Megan Matchinske, ed. The Carleton Bigamy Trial New York: Iter Press, 2023. Pp. 394. $60.95 (paper).

The Carleton Bigamy Trial is a collection of seven of the sixteen texts published within seven weeks of what may have been the first "tabloid-news" scandal in the English-speaking world.Mary Carleton (ne Moders), of lower-class Canterbury origins, arrived in London in 1663 claiming to be Maria von Wolway, a German "princess."She instantly attracted the fortunehunting young law student John Carleton, who married her at Great St. Bartholomew's church on April 21, 1663.When no money or plate arrived from Germany, he had her indicted and tried for bigamy.Conviction meant execution, but she performed her von Wolway identity at the June 4 Old Bailey trial persuasively enough for the jury to acquit her.Narratives about the scandal were authored by both plaintiff and defendant as well as London hacks who produced trial reports, a poem, and a play.After her "five minutes of fame," Carleton lived for another ten years during which time she became a professional thief and, after multiple arrests, was put on order for transportation to Barbados.We do not know for certain whether she ever lived in the Caribbean but we do know she returned to London, breaking the "condition of her transportation"-indentured servitude-to reprise the role that had made her "famous."In 1672, she reportedly stole watches from a London goldsmith and remained undetected until she was caught with a stolen silver cup and spoon.An unredeemed recidivist, she was sentenced to hang at Tyburn and died January 22, 1673.Megan Matchinske's edition begins with a timeline of Carleton's life that gives both her own and her detractors' dating of significant events as well as publication dates for major works about Carleton.In a long introduction (43 pages), Matchinske frames the Carleton bigamy trial and its pamphlet coverage through the idea of "truth wars" (1).During the Civil Wars, all was tumult as John Milton predicted.Truth with a capital T had been dethroned with the king; and the people had to sink or swim in streams of living water-Milton's metaphor for Truth in Areopagitica (1644).But the English people, as a group, disappointed him.Like sheep, they returned to the monarchical fold in 1660 and participated in the collective pretense that the war never happened.There were, however, individuals like Mary Carleton whose behavior expressed the Miltonic idea of Truth as a current of energy or a life force manifested in the "passages of moment" which, in her autobiographical defense, she calls "these novels of my life."Beyond the framing work done in the Introductory chapter, Matchinske includes introductions to each of the seven documents, which, while helpful, could include more instruction on key topics, such as class, work, and, most importantly, the law and legal process.Her discussion of women's subject position, limited as it was to coverture and the absence of property rights, neglects the ways women intervened in politics and the public sphere during the Civil Wars and the new mobility continental exile afforded them.Since the focus of the edition is a bigamy trial, there ought to be more discussion of the law and trial