
'Crime in Fiction' with Professor John Mullan
Online Lecture series, The Power of the Novel, with Gresham College visiting lecturer Professor John Mullan.
Wednesday 24th February, 2021 @ 6:00 pm
- Online event
- Talk
Free
About the Event
Why did stories of criminals become irresistible for novelists? Starting with works like Moll Flanders in the eighteenth century, this lecture goes on to examine the role of criminals in Dickens, keen to let his readers and characters experience what Pip in Great Expectations calls ‘the taint of crime’. To what ends?
How does the recent genre fiction of novelists like Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell return us to the transgressive pleasures of Defoe’s criminal autobiographies?
Reservations are required for this lecture. In person reservations will be available closer to the event. Sign up to our email newsletter for updates: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/newsletter/
About the Book

Publisher:Oxford University Press
Publication date:10 Feb 2011
ISBN:9780192805355
Moll Flanders - whore, wife, thief, felon, penitent - tells the racy tale of her life in Defoe's extraordinary novel. An account of opportunism, endurance, and survival that speaks as strongly today as it did to its first readers, this new edition provides a full introduction and notes to explore the book's eighteenth-century context.