Books
I have written several ground-breaking books on nineteenth-century England, exploring Victorian popular culture and the taste for true crime, the history of prisoner education, and the many hundreds of prisons which shaped the landscape and produced an abundance of historical records.
Violent Victorians: Popular Entertainment in Nineteenth-century London
From the turn of the nineteenth century, graphic 're-enactments' of high level violence flourished in travelling entertainments, penny broadsides, popular theatres, cheap instalment fiction and Sunday newspapers.
Violent Victorians explores the ways in which these entertainments siphoned off much of the actual violence that had hitherto been expressed in all manner of social and political dealings, thus providing a crucial accompaniment to schemes for the reformation of manners and the taming of the streets, while also serving as a social safety valve and a check on the growing cultural hegemony of the middle class.
“Rosalind Crone’s Violent Victorians is the kind of book that should be on every undergraduate reading list for 19th-century studies.” - Jennifer Wallis, Reviews in History
“Crone’s Violent Victorians (2012) has been essential. Reading her research into the meaning of murderous entertainments is like pushing a spring-lock that opens up Victorian society.” - Lucy Worsley, A Very British Murder
“Rosalind Crone’s book is an illuminating, well-researched and persuasively argued analysis … In sum, an absorbing, lively read.” - Clive Emsley, BBC History Magazine
“[This book] demonstrates the need to rethink our understandings of both Victorian popular culture and the nature of British modernity.” - Christopher Ferguson, Victorian Studies
Illiterate Inmates: Educating Criminals in Nineteenth Century England
Illiterate Inmates tells the story of the emergence, at the turn of the nineteenth century, of a powerful idea - the provision of education in prisons for those accused and convicted of crime - and its execution over the century that followed.
Using evidence from both local and convict prisons, the study shows how education became part of the modern penal regime.
★★★★★ Winner, History of Education Society Anne Bloomfield Prize 2023
★★★★★ Honourable mention (runner up) for the British Association of Victorian Studies Rosemary Mitchell Book Prize 2023
“Through meticulous scholarly research, Crone examines the intricate and labyrinthine detail of curriculum and pedagogy in penal settings, where elementary education took on new meanings within the specific prison environment. A significant range of quantitative evidence, archival and documentary research is deployed to provide new insights into this phenomenon.” - Elena Rossi, historyofeducation.org.uk
Follow this link to listen to conversation about the book between me and Oliver Mumford on the History of Education Society Podcast.
Guide to the Criminal Prisons of Nineteenth-Century England
Developed as part of my Prison History project, this 2-volume Guide to the Criminal Prisons recovers the lost penal landscape of 19th century England.
The books contain critical information – operational dates, locations, authorities, jurisdictions and population statistics – as well as lists of printed and archival primary sources for 844 English prisons, including local prisons (419), convict prisons (17), prison hulks (30) and lock-ups (378), used to confine those accused and convicted of crime in the period 1800-1899.
★★★★★ High Commendation, British Records Association Harley Prize, 2018
Other academic publications
In addition to the books mentioned above, I have published an annotated collection of primary source documents on the policing of entertainment during the 19th century, and I have co-edited several books on the history of reading.
My work has also been published in several leading history journals. Follow this link to find out more.
I am also co-founder and co-editor of the McGill-Queen’s University Press monograph series, States, People, and the History of Social Change.
Contact me
To talk about media, consultancy, broadcast and project opportunities, please get in touch - I’d love to chat.