Title: True crime - Wikipedia
Headings: True crime
True crime
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Content: Hundreds of pamphlets, broadsides, chapbooks and other street literature about murders and other crimes were published from 1550 to 1700 in Britain as literacy increased and cheap new printing methods became widespread. They varied in style: some were sensational, while others conveyed a moral message. Most were purchased by the "artisan class and above", as the lower classes did not have the money or time read them. Ballads were also created, the verses of which were posted on walls around towns, that were told from the perpetrator 's point of view in an attempt to understand the psychological motivations of the crime. Such pamphlets remained in circulation in the 19th century in Britain and the United States, even after widespread crime journalism was introduced via the penny press. Thomas De Quincey published the essay " On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts " in Blackwood's Magazine in 1827, which focused not on the murder or the murderer but on how society views crime. Starting in 1889, Scottish lawyer William Roughead wrote and published essays for six decades about notable British murder trials he attended, with many of these essays collected in the 2000 book Classic Crimes. Many regard Roughead "as the dean of the modern true crime genre." An American pioneer of the genre was Edmund Pearson, who was influenced in his style of writing about crime by De Quincey.