A new translation of Cesar Lombroso's La Donna Delinquente, with a new scholarly introduction

Cesare Lombroso is widely considered the founder of the field of criminology. His theory of the “born” criminal dominated discussions of criminology in Europe and the Americas from the 1880s into the early twentieth century. His book, La donna delinquente, originally published in Italian in 1893, was the first and most influential book ever written on women and crime. This comprehensive new translation gives readers a full view of his landmark work.

Lombroso’s research took him to police stations, prisons, and madhouses where he studied the tattoos, cranial capacities, and sexual behavior of criminals and prostitutes to establish a female criminal type. Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman anticipated today’s theories of genetic criminal behavior. Lombroso used Darwinian evolutionary science to argue that criminal women are far more cunning and dangerous than criminal men. Designed to make his original text accessible to students and scholars alike, this volume includes extensive notes, appendices, a glossary, and more than thirty of Lombroso’s own illustrations. Nicole Hahn Rafter and Mary Gibson’s introduction, locating his theory in social context, offers a significant new interpretation of Lombroso’s place in criminology.

"“Rafter and Gibson’s new edition of Criminal Woman is a vital resource for a diverse range of researchers and students. They effectively demonstrate that a new translation was long overdue, and adjustments can be made to textbooks and courses on criminology in the light of it.”" - Crime, Law and Social Change

"A magnificently useful and user-friendly edition within the history of European social thought. It deserves the widest possible readership." - European History Quarterly

"Entertaining reading . . . . Rafter and Gibson, who are extremely smart, defend their project on the grounds that we should be able to consult Lombroso's original to contextualize our knee-jerk reaction to his ideas. . . . Surely we can take Lombroso seriously in his struggle to reconcile discrepant discourses and still seize with glee on his absurdities." - Rain Taxi

"[Lombroso's] still relevant works haunt contemporary ideas of criminality and jurisprudence. Current debates over the biology of mind versus the role of environment ably show that we haven't resolved the nature-nurture fray Lombroso entered—nor do we actually know much more about what makes a criminal than he did. Although maybe we doubt it has quite so much to do with the mandible."
- Village Voice