Part of the "Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights" This book examines how the cultural and ethical power of literature offered early twentieth-century readers opportunities for thinking about capital punishment in Britain, Ireland and the US in the period between 1890 and 1950. "Modern Literature and the Death Penalty, 1850-1910" considers how connections between 'high' and 'popular' culture are particularly inextricable where the death penalty is at stake. The monograph explores a range of forms, including: short stories; detective fiction; plays; polemic; criminological and psychoanalytic tracts; letters and memoirs of condemned persons and by executioners; and major works of canonical literature by authors such as James Joyce, Richard Wright and Elizabeth Bowen. Legal cases that sparked particular public debate about the death penalty and had substantial literary influence examined, including the Roger Casement case (Britain/Ireland, 1916), the Edith Thompson ca