Barnaby Rudge

Set against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots of 1870, Barnaby Rudgeis a story of mystery and suspense which begins with an unsolved murder and goes on to involve conspiracy, blackmail, abduction and retribution. Through the course of the novel fathers and sons become opposed, apprentices plot against their masters and anti-Catholic mobs rampage through the streets. And, as London erupts into riot, Barnaby Rudge himself struggles to escape the curse of his own past. With its dramatic descriptions of public violence and private horror, its strange secrets and ghostly doublings, Barnaby Rudgeis a powerful, disturbing blend of historical realism and Gothic melodrama. This edition is based on the first one-volume publication of Barnaby Rudge, reproducing all the original illustrations. Appendices include a map of London at the time of the Gordon Riots and the preface to the 1969 edition.

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Landport, Portsea, England. He died in Kent on June 9, 1870. The second of eight children of a family continually plagued by debt, the young Dickens came to know not only hunger and privation,but also the horror of the infamous debtors’ prison and the evils of child labor. A turn of fortune in the shape of a legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and “slave” factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years’ formal schooling at Wellington House Academy. He worked as an attorney’s clerk and newspaper reporter until his Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837) brought him the amazing and instant success that was to be his for the remainder of his life. In later years, the pressure of serial writing, editorial duties, lectures, and social commitments led to his separation from Catherine Hogarth after twenty-three years of marriage. It also hastened his death at the age of fifty-eight, when he was characteristically engaged in a multitude of work.

John Bowen teaches English at the University of Keele. He has written widely on Charles Dickens and is the author of Other Dickens: Pickwick to Dombey (OUP, 2000).