Matthew Ritger

Works In Progress

Book Project

Houses of Correction: Carceral Institutions and Humanist Culture in Early Modern England

Forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2026

In England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, carceral institutions called houses of correction anticipated many of the reforms of the penitentiary by more than 250 years. By experimenting with the use of variable sentences, hard labor, apprenticeships, and even basic education in their efforts to discipline the poor, houses of correction began a shift toward ideas and practices that remain familiar to scholars and critics of the prison today, even as they gained a reputation for problems that remain equally familiar, including abuses of power, corruption scandals, and persistent recidivism. 

Houses of Correction delves into the archives of London's Bridewell, established in 1553 as the first of these new prisons, to reveal how humanist educators and reformers struggled to administer and justify these institutions even as scandals and outcry made it increasingly clear that their coercive tactics were at odds with the ideals of humanist culture. By integrating obscure court records with the imaginative and critical accounts of well-known figures such as Thomas More, William Shakespeare, John Milton, and Thomas Ellwood, this book joins a growing field of interdisciplinary scholarship that seeks to understand the role of prisons, jails, workhouses, so-called "Literary worke-houses," and other sites of confinement within the social and cultural history of early modern England.