It is a commonly held assumption that all Victorian prisons were grim, abhorrent places, loathed by their inmates. This is undoubtedly an accurate description o

Victorian Prison Lives is the first account of the process of imprisionment in England between 1830 and 1914 to be drawn largely from the writings of prisoners

An “utterly brilliant” and deeply researched guide to the sights, smells, endless wonders, and profound changes of nineteenth century British history (Books

Michel Foucault's writing about the Panopticon in Discipline and Punish has dominated discussions of the prison and the novel, and recent literary criticism dra