Americans have always loved a good murder story. The first book published in Boston, in 1675, was
The Wicked Man’s Portion, a sermon about two men who were executed for murdering their master, and for at least the next two and a quarter centuries the public’s desire to read about killing was satisfied by cheap, sensational, paperbound murder pamphlets. The earliest examples, following a tradition that began in England, were one page broadsides sold at the murderer’s hanging, containing sermons relating to the crime or the transcribed confession of the condemned man. They were often decorated with images of coffins or the hanging man, and their sale was justified on the grounds that they served as a warning against living an immoral life.
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