Recent Book on Trials, Evidence, and Victorian Literature

A recent book edited by Jan-Melissa Schramm and Gillian Beer has been published entitled Testimony and Advocacy in Victorian Law, Literature and Theology (Cambridge, 2006).

From the book description:

This original and wide-ranging study shows how changing attitudes to evidence, trial and revelation in law and theology had a profound impact on literary narrative in the nineteenth century. Jan-Melissa Schramm, who is both a lawyer and a literary critic, argues that authors of fiction created a style of literary advocacy that both imitated, and reacted against, the example of their story-telling counterparts of the criminal Bar, and traces the ongoing debate over rules of evidence, eye-witness testimony and codes of ethical conduct that helped shape Victorian realism as a narrative form.