Eugene Aram

A scholar of the highest reputation in a quiet town is arrested for a murder committed fourteen years before, and the case against him is built out of his own past. Bulwer-Lytton took the outline from a real trial of 1759 and made the murderer a philosopher, which scandalised readers who wanted their criminals stupid. The examination scene is the ancestor of every courtroom novel in English. Fifty-six plates, from Rembrandt to John Atkinson Grimshaw, follow the story in portraits of scholars, old men and northern streets, the world that surrounds a quiet man accused.