Vagrant Figures

“Deftly and incisively, Nicolazzo reads across legal and literary genres to demonstrate the rhetorical force of vagrancy in the transatlantic eighteenth-century Anglophone world. . . . A theoretically challenging and politically inspiring study.”—Kristina Huang, Eighteenth-Century Studies

“A superb book. Its historical depth and geographical breadth accomplishes far more than most literary scholars, writing on this topic, have done in recent years.”—Betty Joseph, Rice University

“A cultural criticism built on the close reading of texts, a model of careful and conscientious reading, and a vital contribution to our understanding of literature’s ideological work.”—Eugenia Zuroski, McMaster University

“Nicolazzo finds the roots of modern policing in the earliest days of the American colonies and traces compelling connections between the local minutiae of vagrancy law and the vast, brutal sweep of British imperial expansion.”—Charlotte Sussman, Duke University

“Reading lyric poetry, fiction, and memoir together with statutory law and the bureaucratic ephemera of various legal functionaries, Sal Nicolazzo dramatically expands our understanding of policing and of the practices and narratives that accompanied it in the early modern period.”—Simon Stern, University of Toronto