Visits to Bedlam: Madness and Literature in the Eighteenth Century

by Max Byrd

Hardcover

First published December 31, 1974

About the author

May Byrd is the author of a number of scholarly books on 18th century English literature, including Visits to Bedlam and London Transformed. Winner of the Shamus Award for best paperback private detective novel, his oeuvre of detective novels include the Book-of-the-Month Club selection Target of Opportunity. Byrd is also the author of four historical novels: Grant: A Novel, Jefferson: A Novel, Jackson: A Novel, and Shooting the Sun. He currently serves as the president of the board of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

Max Byrd has taught English at Yale and UC Davis, has been a visiting professor at Stanford, and has lectured at UC Berkeley, Warwick University, the Sorbonne, and Monticello. Among the many publications featuring Byrd’s articles and book reviews are the Yale Review, New York Times Book Review, New Republic, and Woodrow Wilson Quarterly. He has served as editor of the scholarly journal Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Reviews

[Lisa the Tech · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's no book cover image for this book, and that's all right with me. The cover has to be one of the creepier covers I've ever seen. The book is a look at Bedlam from a literature viewpoint, so the cover will be spooky, but it got to the point that I had to keep the cover hidden so I wouldn't get nightmares. The book itself is very good. Amazing the way things were in those days. Nobody would be allowed today to charge people admission to visit a psych ward or a mental hospital. They did it back then though. Eugh!

Addition 2018 - Several years ago someone found the cover for this book. Yeah... still creepy.