Written by Austin Bidwell, a notorious American forger who executed one of the largest bank frauds of the Victorian era, this memoir chronicles his criminal career, capture, and years of imprisonment in British penitentiaries. Published in the late nineteenth century, it offers a rare first-person account of the criminal underworld and the brutal prison conditions of the era.
Part confession, part travelogue, and part social commentary, Bidwell’s Travels is a genuinely unusual piece of American autobiographical writing from the Gilded Age. Download the free EPUB and read this extraordinary story on any modern e-reader.