"Book Thieves: Theft and Literary Culture in Nineteenth and Twentieth-century Australia," Cultural and Social History 14, no. 2 (2017): 257-273. (original) (raw)
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Bodies and Books: crime fiction novels and the history of libraries
Since the publication of Australia’s first crime novel, Henry Savery’s 'Quintus Servinton' (1830), Australians have read crime fiction for entertainment, for the reassurance that wrongdoers will be punished and to test their deductive skills against those of their favourite sleuth. The novels, short stories and plays, within the crime fiction genre, that have been produced in Australia between Colonial times and the present day, also offer opportunities to investigate a particular place or a particular time. Indeed, many crime fiction writers have mastered the art of recreating settings in both rural and metropolitan landscapes. The details provided within these works ultimately reveal a murderer, yet they also outline the availability of certain products, bus and train timetables, the floor plans of local hotels or world-famous buildings and numerous other particulars; thus providing a rich, if surprising, source of material for the merely curious to the professional researcher. Similarly, crime fiction stories set within libraries present a history of the information services profession. This paper will demonstrate how crime can fiction provide an important supplement to more traditional historical sources, with a special focus on how the genre has documented some of the major changes within libraries over the last 75 years.
Man Robbery—A Gender Signifier in Convict Australia 1827–1836
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This paper investigates the use of the anomalous term ‘man robbery’ in historical records relating to convict women in New South Wales. We question its accuracy as a criminal offence and conclude that its use in the 1830s was an administrative code that summarized an assessment not only of the women’s criminality but also of their morality. Its use in the historical records has been accepted uncritically by modern historians. The anomaly was identified through a large-scale study of these records. Often used to trace the histories of individual women for genealogical research, recurring patterns in the records are more noticeable when considering the crimes of some 5000 women transported to New South Wales, especially when their court records held in Britain are compared with those held in Australia. Evidence has emerged that the criminality of the women has been reduced by this gendered criminal offence. Inconsistency in the application of the term ‘man robbery’ led us to question ...
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Since the publication of Australia’s first crime novel in 1830, Australians have read crime fiction for entertainment, for the reassurance that wrongdoers will be punished, and to test their deductive skills against those of their favourite sleuth. The novels, short stories and plays within the crime fiction genre that have been produced in Australia between colonial times and the present day also offer opportunities to investigate a particular place or a particular time. Indeed, many crime fiction writers have mastered the art of recreating settings in both rural and metropolitan landscapes. The details provided within these works ultimately reveal a culprit (usually a murderer), yet they also outline the availability of certain products, bus and train timetables, the floor plans of local hotels or world-famous buildings and numerous other particulars, thus providing a rich, if surprising, source of material for the merely curious and the professional researcher. Crime fiction stories set within libraries present a history of the information services profession. This paper demonstrates how crime fiction can provide an important supplement to more traditional historical sources, with a focus on how the genre has documented some of the major changes within libraries over the last 75 years, since 1939.
Victorian Studies review of Marvellous Thieves, Ali Behdad
Victorian Studies, 2018
Paulo Lemos Horta’s Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights is an original work that affords genuinely new insight on this inordinately-studied text. Cleverly appropriating the embedding technique used in the Arabian Nights, Marvellous Thieves recounts highly entertaining stories about ve European translators of the original text, framing these stories with a compelling argument conceptualizing translation as a form of theft. Carefully researched and lucidly written, Marvellous Thieves examines three canonical translations of the Arabian Nights, those by Antoine Galland, Edward William Lane, and Richard Francis Burton, and two lesser-known translations by Henry Torrens and John Payne.
Abstract Burglary and pickpocketing were the two most prevalent forms of male and female offending respectively in the flourishing colonial capital of Melbourne during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Using court records and newspaper accounts, this article compares the prosecution patterns and public perceptions of male burglars and female pickpockets. Both offences were associated in the Anglophone world with membership of the criminal classes, and in the colonial context with concerns about a remnant convict populace. Moreover, both male burglary and female pickpocketing occurred in intimate contexts that threatened the possibility of sexual violence or uncontrolled female sexuality. Yet although both crimes were the subject of community concerns, the conviction rates for burglary and pickpocketing differed dramatically. This article examines the ways in which the gendered contexts of burglary and pickpocketing—in relation to constructions of victims as much as defendants—exacerbated the usual differences found in trial outcomes for men and women, as well as other factors that served to place men at far greater risk of conviction. It is suggested that a close reading of the victimization narratives of these two offences complicates traditional perspectives on the policing of male and female sexualities in the criminal justice system.
The stolen book: Communication significance beyond the criminal act
2016
Tsvetkova, Milena and Eleonora Kalvacheva. The stolen book: communication significance beyond the criminal act. – In: Proceedings of the 4th year of Human And Social Sciences at the Common Conference (HASSACC-2016). Eds. S. Brown, S. Larsen, K. Marrongelle, and M. Oehrtman. Volume 4, Issue 1. Zilina, Slovakia: EDIS – Publishing Institution of the University of Zilina, 2016, pp. 46–52. ISBN: 978-80-554-1270-2. ISSN: 2453-6075. CDROM ISSN: 1339-522X. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18638/hassacc.2016.4.1.197 Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2900690 HAL: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01687958 Abstract: The research is an attempt to be made a reassessment of the phenomenon „theft of book“ in the foreshortening of the information-communication treatments, the theory of the feedback and the reflexive model of the communication. The theft of book is rationalized as reader’s reflexion and as a specific social resonance towards it. The research thesis is, that it is accumulated a critical mass of circumstances for liberation of the attitude towards the stolen book as a communication phenomenon and for its emancipation on the field of marketing and advertising. Based on retrospective document and discourse analysis are searched proofs about the positive connotation of the phenomenon „theft of book“ in the context of the concept of the book as a medium. In order to be revealed as objectively as possible the communication energetics of the act of the theft of book, the authors set aside from the criminal aspect of the phenomenon. The present text excludes from the subject of the research interest the crime theft, and also any action, causing material damage. The empirical examination the the thesis is accomplished through the method of the anonymous inquiry survey about the attitude towards the stolen book. The consultation was done twice – in 2013 and in 2016 among commonly 283 respondents, which represent widest range of active readers. The research supports and summarizes the changes in the mass connotation of the stolen book in the foreshortening of the communicative practice „reading“ and supports the formulation of proposals about relevant tactics and approaches in the marketing and advertising of the books. Keywords: cleptomania, kleptomania, bibliokleptomania, biblioklept, stolen book, „most stolen book“ index, stealing book, theft of books, book thief, library theft, book as medium, feedback, reflexive model of communication, science of reading
From Ned Kelly to Waltzing Matilda, tales of thievery dominate Australia’s colonial history. Yet while theft represents one of the most pervasive forms of criminal activity, it remains an under-researched area in Australian historical scholarship. This article draws on detailed inter-jurisdictional research from Victoria and Western Australia to elaborate trends in the prosecution, conviction and sentencing of theft in colonial Australia. In particular, we use these patterns to explore courtroom attitudes towards different forms of theft by situating such statistics within the context of contemporary commentaries. We examine the way responses to theft and the protection of property were affected by colonial conditions, and consider the influence of a variety of factors on the outcomes of theft trials.