Homicide in American fiction, 1798-1860: a study in social values

Homicide has many social and psychological implications that vary from culture to culture and which change as people accept new ideas concerning guilt, responsibility, and the causes of crime.

A study of attitudes toward homicide is therefore a method of examining social values in a specific setting. 'Homicide in American Fiction, 1798-1860' is the first book to contrast psychological assumptions of imaginative writers with certain social and intellectual currents in an attempt to integrate social attitudes toward such diverse subjects as human evil, moral responsibility, criminal insanity, social causes of crime, dueling, lynching, the 'unwritten law' of a husband's revenge, and capital punishment.