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The Convict : a Tale / by G.P.R. James 1851 [Leather Bound]
Leather Binding on Spine and Corners with Golden leaf printing on spine. This book is printed in black & white, Sewing binding for longer life, where the book block is actually sewn (smythe sewn/section sewn) with thread before binding which results in a more durable type of binding. Reprinted in 2022 with the help of original edition published long back 1851. As this book is reprinted from a very old book, there could be some missing or flawed pages. If it is multi vo Resized as per current standards. We expect that you will understand our compulsion with such books. 426 The convict : a tale / by G.P.R. James 1851 G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James
426 pages, Leather Bound
Published January 1, 2022
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September 4, 2026
‘The Convict: A Tale’ is the somewhat unconvincing title of the 1847 G. P. R. James novel, the first part of which is a convoluted plot featuring a violent arm of the Chartist Movement and a Jesuitical Roman Catholic priest who stops at nothing to ‘save a soul,’ in the belief that the end justifies the means.
There is a stock disinherited heir, a suspicious death, a trial for murder, and an unjust conviction for manslaughter. Three major issues stand out: the villainy of a Jesuit priest; the brutality of the ‘lower classes,’ who fight with shovel and pickaxe rather than with sword and pistol; and the iniquity of a penal system that brushes criminals under the carpet, so to speak, or into slavery.
All three issues are dealt with in a manner that history has proved James wrong; the villainy of the Jesuit is that of an ambitious man acting on his own authority; the Chartist demands were met, incrementally, it is true, but full male suffrage was eventually attained, and their other demands recognised and acted upon soon after. The brutal transportation system was also abolished ten years after the publication of ‘The Convict,’ though not as a direct result of it.
This is not one of the great G. P. R. hits, but it tells a good story. The Chartist riots of 1839 are excellently portrayed in the struggle of the working man for the right to a minimum wage, and the right to vote without the qualification of ownership. However, James’s portrayal reveals a deeply conservative, Tory attitude; he finds the whole movement pretty abominable. While the riots are vividly drawn as crimes against the natural order, the collective political demands of the Chartists are treated as inherently dangerous.
James only shows sympathy to working-class characters on an individual level, and even then, only if they show proper deference, demonstrate their worth, pull their forelocks, or curtsey low enough to their social betters.It is worth noting that the title itself serves as a misnomer.
James bypasses the urgent debates on prison reform led by contemporaries like Elizabeth Fry and Lord Shaftesbury, using the conviction merely as a plot device rather than as social criticism, which another contemporary, like Charles Dickens or Marcus Clarke a generation later, might joyfully have seized upon.
And while James’s plot is well conceived, the execution depends too much on coincidence to be of great merit.
The second part of the novel deals with the manner in which the convict redeems his fortune, his sweetheart, and his good name after the real perpetrator of the crime is identified and the hero’s innocence openly declared.
For nearly four chapters, James discourses on the evils of transportation without the accompanying consolation of philosophy and religion. We meet escaped convicts on the lam, just like the hero, the convict of the title, an unexpected company of scientific explorers who express great sympathy for him, as well as “savages,” who use spears and arrows to attack him. And all this detail comes without personal experience of the Antipodes. Although James was a great traveller both on the Continent and in America, he never visited the Southern Hemisphere, and his information is secondhand.
The style is heavy, omniscient, authorial and retributional, an outdated fashion that accounts for his fall from grace and his obscurity today, even when there is a revival of interest in the proto-Victorian novel. ‘The Convict’ shows James at his most lazy and formulaic. He uses the massive, tragic human suffering of the Australian transportation system merely as a convenient stage to resolve a domestic inheritance plot, utterly ignoring the deep moral questions of his own era.
There is a stock disinherited heir, a suspicious death, a trial for murder, and an unjust conviction for manslaughter. Three major issues stand out: the villainy of a Jesuit priest; the brutality of the ‘lower classes,’ who fight with shovel and pickaxe rather than with sword and pistol; and the iniquity of a penal system that brushes criminals under the carpet, so to speak, or into slavery.
All three issues are dealt with in a manner that history has proved James wrong; the villainy of the Jesuit is that of an ambitious man acting on his own authority; the Chartist demands were met, incrementally, it is true, but full male suffrage was eventually attained, and their other demands recognised and acted upon soon after. The brutal transportation system was also abolished ten years after the publication of ‘The Convict,’ though not as a direct result of it.
This is not one of the great G. P. R. hits, but it tells a good story. The Chartist riots of 1839 are excellently portrayed in the struggle of the working man for the right to a minimum wage, and the right to vote without the qualification of ownership. However, James’s portrayal reveals a deeply conservative, Tory attitude; he finds the whole movement pretty abominable. While the riots are vividly drawn as crimes against the natural order, the collective political demands of the Chartists are treated as inherently dangerous.
James only shows sympathy to working-class characters on an individual level, and even then, only if they show proper deference, demonstrate their worth, pull their forelocks, or curtsey low enough to their social betters.It is worth noting that the title itself serves as a misnomer.
James bypasses the urgent debates on prison reform led by contemporaries like Elizabeth Fry and Lord Shaftesbury, using the conviction merely as a plot device rather than as social criticism, which another contemporary, like Charles Dickens or Marcus Clarke a generation later, might joyfully have seized upon.
And while James’s plot is well conceived, the execution depends too much on coincidence to be of great merit.
The second part of the novel deals with the manner in which the convict redeems his fortune, his sweetheart, and his good name after the real perpetrator of the crime is identified and the hero’s innocence openly declared.
For nearly four chapters, James discourses on the evils of transportation without the accompanying consolation of philosophy and religion. We meet escaped convicts on the lam, just like the hero, the convict of the title, an unexpected company of scientific explorers who express great sympathy for him, as well as “savages,” who use spears and arrows to attack him. And all this detail comes without personal experience of the Antipodes. Although James was a great traveller both on the Continent and in America, he never visited the Southern Hemisphere, and his information is secondhand.
The style is heavy, omniscient, authorial and retributional, an outdated fashion that accounts for his fall from grace and his obscurity today, even when there is a revival of interest in the proto-Victorian novel. ‘The Convict’ shows James at his most lazy and formulaic. He uses the massive, tragic human suffering of the Australian transportation system merely as a convenient stage to resolve a domestic inheritance plot, utterly ignoring the deep moral questions of his own era.
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