Jack the Ripper reading list question

[truepenny]

If a person has read Donald Rumbelow's book on Jack the Ripper (variously published as The Complete Jack the Ripper and Jack the Ripper: The Complete Casebook), are there any other nonfiction Jack the Ripper books that one ought to read? I.e., has anything substantially new been said since Rumbelow? (And should I bother with anything pre-Rumbelow?)

Please note, I'm not asking what books about Jack the Ripper have been published since 1975; I can find that out for myself. I'm asking for recommendations about which, if any of them, to read.

Comments

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Ripperology is a field I stay far, far, away from, even though the case falls within my period and disciplinary remit.

Something that might give a certain perspective - insofar as it's about another case in which a man was killing prostitutes in late C19th London, but by poison - is Angus McLaren's Prescription for Murder.

I also like Judith Walkowitz's discussion in City of Dreadful Delight, but that's more about cultural impact than real crime.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Both those books are on my list from cherry-picking the bibliography to Lisa Duggan's Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity (Duke UP, 2000), a book which is radically misrepresented by its (terrible) title,* but I am very glad to have confirmation.

And I completely understanding wanting to stay as far away from Ripperology as you can. It's fun to watch as an uninvested spectator, but it would be a nightmare to approach professionally as a historian. Kind of like the "Authorship Question."

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*I need to go blog about it here in a minute.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

There's definitely a feeling that even if one were approaching it as a case-study of East End life and the culture of prostitution at the period, the questions one got asked would still be about Who Was the Ripper. Sigh.

[wicked-witchery.livejournal.com]

I agree, City of Dreadful Night was very good. And I would say, from my perspective, the question of who Jack the Ripper was is not nearly as interesting or enlightening as what he was and continues to be, symbolically.