The Tichborne Claimant - Hardcover

McWilliam, Rohan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1852854782 ISBN 13: 9781852854782

Publisher: Continuum Books, 2007

Synopsis

The extraordinary case in 1874 of the Tichborne Claimant generated the longest trial, to that point, in British legal history. Was the stout man claiming to be the vanished Sir Roger Tichborne really who he said he was; or was he Arthur Orton, a butcher from Wagga Wagga in Australia? Was he the public school educated rightful heir to a landed estate or an ill-educated fraud? Why, if he was a fraud, had the dowager Lady Tichborne recognised him? And what was the truth about his tattoo?



The trial mesmerised the British public and led to furious debate, to the extent that several newspapers were devoted entirely to the case and a Tichbornite candidate won a seat in Parliament. The case divided the nation along political, religious and social lines, and the campaign for justice for the Claimant proved a focus for political activism between the defeat of the Chartists and rise of the Labour Party.

About this title

About the Author:

Rohan McWilliam is Senior Lecturer in History at Anglia Ruskin University and author of Popular Politics in Nineteenth-Century England and the editor (with Kelly Boyd) of The Victorian Studies Reader (2007).

Review:

-Mention. The Chronicle ofHigher Education/ July 13, 2007

"Despite the esteemed former Tablet editor Douglas Woodruff's fine book on the subject, published 50 years ago, this thoroughly researched biography ought to be the standard work on the matter for our times." Tablet, July 2007 (The American Spectator)

"Rohan McWilliam's account goes further in unteasing the many strands of this baffling and delightfully ludicrous affair" (Sarah Wise Literary Review)

Mentioned in Publishing News, October 2007 (Publishing News)

Reviewed by Emeritus Professor G.R. Batho, The Historical Association.

"In each case an event or a figure that scholars had previously confined to passing references becomes a key to unlock the broadest possible understanding of their respective periods. Now, with Rohan McWilliam's rich book we can add the Tichborne imposture case to this (partial) list of episodes rescued from the indifference of posterity. But what makes this addition especially remarkable is the fact that the Tichborne story, unlike most others in this genre, is not simply an unnoticed backdoor key to the bigger picture. Rather, as McWilliam persuasively shows, it is itself the bigger picture." - Dror Wahrman, Victorian Studies, Winter 2008 (Dror Wahrman)

"McWilliam argues that the Claimant's narrative can best be understood as a melodrama, a dramatic form then still in the mainstream of popular culture...In doing so, he has not only told us that story in its full delirious glory for the first time, but he has showed us how much "sense" it did make to contemporaries, and in doing so has made a genuinely important contribution to our understanding of popular consciousness—truly, a rescue of popular experience from the condescension of posterity." - Peter Mandler, H-Net Reviews, October 2007 (Peter Mandler H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online)

Mentioned in History Today, July 2009

'[McWilliam] tells the story with a lucid command of narrative and an understated wit.' - London Review of Books

'McWilliam has done a wonderful, thoughtful and imaginative job, and in so doing has thrown up some welcome challenges to the way that we think about political and social history. His understanding of why the Tichborne story remains puzzling even after his painstaking reconstruction forces us to continue asking difficult questions about the connections between politics and emotion in an emerging mass culture.'

- Journal of Victorian Culture, 2009

About this edition

• Publisher: Continuum Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1852854782
• ISBN 13: 9781852854782
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384