Newgate novel
The Newgate novels (or Old Bailey novels) were
Works
Among the earliest Newgate novels were
Thackeray's
Decline
The 1840 murder of
Bah! what figments these novelists tell us! Boz, who knows life well, knows that his
Gesner's shepherdesses resembles a real country wench. He dare not tell the truth concerning such young ladies.
It was believed that the character of Fagin was based on the real pickpocket Ikey Solomon, but while Dickens did nothing to discourage this perceived connection, he was at pains not to glorify the criminals he created: Bill Sikes is without redeeming features, and Fagin seems pleasant only in comparison to the other grotesques Oliver meets as his story unfolds.
The Newgate novel was also attacked in the literary press, with Jack Sheppard described as a "one of a class of bad books, got up for a bad public" in The Athenaeum, and Punch published a satirical "Literary Recipe" for a startling romance, which began "Take a small boy, charity, factory, carpenter's apprentice, or otherwise, as occasion may serve – stew him down in vice – garnish largely with oaths and flash songs – Boil him in a cauldron of crime and improbabilities. Season equally with good and bad qualities ...".[2] The attacks were enough to make Ainsworth and Lytton turn to other subjects; Dickens continued to use criminals as the central characters in many of his stories.
Among the last of the pure Newgate novels was
Notes
- ^ William Makepeace Thackeray (1840). On Going to See a Man Hanged.
- ^ Lynn Pykett, Ed. Martin Priestman. "The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction, chapter 2 – The Newgate novel and sensation fiction, 1830–1868". Cambridge University Press, 2003; Cambridge Collection Online (subscription required). Retrieved 5 February 2007.
References
- "Why Thackeray went to see a man hanged". Collected Essays of Albert Borowitz 1966-2005. Legal Studies Forum. Archived from the original on 5 February 2006. Retrieved 4 February 2007.
- "Newgate Novel". Bloomsbury.com. Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 4 February 2007.
- Simon Joyce (1995). "Resisting arrest/arresting resistance: crime fiction, cultural studies, and the "turn to history."". Criticism. Retrieved 4 February 2007.
Further reading
- Hollingsworth, Keith (1963). The Newgate Novel, 1830-1847: Bulwer, Ainsworth, Dickens & Thackeray. Wayne State University Press.
- The Newgate Calendar Online reading and multiple ebook formats at Ex-classics.