AUBURN — The Auburn Public Library will host historian Joseph Conforti at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8.

Conforti, a native of Fall River, Massachusetts, will talk about one of the most famous murderers in American history, Lizzie Borden.

Conforti is the author of “Lizzie Borden on Trial: Murder, Ethnicity, and Gender.”

Most people probably know that Borden “took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks,” but few may know that during the trial, she was acquitted.

Conforti’s account on Borden is also fascinating for what it tells readers about the world she inhabited. As Conforti introduces readers to Borden, her father and stepmother, he shows them why who they were matters almost as much to the trial’s outcome as the actual events of Aug. 4, 1892.

Conforti taught American and New England studies at the University of Southern Maine for 24 years before retiring as distinguished professor emeritus in 2011. Copies of his book will be available for sale and signing.