ABSTRACT
The criminal obtains his compelling stature because he violates the specific taboos of the age, and it will not do simply to resort to psychological truisms, to say only that violent crime has always been fascinating to many. By a suggestive process of analogy and extension, based on authenticated exemplary histories, criminal biographers and court reporters could imaginatively invigorate a peculiarly dramatic and powerful individualised narrative of corruption, crime, judgement and death. London is at once the centre of the most developed modern civilisation, and the baffling apogee of proliferating crime and corruption. The ubiquity of crime is presented as the most obvious way in which the inhabitants of London could recognise the severity of the problems that beset their culture. Crimes and criminals were recognisable and important features of the real social experience of the Augustan public. The socially-defined category of ‘crime’ provides Samuel Johnson and a great many other Augustan writers with a powerful diagnostic tool.
