Event finished. This event was in the past: 7:00pm on Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Cara Robertson’s book ”The Trial of Lizzie Borden" is based on twenty years of research and recently discovered evidence about the murders that happened on August 4, 1892.
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This book is the winner of The New England Society Book Award.
The fascination with the Borden murders has endured for nearly one hundred and thirty years.
When Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally hacked to death in Fall River, Massachusetts, in August 1892, the arrest of the couple’s younger daughter Lizzie turned the case into international news and her murder trial into a spectacle unparalleled in American history. Reporters flocked to the scene. Well-known columnists took up conspicuous seats in the courtroom. The defendant was relentlessly scrutinized for signs of guilt or innocence. Everyone - rich and poor, suffragists and social conservatives, legal scholars, and laypeople - had an opinion about Lizzie Borden’s guilt or innocence. Was she a cold-blooded murderess or an unjustly persecuted lady? Did she or didn’t she?
Told and retold in every conceivable genre, the murders have secured a place in the American pantheon of mythic horror. In contrast, “Cara Robertson presents the story with the thoroughness one expects from an attorney. Fans of crime novels will love it” (Kirkus Reviews). Based on transcripts of the Borden legal proceedings, contemporary newspaper accounts, unpublished local accounts, and recently unearthed letters from Lizzie herself, "The Trial of Lizzie Borden" makes for a very interesting read.
Author: Cara Robertson began researching the Borden case as a Harvard undergraduate in 1990. She holds a PhD from University of Oxford and a JD from Stanford Law School. She clerked at the Supreme Court of the United States, served as a legal adviser to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague, and has written for various publications. Her scholarship has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Humanities Center, of which she is a Trustee. "The Trial of Lizzie Borden," is her first book,and it won the New England Society Book Award in 2020.
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