Bandits & Bibles: Convict Literature in Nineteenth-Century America

A lively array of selections from the earliest recorded convict autobiographies, examining crimes, arrests and convictions, punishments inflicted, survival techniques, and spiritual awakenings. Hard labor in coal mines, whippings, solitary confinement in bare unheated cells, water torture, and iron maidens—these are just a few of the punishments meted out to these prisoners and vividly recounted in these selections.

Dr. Larry E. Sullivan is Chief Librarian of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Professor of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. He is the author of The Prison Reform Movement: Forlorn Hope, as well as author or editor of numerous other books and articles in history, penology, and other disciplines. Sullivan is currently the editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Law Enforcement.