Eugene Aram by Edward George Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Historical

Was Eugene Aram a murderer -- or an important part of our cultural heritage? Or was he both? Eugene Aram was the first to recognize that the Celtic languages were related to the other languages of Europe. In 1758, while at work on an Anglo-Celtic dictionary, he was arrested (and eventually hanged) for the murder, 14 years earlier, of his friend Daniel Clark. A hundred years later, Bulwer-Lytton wrote this book about the man, the contradiction, the time and the place. Like all of Bulwer-Lytton's underrated work, it has a beautiful, discursive, and profound quality.