborne Claimant in the next century.
Actually, the story is not that arcane at all. The “Douglas Cause” was a major scandal and media sensation in 18th Century Britain, about which everyone had an opinion; comparable to the case of the Tichborne Claimant in the next century.