"The Diary of a Resurrectionist" by James Blake Bailey offers a gripping glimpse into the life of a resurrectionist during a time when body snatching was a grim necessity for medical advancement. Through the eyes of the author, readers are transported to the early 19th century, where the demand for cadavers for anatomical study led to morally ambiguous practices. Bailey's detailed accounts reveal the challenges and dangers faced by those who engaged in this illicit trade, providing a uniqu...

True Crime Classics: 7 Books on Notorious Cases and Criminals gathers seven historical accounts of crime, investigation, and public fascination with transgression. Moving between case narrative, biographical portraiture, documentary compilation, and moral commentary, the volume illuminates the literary forms through which notorious offenders and celebrated trials were made intelligible to their contemporaries. Its range is a particular strength: dramatic reconstructions sit beside archival...

The “Diary of a Resurrectionist” here reprinted is only of a fragmentary character. It is, however, unique in being an actual record of the doings of one gang of the resurrection-men in London. Many persons have expressed a wish that so interesting a document should be published; permission having been obtained to print the Diary, an endeavour has been made to gratify this wish. To make the reprint more interesting, and to explain some of the allusions in the Diary, an account of the resur...

The Diary of a Resurrectionist, 1811-1812 is a stark documentary window onto the clandestine economy that supplied human bodies to London's anatomy schools before the Anatomy Act of 1832. Presented with editorial sobriety, the diary's terse entries—recording graves opened, corpses transported, payments made, and dangers evaded—derive much of their power from their plainness. Its literary interest lies less in ornament than in its collision of criminal ledger, social history, and Gothic rea...

In "The Diary of a Resurrectionist, 1811-1812," James Blake Bailey presents a compelling first-person account that intricately weaves the gritty realities of early 19th-century medical practices with the cultural anxieties surrounding body snatching. Bailey employs a vivid, confessional narrative style that immerses readers in the daily lives of resurrectionists'Äîindividuals who illegally exhumed bodies for medical research'Äîa practice rife with moral ambiguity. This work is not only a c...

In "Reprint of Two Tracts," Jean Paul Marat, a prominent figure of the French Revolution, presents a compelling critique of contemporary society through a blend of incisive political analysis and fervent rhetoric. Marat's pamphlets, originally disseminated during the tumultuous years of late 18th-century France, engage with themes of justice, equality, and the fight against corruption. His literary style is marked by passionate language and sharp polemics, designed to incite public sentime...

The classic tale of one man’s struggle with alcoholism, this revolutionary novel remains Charles Jackson’s best-known book—a daring autobiographical work that paved the way for contemporary addiction literature.It is 1936, and on the East Side of Manhattan, a would-be writer named Don Birnam decides to have a drink. And then another, and then another, until he’s in the midst of what becomes a five-day binge. The Lost Weekend moves with unstoppable speed, propelled by a hea...

John Cheever spent much of his career impersonating a perfect suburban gentleman, the better to become one of the foremost chroniclers of postwar America. Written with unprecedented access to essential sources—including Cheever’s massive journal, only a fraction of which has ever been published—Bailey’s Cheever is a stunning example of the biographer’s art and a brilliant tribute to an essential author.

“I don’t want you to rehabilitate me,” Philip Roth said to his only authorized biographer, Blake Bailey. “Just make me interesting.” Granted complete independence and access, Bailey spent almost ten years poring over Roth’s personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and listening to Roth’s own breathtakingly candid confessions. Cynthia Ozick, in her front-page rave for the New York Times Book Review, described Bailey’s monumental biography as “a narrative ...

A canceled bestselling author’s highly personal account of his public scandal—a scandal that was reported on the front page of the New York Times and throughout the world.Blake Bailey grew up in the shadow of his father, Burck, an eminent litigator—president of the Oklahoma Bar Association and widely considered a sort of real-life Atticus Finch: “His conduct, honesty, integrity, and courtesy best exemplify and represent the highest standards of the legal p...

**A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist 'Autobiography'The renowned biographer’s unforgettable portrait of a family in ruins—his own.**Meet the Baileys: Burck, a prosperous lawyer once voted the American Legion’s “Citizen of the Year” in his tiny hometown of Vinita, Oklahoma; his wife Marlies, who longs to recapture her festive life in Greenwich Village as a pretty young German immigrant, fresh off the boat; their addled son Scott, who repeatedly crashes the family ...

From the prizewinning biographer of Richard Yates and John Cheever, here is the fascinating biography of Charles Jackson, the author of The Lost Weekend—a writer whose life and work encapsulated what it meant to be an addict and a closeted gay man in mid-century America, and what one had to do with the other.Charles Jackson’s novel The Lost Weekend—the story of five disastrous days in the life of alcoholic Don Birnam—was published in 1944 to triumphant success. Wi...