Distorting the Genre, Defining the Audience, Detecting the Author: Richard Marsh's "For Debt" (1902)

The author examines the turn-of-the-century debate over prison reform by closely analyzing Richard Marsh's short story "For Debt" (1902). The story presents a powerful critique of imprisonment in a guise acceptable to Marsh's lower-middleclass readership. By blurring the boundaries of fiction, prison autobiography, and investigative journalism, the story further highlights the entertainment value of these genres in the early 1900s.