Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.

David Nash's new study focuses on the development of blasphemy in the Christian world. Tracing the subject from the Middle Ages to the present, he outlines the history of blasphemy as a concept, from a species of heresy to modern understandings of it as a crime against the sacred and individual religious identity. Investigating its appearance in speech, literature, popular publishing and the cinema, he disinters the likely motives and agendas of blasphemers themselves, as well as offering a glimpse of blasphemy's victims. In particular, he seeks to understand why this seemingly medieval offence has reappeared to become a distinctly modern presence in the West.

Includes parodies of Tennyson, Longfellow, Bret Harte, Thomas Hood, Swinburne, Browning, Shakespeare, Milton, Poe, Shelley, Cowper, Coleridge, Herrick, Carroll, Lever, Lover, Burns, Scott, Goldsmith, Kingsley, Byron and many others.

A collection of all three trials celebrating Hone's innocence and upholding freedom of the press.

This book provides provocative information on poetry written in response to the most revolutionary set of events seen in Britain since the 1640s: 'Peterloo', a peaceful protest that became a massacre; 'Cato Street', a government scripted rebellion; and the 'Queen Caroline Controversy', when the estranged wife of George IV tried to claim her crown.