This is the first omnibus scholarly edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's (then Elizabeth Barrett Barrett) protest poem "The Cry of the Children" (1843), as it was published in Blackwood's Magazine. The editors and annotators have built on sustained scholarly engagement about the poem, its contexts, and its relationship with laboring-class poetry of the time. This was initiated by their cooperation for "Rhyme and Reform: Victorian Working-Class Poets and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 'Cry of the Children.'" This two-day, international, multi-site symposium (Oct.
Robert Louis Stevenson, celebrated author of Treasure Island (1882-3), Kidnapped (1886), and "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1886) was a lifelong connoisseur of "penny dreadfuls": illustrated serial fiction that targeted working-class readers. In Stevenson's childhood, his nurse Alison Cunningham often read dreadfuls to him. In adulthood, Stevenson was haunted by one serial in particular. This was A Mystery in Scarletby “Malcolm J. Errym,” the pseudonym of James Malcolm Rymer (1814-84).
Robert Louis Stevenson cherished the 1866 penny dreadful A Mystery in Scarlet, written by his "genuine influence" Malcolm J. Errym, the pseudonym of "Sweeney Todd" creator James Malcolm Rymer (1814-84) and illustrated by the celebrated "Phiz" (Hablot K. Browne, 1815-82).