1. It deals with Dickens’ Little Dorrit (1855–57); A Tale of Two Cities (1859); and Great Expectations (1860–61) as well as their film adaptations. The book also analyzes Robert E. Burns’ I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! (1932); Thomas E. Gaddis’ Birdman of Alcatraz (1955); Alan Sillitoe’s “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” (1959); Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange (1962); Stephen King’s “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” (1982); and Lorenzo Carcaterra’s Sleepers (1995) as well as their film versions. Finally, the book also looks at the films Down by Law (1986) and Wilde (1997).

2. Since it is certainly reductionist to speak of ‘masculinity’ in the singular, I wish to stress that various different forms of masculinity exist. Gender roles are never stable or fixed but hyper-legible and artificial. Traditional masculinity correlates with a clear preference for heterosexual practices (as opposed to homosexual ones) and sometimes even homophobia. Also, traditional manliness correlates with toughness as well as a stress on activity (as opposed to passivity) and dominance (as opposed to submission).

3. In authorial novels, the story is told by and presented from the perspective of an authorial or ‘omniscient’ narrator who is not present as a character in the story. An authorial narrator is typically overt, i.e., clearly recognisable as a speaker or writer (Stanzel Theory).

4. Other nineteenth-century novels that deal with imprisonment include Charles Reade’s It Is Never Too Late to Mend (1895), George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859) and the so-called Newgate novels by Edward Bulwer Lytton (1803–73) and William Harrison Ainsworth (1805–82). Forms of metaphorical imprisonment can be found in Charlotte Brontè“’s Villette (1853) and Wilkie Collins’ Armadale (1866).

5. See my list of British and American prison films in the bibliography.

6. See, for example, Victor Brombert’s The Romantic Prison (1975), W.B. Carnochan’s Confinement and Flight (1977), Sigrid Weigel’s “Und selbst im Kerker frei…!” (1982) and Christa Karpenstein-Eè_bach’s Einschluè_ und Imagination (1985).

7. Bentham envisioned the Panopticon as a circular prison with a central tower at the center, from which the inspectors can observe all cells located on the outer perimeter.