By Angela Bourke

Historical Context: The book details the harsh winter of 1894/95 inIreland, which led to economic hardship and unemployment amongagricultural laborers.

Bridget Cleary's Illness: Bridget Cleary fell ill in early March 1895, leading to a series of events involving traditional herbal treatments and beliefs in fairies.

Tragic Outcome: Bridget was burned to death by her husband, Michael Cleary, who believed she was a fairy changeling. Her body was discovered on March 22, 1895.

Legal Proceedings: The document outlines the subsequent legal actions, including the inquest, trial, and imprisonment of those involved in Bridget's death.

Pimlico, 1999, 279 pages

By E. P. Thompson

From the introduction: “This book has a clumsy title, but it is.one which meets its purpose. making, because it is a study in an active process, which owes as much to agency as to conditioning. The working class did not rise like the sun at an appointed time. It was present at its own making. Class, rather than classes, for reasons which it is one purpose of this book to examine. There is, of course, a difference. "Work­ ing classes" is a descriptive term, which evades as much as it defines. It ties loosely together a bundle of discrete phenomena. There were tailors here and weavers there, and together they make up the working classes.”

Vintage Books· A Division Of Random House. New York. 1963. 423p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Thomas Ruys Smith

In 1836 Benjamin Drake, a midwestern writer of popular sketches for newspapers of the day, introduced his readers to a new and distinctly American rascal who rode the steamboats up and down the Mississippi and other western waterways—the riverboat gambler. These men, he recorded, “dress with taste and elegance; carry gold chronometers in their pockets; and swear with the most genteel precision. . . . Every where throughout the valley, these mistletoe gentry are called by the original, if not altogether classic, cognomen of ‘Black-legs.’” In Blacklegs, Card Sharps, and Confidence Men, Thomas Ruys Smith collects nineteenth-century stories, sketches, and book excerpts by a gallery of authors to create a comprehensive collection of writings about the riverboat gambler.

Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 2010. 288p.