( The Lizzie Borden case was to Pearson "without parallel...)
The Lizzie Borden case was to Pearson "without parallel in the criminal history of America." It takes center stage in Studies in Murder, and Pearson's version is still considered the classic account of the Borden murders. The other four cases Pearson retells are "The Twenty-Third Street Murder," about the killing of New York financier Benjamin Nathan in July 1870; "Mate Bram!" about the double murder of a ship captain and his wife in 1896; "The Hunting Knife," about the murder of Miss Mabel Page in 1904; and "Uncle Amos Dreams a Dream," about the 1819 trial of Stephen and Jesse Boorn for the murder of their brother-in-law in Manchester, Vermont. Pearson carefully researched these cases and interviewed people connected with each one. His accounts are admirably detailed, clear, and engaging. In all five cases, the determination of guilt or innocence rested on circumstantial evidence, which left unanswered questions still capable of intriguing the contemporary reader. Roger Lane's lively introduction provides information about Pearson and the genre of true crime.
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(Excerpt from The Believing Years The clock pointed to th...)
Excerpt from The Believing Years The clock pointed to the hour of three. Exactly sixty minutes separated us from vacation. It was the day of our dreams, - the last day of school. We had thought of it, thought of it far back When snow still covered the ground; planned for it, lived in hope of it. TO morrow the tyrannical bell Should besilent, and no one could say: Time to start for school 1 Many forces had been at work hurry ing this day forward: the first blades Of grass, the first leaves on the horse-chest nut trees, the first robin who ran across the grass-plots overlooking the frog pond, the first dandelion that gleamed in the grass. All were Signs and symbols Of it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Edmund Lester Pearson was born on February 11, 1880 in Newburyport, Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. He was the second son and youngest of three children of Edmund Carlton and Tamzen Maria (Richardson) Pearson. He was the descendant of a long line of deacons, millers, farmers, fishermen, and bakers who lived in Rowley, Newbury, and Newburyport. Pearson has described his boyhood in The Believing Years (1911) and in a story for boys, The Voyage of the Hoppergrass (1913).
Edmund Lester Pearson was educated in the public schools of Newburyport and prepared at Hopkinson's School, Boston, for Harvard, where he contributed to the Advocate.
After graduation in 1902 he attended the New York State Library School at Albany, a forerunner of the Columbia School of Library Service, receiving the degree of B. L. S. in 1904.
Edmund Lester Pearson went to the Washington (D. C. ) Public Library as reference librarian. Though he became assistant librarian in 1905, he had no particular interest in the mechanics of library work. In his weekly column, "The Librarian, " in the Boston Evening Transcript, which he began in March 1906 and continued until May 1920, he satirized some of the more earnest workers in the field. During the years that followed Pearson devoted more and more time to writing. In 1914 he went to the New York Public Library as editor of publications, but he resigned in 1927 in order to become a free-lance writer and editor. His first book, The Old Librarian's Almanack (1909), modeled in style on The Old Farmer's Almanack, masqueraded as the work of a crabbed New England librarian of 1773. So successful was the deception that it was accepted in some quarters as an authentic piece of Americana. The Library and the Librarian (1910), The Librarian at Play (1911), and The Secret Book (1914) were compiled from his column in the Transcript.
Theodore Roosevelt (1920) was a book for boys about a figure whom he greatly admired; Books in Black or Red (1923) was a collection of light essays on literature and on murder considered as one of the fine arts. Though he later wrote two other literary studies, Queer Books (1928), an assembly of pieces on literary oddities, and Dime Novels (1929), a rather superficial treatment of its subject, and served for a time as book-review editor of the Outlook, it was the art of murder that became his specialty and won him his greatest fame.
His Studies in Murder (1924) was a pioneer book in its field, at least in the United States; it had a literary distinction lacking in Arthur Train's True Stories of Crime (1908) and similar books. The first and longest study introduced the then still living Lizzie Borden [q. v. ] to a new generation. He later wrote a full-length study of The Trial of Lizzie Borden (1937), the first volume of the Notable American Trials series. For Murder at Smutty Nose (1926) and Five Murders (1928) he often traveled to the scene of the crime. Articles written for Vanity Fair on murder were elaborated and collected in Instigation of the Devil (1930).
Edmund Lester Pearson also edited Henry Tufts's Autobiography of a Criminal (1936). Signs of fatigue appear in More Studies in Murder (1936), though these shorter pieces still show his customary careful workmanship, humor, and clarity of style. He died in New York City of bronchial pneumonia at the age of fifty-seven on August 8, 1937 and was buried at Newburyport.
( The Lizzie Borden case was to Pearson "without parallel...)
(Excerpt from The Believing Years The clock pointed to th...)
Edmund Lester Pearson was of medium height, with a round face, cleft chin, and blue eyes. He always looked much younger than his actual age.
On October 15, 1908, Edmund Lester Pearson was married to Mary S. Sellers of Washington. They had no children.
