Customer Reviews

Word Crimes: Blasphemy, Culture, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century England

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I approached this book from, I suppose, a biased standpoint. I was a student of Dr. Joss Marsh's at Indiana University this past year. Through her brilliant lectures and subsequent private office conversations, I became very fond of both the person and the scholar and eagerly purchased her book. I was not disappointed! As a student of both history and english (my major and minor respectively), I approached this book with that frame of mind, as a scholarly excercise and a completed study. And while the book is that, Dr. Marsh also writes with the skill of a most accomplished writer, keeping the mind actively engaged in the book's study of the past, the present, and indeed the future. This book is a valuable addition to both the study of blasphemy and the Victorian Age generally. It also paints a staggering portrait of "justice" gone awry under the Javert-like prosecutors of the Royal Court. A triumph for Dr. Joss Marsh and all those interested in the freedoms of speech.