This innovative book draws together literature, law and economic and social history to investigate the meanings and uses of legitimacy in nineteenth-century Britain. This broad range of essays highlights the ways in which contested narratives and interested performances shaped the idea of legitimate authority during this period.

'...several of the essays offer interesting and worthwhile material... Perhaps, most appealing to literary scholars will be Jo McDonagh's 'On Settling and Being Unsettled: Legitimacy and Settlement around 1850'. A subtle analysis of the languages of settlement in George Coode's 1851 parliamentary report on the New Poor Law and Charles Dickens' 1852-3 novel Bleak House , this essay exemplifies interdisciplinary scholarship at its best.' - Routledge ABES June 2011

Autorentext
TIMOTHY ALBORN Professor of History, Lehman College, University of New York City, USA MICHAEL LOBBAN Professor of Legal History, Queen Mary, University of London, UK RANDALL MCGOWEN Professor of History, University of Oregon, USA ROHAN MCWILLIAM Senior Lecturer in British and American History, Anglia Ruskin University, UK JOSEPHINE MCDONAGH Professor of English Literature, King's College, University of London, UK MARGOT FINN Professor of Modern British history, University of Warwick, UK JENNY BOURNE TAYLOR Professor of English, University of Sussex, UK

Inhalt
Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Spurious Issues; J.B.Taylor, M.Finn & M.Lobban The Barlow Bastards: Romance Comes Home from the Empire; M.Finn On Settling and Being Unsettled: Legitimacy and Settlement around 1850; J.McDonagh Unauthorised Identities: the Imposter, the Fake and the Secret History in Nineteenth-Century Britain; R.McWilliam The Fauntleroy Forgeries and the Making of White-Collar Crime; R.McGowen Commercial morality and the common law: or, paying the price of fraud in the later Nineteenth Century; M.Lobban Dirty laundry: Exposing bad behaviour in life insurance trials, 1830-1890; T.Alborn Afterword Bibliography Index