by Elizabeth Spearing (Editor), Janet Todd (Editor)
Accused of transvestism and trickery, indicted for bigamy and hanged for robbery, Mary Carleton, the German Princess, was the most notorious female rogue of her time. Mary Frith, alias Mal Cutpurse, was a similarly spectacular transgressor: a resident of London's infamous Alsatia district, a criminal sanctuary between Fleet Street and the Thames, she was renowned for strolling the streets of seventeenth-century London in men's clothes.
The Case of Mary Carleton and The Life and Death of Mary Frith, are reprinted here for the first time, since their original publication in 1663 and 1662 respectively. In the tradition of Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, these are the semi-fictional biographies of these two extraordinary criminals. They reveal to us a world in which women smoked in taverns, drank to excess in alehouses, and regaled revelers with anecdotes around a fire all perilous activities for a woman in a society which considered modesty, silence, and obedience the feminine virtues of the day.
Format: Illustrated
Pages: 232
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 01 Jan 1995
ISBN 10: 0814782140
ISBN 13: 9780814782149
Praise for the original edition:
Indispensable for the serious student of American literature, these volumes should be purchased by every college, university, and large public library.
- Library Journal ,