Jodi Schorb

Shining new light on early American prison literature, Reading Prisoners weaves together insights about the rise of the early American penitentiary, the history of early American literacy instruction, and the transformation of crime writing in the “long” eighteenth century. Jodi Schorb overturns much conventional wisdom as she illuminates how prisoners first entered print as readers and writers, from the colonial American jail to the early national penitentiary.