Avi

word craft

blog

Everything about
The Unexpected Life of
Oliver Cromwell Pitts

A look into 18th Cen­tu­ry Eng­land, the crim­i­nal world young Oliv­er Cromwell Pitts becomes embroiled in, and one of Britain’s most noto­ri­ous “thief-catch­ers,” who was a mas­ter thief. It’s a sto­ry writ­ten in the style of eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry sto­ries by Field­ing, Sterne, and others—great fun.

The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts

Behind the story

In 18th Cen­tu­ry Eng­land, there were no pro­fes­sion­al police forces. Thieves were to be appre­hend­ed by cit­i­zens, and brought to mag­is­trates for tri­al. If con­vict­ed, a cit­i­zen would be reward­ed by large sums of mon­ey. No sur­prise, pro­fes­sion­al “thief-catch­ers” came into being. read more

Resources

For your triv­ia games, I believe this is my book with the longest title: The Unex­pect­ed Life of Oliv­er Cromwell Pitts: Being an Absolute­ly Accu­rate Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Account of My Fol­lies, For­tune, and Fate

Inter­view with From the Mixed-Up Files, Amber J. Keyser

Radio inter­view with Sive Kel­li­her (age 12), Col­orado Mat­ters, Col­orado Pub­lic Radio

Five things to like about this book from Greg Pat­tridge, mid­dle grade teacher

Arti­cles to inspire discussion

Jonathan Wilde, The Thief-Tak­er Gen­er­al,” Cia­ran Con­liffe, Head Stuff, 25 Jan­u­ary 2016

Read­ing Restora­tion and 18th Cen­tu­ry Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture,” MJ Booklover, Read Great Lit­er­a­ture, 20 Feb­ru­ary 2021

What hap­pens next?

Spoil­er Alert! The sequel to The Unex­pect­ed Life of Oliv­er Cromwell Pitts is The End of the World and Beyond. Con­vict­ed of thiev­ery and trans­port­ed from Eng­land to Amer­i­ca, Oliv­er Cromwell Pitts, shack­led to his fel­low pris­on­ers, endures ined­i­ble food, filthy con­di­tions, and dead­ly storms on his voy­age across the Atlantic. But the haz­ardous ship­board jour­ney is noth­ing com­pared to the per­il that waits for him on the colo­nial shores. In Annapo­lis, Oliver’s inden­tured servi­tude is pur­chased by the foul, miser­ly Fitzhugh, who may have mur­dered anoth­er ser­vant. On Fitzhugh’s iso­lat­ed tobac­co farm, Oliver’s only com­pan­ion is an enslaved boy named Bara. Oliv­er and Bara become fast friends with one pow­er­ful goal: to escape Fitzhugh.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.