Fall River Tragedy ^(Myth)

The very first book ever published about the Borden case, written by Fall River Globe reporter Edwin Porter, came out only a few months after the trial in 1893. Essentially a compilation of articles that Porter wrote for the Globe, the book was reportedly produced in a print run of between 500 and 1,000 copies. They were sold by subscription rather than being made available in bookstores. According to a 1933 article for The New Yorker by Edmund Pearson, the book “failed to sell—or was withdrawn—so that part of the edition remains today, covered with dust, in the loft of an old barn.”

However, that news became lost and over the following decades; people interested in the case would look for copies of Porter’s books and be unable to locate a single one. This led to whispers that Lizzie had bought up all but four copies upon publication and had them all destroyed. (How and why this specific number of copies were spared was never explained.) This unproven rumor was repeated as fact, in 1967, by none other than Victoria Lincoln, Lizzie mythologizer extraordinaire. “Like most of Fall River,” Lincoln wrote, “I had always wanted to read Edwin H. Porter’s The Fall River Tragedy. However, Lizzie bought off the printer, a local, and the books were destroyed before they hit the shop.” The book was indeed difficult to find and so, of course, Lincoln was believed, and this so-called “fact” was repeated continuously over the years, even showing up in the keynote speech given at the 1992 centennial conference on Lizzie and the Borden murders.

It wasn’t until the internet came along and online booksellers could put their used books up for sale that it was discovered there were actually hundreds of Fall River Tragedy first editions floating around. This one-hundred-year delay in putting that myth to rest shows us just how tenacious legends about Lizzie can be and erroneously passed along as fact. It also reveals how quick many are to assign sinister motives and methods to someone simply going about her life, as well as how quick we are to believe them, no proof required.

As of this writing in 2026, one can obtain a first edition of Porter’s Fall River Tragedy for anywhere between $1,000 and $1,200.