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Jack Sheppard: A Romance
While Jack Sheppard seems marked from birth for a terrible end, his wit and charm might just be able to cheat fate. Fate, however, seems eager to cheat him out of an honest living, when Jack begins visiting the notorious Black Lion, drinking den of the worst criminals in London. (Excerpt from Goodreads)
297 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1839
22 people are currently reading
311 people want to read
About the author
William Harrison Ainsworth
567 books50 followersWilliam Harrison Ainsworth was educated at Manchester Grammar School and later articled to a solicitor, deserting this profession for literature.
Among his best known novels are The Tower of London (1840), Old St. Paul's (1841), Windsor Castle (1843) and The Lancashire Witches (1848).
Among his best known novels are The Tower of London (1840), Old St. Paul's (1841), Windsor Castle (1843) and The Lancashire Witches (1848).
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
July 12, 2019
I knew little about this writer before, save that he wrote sensationalist literature at about the same time as Charles Dickens, including a novel called ‘Rookswood’ which reputedly featured a highly glamorised version of Dick Turpin.
It seems that he was at one time massively popular with the Victorian reading public for his ‘neck and axe’ adventure novels. ‘Jack Sheppard’ was his third novel, and ran concurrently in serialised form in one of the Victorian literary magazines, ‘Bentley’s Miscellany’, with Charles Dickens’ ‘ ‘Oliver Twist’. It seemed that there was a controversy between the two men over the subject of ‘Newgate Novels’.
Though Dickens left the magazine as a result, he was the eventual victor, for while the public greedily devoured Ainsworth’s melodramatic blood-and-thunder novels, he was despised by critics, and never came to equal Dicken’s stature as a writer. His fame barely outlasted his lifetime. These days he is largely forgotten.
One critic even wrote of him: ‘ Let us start with an opinion fearlessly expressed as it is earnestly felt, that the existence of this writer is an event to be deplored.’ I think this criticism is undeservedly harsh, though of course, this was written around 1875, before Charles Garvice’s romantic melodramas showed critics what successful bad writing truly is.
Ainsworth’s prose is often turgid, and he has a passion for the lurid and melodramatic. However, in an age when novels moved along at a snail’s pace, his tales are comparatively eventful and fast moving: I found it difficult as a modern reader not to find this a great relief. His stories are gripping and the action is vividly portrayed. While Thackeray and Dickens wished to stimalate thought, and often, indignation in the reader, Ainsworth is obviously less out to point a moral than to give the reader an exciting tale.
Not only that, but if Ainsworth’s prose is turgid, his research immediately struck me as impressive. I know how exacting and time consuming research can be, even with the internet to hand. Ainsworth knew all about the topography of London, the sort of buildings extant in 1703 in The Mint, the ‘rookery’ where Jack Sheppard was born, and the architecture of the first London Bridge. He could depict the dress and manners of all classes of society in that era, and also, bring to life the famous (or infamous) characters who featured in Jack Sheppard’s tragic history; for instance, the dreaded informer and thief catcher Jonathon Wilde, and the ruffianly Bueskin.
This industrious research is not a quality one associates these days with a poor to mediocre author, and it is intriguing that while Harrison Ainsworth acquired a name as a purveyor of sensationalist tales that tickled popular taste in the Victorian era, Dickens – whose writing also has very strong senstationalist themes – is seen as the writer of a grander form of literature, the ‘social protest novel’.
Well, I promise I won’t rant here about the lurid popular view of the French Revolution, all rolling heads and snapping guillotines, that began with Dickens.
Certainly, it is true that Dickens was the writer of the Victorian age who set to work to expose social injustice, who attacked hypocrisy and who had a wonderful sense of the ludicrous.
Still, Dicken’s writing also comes with a great supply of faults – for instance, the infamous sentimentality and male and female leads so dull I wonder that he could bear to write about them at all.
And I have to say that if you compare Ainsworth’s style with that of various other generally far more respected writers – and the earlier Samuel Richardson and Fanny Burney immediately come to mind – this novel at least comes out as a good deal less lurid and improbable.
Of course, the tragically short life of the anti-hero of the story, the eponymous Jack Sheppard, in itself reads like something made up by a writer of ‘Penny Dreadfuls’. A renegade London apprentice carpenter turned thief, he soon became famous – or infamous, depending on the point of view – for his escapes from prison.
His career was short but brief, for he made an enemy of the hated thief taker and informer Jonathan Wild, who schemed to destroy anyone who would not work for him.
At last chained to the stone flooring of his cell, the young man managed to escape again, but was captured when blind drunk. In gaol in chains and a secure inner cell, he was painted by the king’s painter James Thornhill. The gaolers charged high society figures four shillings a time to view him. There were petitions for leniancy from various well known figures, but these were rejected.
Stealing a sum valued at above - I think - five shillings in those days meant a death sentence. Jack Sheppard was offered a reduced sentence if he informed on his associates, but refused, and huge, admiring crowds turned out to follow the procession to Tyburn on 15 November 1724.
I knew well enough that the eighteenth century was a brutal and violent age, but even so, the amount of beatings that this anti-hero endures in the course of one day at the grand old age of twelve is astounding. He is beaten for idling by the master carpenter to whom he is apprenticed, knocked down by the master’s stepson Thames for saying he wants a kiss from that master’s daughter, then slapped in the face by the girl herself (whom he is inclined to worship, as he does Thames himself), slapped much harder by the master’s wife, who resents his being in the house at all, and finally beaten by the constables in Wild’s pay. However, he is still apparently not too stiff to be able to break free from custody.
Such treatment would surely be enough to make a rebel out of anyone, even in an age when thrashings were the general form of chastisment, and in the story it is the slap in the face from his master’s wife which finally tips the balance and makes Jack decide on a life of crime.
Whether this depiction of so much corporal punishment in a day is a matter of sloppy editing on Ainsworth’s part, or was put in by him to indicate the harshness of life among the London poor, it certainly makes the latter point vividly.
Besides changing in character, Jack, between the second and the third volumes, seems to have such a remakrable change in appearance, that it even involves his eye colour turning from hazel -which the author, oddly enough, associates with faithlessness - to black. I suspect this came through writing in installments. I remember in 'Vanity Fair' Dobbin's hair changes from stiff and black to soft and brown.
Whatever the criticisms that the critics may have levelled at Ainsworth, he tells an engaging story, and I am puzzled that this book has disappeared so completely from view. In that, of course, it shares the fate of another robber novel, Christian Auguste Vulpius' 'Rinaldo Rinaldini' (1798).
It seems that he was at one time massively popular with the Victorian reading public for his ‘neck and axe’ adventure novels. ‘Jack Sheppard’ was his third novel, and ran concurrently in serialised form in one of the Victorian literary magazines, ‘Bentley’s Miscellany’, with Charles Dickens’ ‘ ‘Oliver Twist’. It seemed that there was a controversy between the two men over the subject of ‘Newgate Novels’.
Though Dickens left the magazine as a result, he was the eventual victor, for while the public greedily devoured Ainsworth’s melodramatic blood-and-thunder novels, he was despised by critics, and never came to equal Dicken’s stature as a writer. His fame barely outlasted his lifetime. These days he is largely forgotten.
One critic even wrote of him: ‘ Let us start with an opinion fearlessly expressed as it is earnestly felt, that the existence of this writer is an event to be deplored.’ I think this criticism is undeservedly harsh, though of course, this was written around 1875, before Charles Garvice’s romantic melodramas showed critics what successful bad writing truly is.
Ainsworth’s prose is often turgid, and he has a passion for the lurid and melodramatic. However, in an age when novels moved along at a snail’s pace, his tales are comparatively eventful and fast moving: I found it difficult as a modern reader not to find this a great relief. His stories are gripping and the action is vividly portrayed. While Thackeray and Dickens wished to stimalate thought, and often, indignation in the reader, Ainsworth is obviously less out to point a moral than to give the reader an exciting tale.
Not only that, but if Ainsworth’s prose is turgid, his research immediately struck me as impressive. I know how exacting and time consuming research can be, even with the internet to hand. Ainsworth knew all about the topography of London, the sort of buildings extant in 1703 in The Mint, the ‘rookery’ where Jack Sheppard was born, and the architecture of the first London Bridge. He could depict the dress and manners of all classes of society in that era, and also, bring to life the famous (or infamous) characters who featured in Jack Sheppard’s tragic history; for instance, the dreaded informer and thief catcher Jonathon Wilde, and the ruffianly Bueskin.
This industrious research is not a quality one associates these days with a poor to mediocre author, and it is intriguing that while Harrison Ainsworth acquired a name as a purveyor of sensationalist tales that tickled popular taste in the Victorian era, Dickens – whose writing also has very strong senstationalist themes – is seen as the writer of a grander form of literature, the ‘social protest novel’.
Well, I promise I won’t rant here about the lurid popular view of the French Revolution, all rolling heads and snapping guillotines, that began with Dickens.
Certainly, it is true that Dickens was the writer of the Victorian age who set to work to expose social injustice, who attacked hypocrisy and who had a wonderful sense of the ludicrous.
Still, Dicken’s writing also comes with a great supply of faults – for instance, the infamous sentimentality and male and female leads so dull I wonder that he could bear to write about them at all.
And I have to say that if you compare Ainsworth’s style with that of various other generally far more respected writers – and the earlier Samuel Richardson and Fanny Burney immediately come to mind – this novel at least comes out as a good deal less lurid and improbable.
Of course, the tragically short life of the anti-hero of the story, the eponymous Jack Sheppard, in itself reads like something made up by a writer of ‘Penny Dreadfuls’. A renegade London apprentice carpenter turned thief, he soon became famous – or infamous, depending on the point of view – for his escapes from prison.
His career was short but brief, for he made an enemy of the hated thief taker and informer Jonathan Wild, who schemed to destroy anyone who would not work for him.
At last chained to the stone flooring of his cell, the young man managed to escape again, but was captured when blind drunk. In gaol in chains and a secure inner cell, he was painted by the king’s painter James Thornhill. The gaolers charged high society figures four shillings a time to view him. There were petitions for leniancy from various well known figures, but these were rejected.
Stealing a sum valued at above - I think - five shillings in those days meant a death sentence. Jack Sheppard was offered a reduced sentence if he informed on his associates, but refused, and huge, admiring crowds turned out to follow the procession to Tyburn on 15 November 1724.
I knew well enough that the eighteenth century was a brutal and violent age, but even so, the amount of beatings that this anti-hero endures in the course of one day at the grand old age of twelve is astounding. He is beaten for idling by the master carpenter to whom he is apprenticed, knocked down by the master’s stepson Thames for saying he wants a kiss from that master’s daughter, then slapped in the face by the girl herself (whom he is inclined to worship, as he does Thames himself), slapped much harder by the master’s wife, who resents his being in the house at all, and finally beaten by the constables in Wild’s pay. However, he is still apparently not too stiff to be able to break free from custody.
Such treatment would surely be enough to make a rebel out of anyone, even in an age when thrashings were the general form of chastisment, and in the story it is the slap in the face from his master’s wife which finally tips the balance and makes Jack decide on a life of crime.
Whether this depiction of so much corporal punishment in a day is a matter of sloppy editing on Ainsworth’s part, or was put in by him to indicate the harshness of life among the London poor, it certainly makes the latter point vividly.
Besides changing in character, Jack, between the second and the third volumes, seems to have such a remakrable change in appearance, that it even involves his eye colour turning from hazel -which the author, oddly enough, associates with faithlessness - to black. I suspect this came through writing in installments. I remember in 'Vanity Fair' Dobbin's hair changes from stiff and black to soft and brown.
Whatever the criticisms that the critics may have levelled at Ainsworth, he tells an engaging story, and I am puzzled that this book has disappeared so completely from view. In that, of course, it shares the fate of another robber novel, Christian Auguste Vulpius' 'Rinaldo Rinaldini' (1798).
January 23, 2021
I can't review this book. I can't review it because of Charles Dickens, blame him. After these last four years I'm used to blaming anything that happens on someone else. That's just what we seem to do here, hopefully now that's finally ending, but for me Charles Dickens has ruined my chance for reviewing this book. It's all because I knew before I read it that it this novel was being published concurrently in serialized form in one of the literary magazines, Bentley’s Miscellany at the same time as Charles Dickens’ ‘Oliver Twist’. So I spent all my time comparing it to Oliver Twist or comparing Ainsworth with Dickens would be more like it. Dickens won, he always wins. This book even came with illustrations by George Cruikshank, you can't get much more Dickens-like than that. Dickens and Ainsworth were friends when they started their books, they weren't anymore when they finished them. Dickens even left Bentley's Miscellany over it. I'm not sure what went wrong, but it had something to do with a controversy over the scandalous nature around Jack Sheppard, Oliver Twist, and other novels describing criminal life. I'm not so sure what was so scandalous about any of them, but it was enough to ruin their friendship.
The story is divided into three parts called "epochs". The "Jonathan Wild" one comes first. He's a bad guy who does bad things convincing Jack's father to do bad things with him that ends with Jack's father executed and Sheppard's mother left alone to raise Jack, an infant at the time.
The second epoch is the story of Thames Darrell. It traces the adolescence of both Darrell and Sheppard, who grow up together. And the third is back to Jack who is now an adult. I'm not telling you what happens to him, although since he was a real person you may already know. Oh, Jonathan Wild was a real person too.
And now I'm back to Dickens. Supposedly Jack Sheppard and Oliver Twist were considered similar books. I do not consider them similar, but the plots are thought to be similar, in that both deal with an individual attempting to corrupt a boy. I suppose that's true. Ainsworth's boy is corrupted, whereas Dickens' is not. I suppose that is also true. And both authors also cast Jews as their villains; they are similar in appearance, though Ainsworth's is less powerful. Ainsworth's is much less powerful, I can't even picture him anymore but I'll never forget Fagin. See, this is why I can't review this book, I keep getting caught up in Dickens. Happy reading.
The story is divided into three parts called "epochs". The "Jonathan Wild" one comes first. He's a bad guy who does bad things convincing Jack's father to do bad things with him that ends with Jack's father executed and Sheppard's mother left alone to raise Jack, an infant at the time.
The second epoch is the story of Thames Darrell. It traces the adolescence of both Darrell and Sheppard, who grow up together. And the third is back to Jack who is now an adult. I'm not telling you what happens to him, although since he was a real person you may already know. Oh, Jonathan Wild was a real person too.
And now I'm back to Dickens. Supposedly Jack Sheppard and Oliver Twist were considered similar books. I do not consider them similar, but the plots are thought to be similar, in that both deal with an individual attempting to corrupt a boy. I suppose that's true. Ainsworth's boy is corrupted, whereas Dickens' is not. I suppose that is also true. And both authors also cast Jews as their villains; they are similar in appearance, though Ainsworth's is less powerful. Ainsworth's is much less powerful, I can't even picture him anymore but I'll never forget Fagin. See, this is why I can't review this book, I keep getting caught up in Dickens. Happy reading.
August 17, 2015
Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard is not for anyone who likes to pause for a breath while reading a novel. The pace is swift, the characters in constant movement and the plot lacks subtlety, but what a fun ride! The story is based on a famous highwayman named Jack Sheppard. Ainsworth makes full use of the facts and blends in romance, historical places and references, songs, liberal doses of melodrama and even some cameos of actual figures of British history, which, when combined, make for a wonderful tale.
The plot has many of the sensation novel conventions and is a novel which would be classified as a " Newgate Novel" which is a somewhat forgotten sub-genre of the Victorian Novel. I hope Ainsworth would forgive me for saying the concept of the Newgate Novel is to set a novel and its characters around the central trope of the Newgate Prison, but never let too many facts get in the way of a good story.
The novel centres around three stages of Jack Sheppard's short-lived life. From his childhood where he lived in the shadow of father's criminal activities and eventual hanging, through his teen years where he honed the craft of being a robber and second-story man to his brief adulthood where he was a romantic rogue Jack is always on the move, always effecting magical daring escapes and always keeping one step ahead of the law.
To balance Jack's exploits, there is a character named Thames Darrell, a girl named Winnifred, Jack's long-suffering mother and a host of supporting characters to keep the loose plot from spilling out over the page. Other great strengths of the novel are the descriptions of the criminal underworld, the prisons and their horrid conditions and a powerful section about a terrific storm and London Bridge. To round out the story there are a few drinking songs and tales laced into the text. On hand to record Jack when he is in jail Ainsworth has William Hogarth and his pen capturing all the excitement.
This novel ran in parallel to Dickens's Oliver Twist. It is interesting to contrast the two and consider how and why Dickens and Ainsworth ended up as they did. While it is evident that Dickens achieved much greater fame and recognition than Ainsworth, we should not ignore Ainsworth. Jack Sheppard was a good read.
The plot has many of the sensation novel conventions and is a novel which would be classified as a " Newgate Novel" which is a somewhat forgotten sub-genre of the Victorian Novel. I hope Ainsworth would forgive me for saying the concept of the Newgate Novel is to set a novel and its characters around the central trope of the Newgate Prison, but never let too many facts get in the way of a good story.
The novel centres around three stages of Jack Sheppard's short-lived life. From his childhood where he lived in the shadow of father's criminal activities and eventual hanging, through his teen years where he honed the craft of being a robber and second-story man to his brief adulthood where he was a romantic rogue Jack is always on the move, always effecting magical daring escapes and always keeping one step ahead of the law.
To balance Jack's exploits, there is a character named Thames Darrell, a girl named Winnifred, Jack's long-suffering mother and a host of supporting characters to keep the loose plot from spilling out over the page. Other great strengths of the novel are the descriptions of the criminal underworld, the prisons and their horrid conditions and a powerful section about a terrific storm and London Bridge. To round out the story there are a few drinking songs and tales laced into the text. On hand to record Jack when he is in jail Ainsworth has William Hogarth and his pen capturing all the excitement.
This novel ran in parallel to Dickens's Oliver Twist. It is interesting to contrast the two and consider how and why Dickens and Ainsworth ended up as they did. While it is evident that Dickens achieved much greater fame and recognition than Ainsworth, we should not ignore Ainsworth. Jack Sheppard was a good read.
Read
July 14, 2019A (rare) example of a book that was far more interesting to study, or write about, than to read. As such, the Broadview introduction, which historicises the text, is fabulous. The text itself was forgettably written. But Ainsworth, his aims and the Newgate novel scandal fascinate. In writing crime and criminals he was far more radical than Dickens, who was dragged into the controversy along with Ainsworth. You can read about it on this dedicated site: https://ainsworthandfriends.wordpress...
I highly recommend the Broadview edition intro, on the matter of historical fiction too. This was a type of historical fiction on quite different lines than Walter Scott -- but it got shot down in the Newgate controversy, and unfortunately for the growth of the genre, I must conclude, was not followed up. Scott hogged the model for HF. Ainworth's abandoned model was one that quotes & incorporates primary sources and rubs out traces of secondary; that does not look at historical process -- which meant, progress, in which he did not necessarily believe (who does these days? Ainsworth our contemporary). The sources he uses are 'lowlife, popular' and the intro's other major claim is that this is the only Newgate novel to defend a class rather than an exceptional individual. Radical.
I highly recommend the Broadview edition intro, on the matter of historical fiction too. This was a type of historical fiction on quite different lines than Walter Scott -- but it got shot down in the Newgate controversy, and unfortunately for the growth of the genre, I must conclude, was not followed up. Scott hogged the model for HF. Ainworth's abandoned model was one that quotes & incorporates primary sources and rubs out traces of secondary; that does not look at historical process -- which meant, progress, in which he did not necessarily believe (who does these days? Ainsworth our contemporary). The sources he uses are 'lowlife, popular' and the intro's other major claim is that this is the only Newgate novel to defend a class rather than an exceptional individual. Radical.
October 1, 2013
A typical Victorian tale with a lot of drama, suspense and horror. While I had to read this for uni, I really enjoyed it and will probably read it again. One of the main things that I liked about it was that the story takes place before it was actually written, so the tale holds descriptions of buildings and places that had since changed. Really interesting to get a historic view of places that have changed again since (for example, they give a horrid description of Bedlam).
If you like Victorian Lit, you'd probably like this one!
If you like Victorian Lit, you'd probably like this one!
July 5, 2025
Jack Sheppard was an 18th century folk hero executed in 1724 at the age of 22 after a two year crime spree and a series of prison breaks. This novel, written more than a century later, gives a very victorian take on the story. Like that other more famous redistributor of wealth, Robin Hood , Jack Sheppard is made palatable for a middle-class readership by the means of an invented aristocratic pedigree, as if having your house broken into is OK when the burglar is posher than you. It must have seemed pretty silly even then that Jack's long suffering mother, was supposed to have been the daughter of a noble family, stolen by gypsies as a young child. Classism isn't the only prejudice on display either, it comes bundled with racist and antisemitic epithets mostly directed at other members of Jack's criminal fraternity.
The best scenes of the book feature Jack's escapes and seem to have been lifted fairly wholesale from the contemporary account published at the time of his hanging. William Harrison Ainsworth deserves credit for preserving the real life characters from the Georgian underworld even if the novel is fairly terrible.
The best scenes of the book feature Jack's escapes and seem to have been lifted fairly wholesale from the contemporary account published at the time of his hanging. William Harrison Ainsworth deserves credit for preserving the real life characters from the Georgian underworld even if the novel is fairly terrible.
September 27, 2021
This book was entertaining in that “This is utter trash” kinda way lol If you’re in the mood for something chaotic, with inconsistent characters and repetitive storyline then give it a try I guess 💀I suppose saying you read the book of Dickens’ forgotten friend can be somewhat of a flex (but not really) 😭
June 9, 2021
“Più si ha fretta più consigliabile è rallentare…”
Un libro storico con una cruda illustrazione dei fatti ,molti sono vicende accadute tra il 1703 e 1975 con personaggi vissuti realmente altre sono creazioni dell’autore per poter esprimere meglio una idea , per esempio Ainsworth aggiunge il personaggio di Thames Darrel per equilibrare una bilancia , tra un lato c’è Jack Sheppard che decide di scegliere la strada “cattiva” di malvagio e dall’altro lato Thames che non ostante aver vissuto le stese circostanze sceglie il bene , un contrasto per rinforzare l’idea del cambiamento, di un pentimento da parte di Jack , che nonostante tutto , chiede scusa piangendo in ginocchio a sua madre , mette a rischio la sua vita per aiutare il suo unico amico , e l’amore di una ragazza impedisce di fare altri delitti.
Un libro storico con una cruda illustrazione dei fatti ,molti sono vicende accadute tra il 1703 e 1975 con personaggi vissuti realmente altre sono creazioni dell’autore per poter esprimere meglio una idea , per esempio Ainsworth aggiunge il personaggio di Thames Darrel per equilibrare una bilancia , tra un lato c’è Jack Sheppard che decide di scegliere la strada “cattiva” di malvagio e dall’altro lato Thames che non ostante aver vissuto le stese circostanze sceglie il bene , un contrasto per rinforzare l’idea del cambiamento, di un pentimento da parte di Jack , che nonostante tutto , chiede scusa piangendo in ginocchio a sua madre , mette a rischio la sua vita per aiutare il suo unico amico , e l’amore di una ragazza impedisce di fare altri delitti.
September 20, 2011
If Maroon 5 Had Lived In The Eighteenth Century
So put me in chains
If you feel like,
Try to cause me pain,
If it feels right
You lock me away, and tell me to stay,
But I won’t behave
You wanted my skills
So we waited
I’ve put on a show
And I’ve made it
You call me a prig
Your ego is big
I don’t give a fig
And it goes like this:
Lock me behind a gate
And say ‘show me’
You won’t have long to wait
’Fore you know me
By my moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
It’s so easy to control you
Try to catch me and I’ll pwn you
With the moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
Dear Jonathan Wild,
You poor sap
Thought you had me beguiled
Doomed to the crap
But leave it to me
To get myself free
Without any key
So get on your horse
Please do chase me
Away through the forest
Though I’m wasted
You’ll never catch I
And please don’t ask why
I’m better than thy
And it goes like this:
Lock me behind a gate
And say ‘show me’
You won’t have long to wait
’Fore you know me
By my moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
It’s so easy to control you
Try to catch me and I’ll pwn you
With the moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
Oh, JS. You are awesomeness personified.
So put me in chains
If you feel like,
Try to cause me pain,
If it feels right
You lock me away, and tell me to stay,
But I won’t behave
You wanted my skills
So we waited
I’ve put on a show
And I’ve made it
You call me a prig
Your ego is big
I don’t give a fig
And it goes like this:
Lock me behind a gate
And say ‘show me’
You won’t have long to wait
’Fore you know me
By my moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
It’s so easy to control you
Try to catch me and I’ll pwn you
With the moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
Dear Jonathan Wild,
You poor sap
Thought you had me beguiled
Doomed to the crap
But leave it to me
To get myself free
Without any key
So get on your horse
Please do chase me
Away through the forest
Though I’m wasted
You’ll never catch I
And please don’t ask why
I’m better than thy
And it goes like this:
Lock me behind a gate
And say ‘show me’
You won’t have long to wait
’Fore you know me
By my moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
It’s so easy to control you
Try to catch me and I’ll pwn you
With the moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
I got the moves like Sheppard
Oh, JS. You are awesomeness personified.
June 21, 2018
Was it only last summer I was reading Rookwood?
Last summer when I was snuggled in sheepskin rugs in a large teepee, having feasted on cheese toasted on a fire and swigs of single-malt whisky. There I snuggled with the crazy, over-the-top story of curses and storms, highwaymen and gypsies, secret brothers and secret wives.
I was keen to dive back into Harrison-Ainsworth’s crazy world and decided that Jack Sheppard was the way to do it.
As Rookwood stretched and played with the history of Dick Turpin, so Jack Sheppard utterly screws with the history of Jack Sheppard. Ainsworth is intensely inspired by history - but he doesn’t really give accuracy any credence whatsoever, he loves a blockbusting, nutty ol’ story far more.
The historical basis of the book is the same one that has inspired The Beggar’s Opera, Fielding’s Jonathan Wild (which I’m sure I reviewed), Lucy Moore’s The Thieves’ Opera, The Virtue of the Jest, The Fatal Tree and my own Odes to the Big City.
Jack Sheppard was a poor boy who had a strong yet thin physique and several years experience as a carpenter’s apprentice. As such he was a skilled housebreaker - however, he was also very easy to capture, having a tendency to hang around the same places and exciting the ire of London’s main criminal mastermind Jonathan Wild. This led to him to discover his real talent - escaping prisons. His go-to tactic was to smash through the roof, using a blanket to catch the debris before using the blanket to lower/parkour himself out into freedom. One memorable occasion has him doing all of this whilst carrying his mistress Edgeworth Bess, who was twice his size. Sheppard also indulged in a spot of classic cross-dressing, sneaking out of the prison in women’s clothing á la Mr Toad (though a hundred-odd years before). Having broken out of London’s most notorious prison once, he did it again in a complicates series of actions, breaking through the empty parts of the prison in a sequence which would make a great film. Unfortunately he was caught again and the last time he didn’t escape. (Although, there is a theory that he had a plan to be brought off the scaffold and revived, a plan which didn’t work because the crowd stopped his rescuers retrieving him, thinking they were doctors wishing to anatomise his body.)
Taking this already fascinating topic, William Harrison Ainsworth adds LOADS OF EVERYTHING.
The morality of Jack’s life isn’t clear enough, let’s add a Hogathian two apprentice sort of thing, but lets make them secret brothers, but lets also make them secret earls but one of them is a marquis, and let’s add the ’15 rebellion and the great storm of 1703. Let’s have Blueskin be an adored follower of Jack and have Jack as a king of thieves, lets stick his mum in Bedlam for a bit, let her be an heir snatched by gypsies. let’s have an action scene in a rain-drenched boat around the feet of Old London Bridge. Let’s make Wild nastier, lets have his hatred of Jack personal and not just business, let’s give him a villains lair with a secret killing room and display cabinets with the bones of his victims, let’s make him practically bullet-proof, sword-proof and telepathic. And a love triangle! We need a love triangle! &c. &c. &c.
Essentially, this is Ainsworth at his most delightfully Ainsworthy.
There’s nothing quite was wonderfully peculiar as the cave/monk cell/wood/gypsy/forced marriage with highwaymen and curses as there is in Rookwood but unlike that book we have a clear villain and he is the most delightfully evil character. It was in this book and about him that the phrase ‘Napoleon of Crime’ was uttered, not Moriarty. He has a full-on Bond villain evil base - he has evil laughs and evil stares and an unnerving habit of appearing in all the most unfortunate places. Technically, he kind of wins despite the best efforts of everyone else. This should be a sad thing but he was so entertaining, it wasn’t.
Jack Sheppard was not an unlikeable wet-lettuce character - although he doesn’t control much of the opening, he develops as a lively but unthinking robber into a repentant who goes to heroic lengths to protect those he loves. All those escapes, they weren’t to save him - they were so he could convey important information to other characters or meet or rescue them from Wild’s dark dungeons. Those easy recaptures - they were all due to the fact that he had to keep returning to obvious places to warn other characters.
There was a little of the slang and balladry that could have weighed the book down - but as the game of cat and mouse between Sheppard and Wild began, the story didn’t have time for all that. It did, however have time to evoke elements of London just fading from living memory when this book was written in 1839 (with very evocative illustrations by Cruickshank - which I didn’t get to enjoy, thus missing a lot, apparently).
In a chapter on Bedlam, we get quotes from Tom Brown, Ned Ward and The Dunciad. As a resident of Willesden, the frequent descriptions of it as a country idyll, along with the isolation of Dollis Hill and the beauty of the Harrow Road (where the author lived and is now buried) made me laugh a lot.
Whilst I wasn’t expecting Rookwood again, I was hoping for a Rookwood-like experience, and this book exceeded my expectations. It’s no masterpiece, but it outsold Oliver Twist on pure fun alone… that’s saying something.
Plus, there’s a minor character called Obediah Lemon.
Last summer when I was snuggled in sheepskin rugs in a large teepee, having feasted on cheese toasted on a fire and swigs of single-malt whisky. There I snuggled with the crazy, over-the-top story of curses and storms, highwaymen and gypsies, secret brothers and secret wives.
I was keen to dive back into Harrison-Ainsworth’s crazy world and decided that Jack Sheppard was the way to do it.
As Rookwood stretched and played with the history of Dick Turpin, so Jack Sheppard utterly screws with the history of Jack Sheppard. Ainsworth is intensely inspired by history - but he doesn’t really give accuracy any credence whatsoever, he loves a blockbusting, nutty ol’ story far more.
The historical basis of the book is the same one that has inspired The Beggar’s Opera, Fielding’s Jonathan Wild (which I’m sure I reviewed), Lucy Moore’s The Thieves’ Opera, The Virtue of the Jest, The Fatal Tree and my own Odes to the Big City.
Jack Sheppard was a poor boy who had a strong yet thin physique and several years experience as a carpenter’s apprentice. As such he was a skilled housebreaker - however, he was also very easy to capture, having a tendency to hang around the same places and exciting the ire of London’s main criminal mastermind Jonathan Wild. This led to him to discover his real talent - escaping prisons. His go-to tactic was to smash through the roof, using a blanket to catch the debris before using the blanket to lower/parkour himself out into freedom. One memorable occasion has him doing all of this whilst carrying his mistress Edgeworth Bess, who was twice his size. Sheppard also indulged in a spot of classic cross-dressing, sneaking out of the prison in women’s clothing á la Mr Toad (though a hundred-odd years before). Having broken out of London’s most notorious prison once, he did it again in a complicates series of actions, breaking through the empty parts of the prison in a sequence which would make a great film. Unfortunately he was caught again and the last time he didn’t escape. (Although, there is a theory that he had a plan to be brought off the scaffold and revived, a plan which didn’t work because the crowd stopped his rescuers retrieving him, thinking they were doctors wishing to anatomise his body.)
Taking this already fascinating topic, William Harrison Ainsworth adds LOADS OF EVERYTHING.
The morality of Jack’s life isn’t clear enough, let’s add a Hogathian two apprentice sort of thing, but lets make them secret brothers, but lets also make them secret earls but one of them is a marquis, and let’s add the ’15 rebellion and the great storm of 1703. Let’s have Blueskin be an adored follower of Jack and have Jack as a king of thieves, lets stick his mum in Bedlam for a bit, let her be an heir snatched by gypsies. let’s have an action scene in a rain-drenched boat around the feet of Old London Bridge. Let’s make Wild nastier, lets have his hatred of Jack personal and not just business, let’s give him a villains lair with a secret killing room and display cabinets with the bones of his victims, let’s make him practically bullet-proof, sword-proof and telepathic. And a love triangle! We need a love triangle! &c. &c. &c.
Essentially, this is Ainsworth at his most delightfully Ainsworthy.
There’s nothing quite was wonderfully peculiar as the cave/monk cell/wood/gypsy/forced marriage with highwaymen and curses as there is in Rookwood but unlike that book we have a clear villain and he is the most delightfully evil character. It was in this book and about him that the phrase ‘Napoleon of Crime’ was uttered, not Moriarty. He has a full-on Bond villain evil base - he has evil laughs and evil stares and an unnerving habit of appearing in all the most unfortunate places. Technically, he kind of wins despite the best efforts of everyone else. This should be a sad thing but he was so entertaining, it wasn’t.
Jack Sheppard was not an unlikeable wet-lettuce character - although he doesn’t control much of the opening, he develops as a lively but unthinking robber into a repentant who goes to heroic lengths to protect those he loves. All those escapes, they weren’t to save him - they were so he could convey important information to other characters or meet or rescue them from Wild’s dark dungeons. Those easy recaptures - they were all due to the fact that he had to keep returning to obvious places to warn other characters.
There was a little of the slang and balladry that could have weighed the book down - but as the game of cat and mouse between Sheppard and Wild began, the story didn’t have time for all that. It did, however have time to evoke elements of London just fading from living memory when this book was written in 1839 (with very evocative illustrations by Cruickshank - which I didn’t get to enjoy, thus missing a lot, apparently).
In a chapter on Bedlam, we get quotes from Tom Brown, Ned Ward and The Dunciad. As a resident of Willesden, the frequent descriptions of it as a country idyll, along with the isolation of Dollis Hill and the beauty of the Harrow Road (where the author lived and is now buried) made me laugh a lot.
Whilst I wasn’t expecting Rookwood again, I was hoping for a Rookwood-like experience, and this book exceeded my expectations. It’s no masterpiece, but it outsold Oliver Twist on pure fun alone… that’s saying something.
Plus, there’s a minor character called Obediah Lemon.
June 8, 2022
This happens oh so rarely, but I had to DNF this one. I usually can get through the driest, most boring, badly written dross, but unfortunately, not this time. I could have continued and taken about 2 months to finish the last 250 pages (yeah I got halfway,) but I decided life is too short and there are too many other books I want to read.
I did a quick survey of reviews below to see if anyone else felt the way I did about this book and the reviews are interesting. Someone mentioned this novel is 'trash.' Yeah, 'this is trash' but Victorian trash. I can barely handle that sort of pulp culture thriller, over the top kind of novel today let alone one written over 100 years ago.
However, it only feels fair to breakdown why I disliked it so much. The first part of this novel, I actually loved. The set up of Jonathan Wild and Sir Rowland as the villains (different kinds of villains,) I really enjoyed. The action takes place in a storm and I loved the over-the-top description in the first 100 pages or so. Enter Part II and within 10 pages, it goes downhill and never gets better. The characters are so ridiculous, all of them, even Mr Wood who seemed like a sensible(ish) man in the first part. The plot is annoying. The female characters, especially Mrs Wood, evoked a special form of cringe. The thing is the title of the story is Jack Sheppard and not only was he the most annoying character of them all, but there was a huge piece of me that hoped that Jonathan Wild would just brain him and be done with this character. I have never rooted so much for a character's death before (and that's actually when I decided I should probably stop reading this book.) That being said, the overall sentiment was annoyance and not because I felt invested in the story or the characters.
I understand that this was written at the same time as Dickens' Oliver Twist. Read Dickens. Don't bother with this trash unless you have to study it (which I understand is more pleasurable than actually reading it. sigh.)
I did a quick survey of reviews below to see if anyone else felt the way I did about this book and the reviews are interesting. Someone mentioned this novel is 'trash.' Yeah, 'this is trash' but Victorian trash. I can barely handle that sort of pulp culture thriller, over the top kind of novel today let alone one written over 100 years ago.
However, it only feels fair to breakdown why I disliked it so much. The first part of this novel, I actually loved. The set up of Jonathan Wild and Sir Rowland as the villains (different kinds of villains,) I really enjoyed. The action takes place in a storm and I loved the over-the-top description in the first 100 pages or so. Enter Part II and within 10 pages, it goes downhill and never gets better. The characters are so ridiculous, all of them, even Mr Wood who seemed like a sensible(ish) man in the first part. The plot is annoying. The female characters, especially Mrs Wood, evoked a special form of cringe. The thing is the title of the story is Jack Sheppard and not only was he the most annoying character of them all, but there was a huge piece of me that hoped that Jonathan Wild would just brain him and be done with this character. I have never rooted so much for a character's death before (and that's actually when I decided I should probably stop reading this book.) That being said, the overall sentiment was annoyance and not because I felt invested in the story or the characters.
I understand that this was written at the same time as Dickens' Oliver Twist. Read Dickens. Don't bother with this trash unless you have to study it (which I understand is more pleasurable than actually reading it. sigh.)
April 17, 2019
A melodramatic, but to my mind stirring and exciting book.
Harrison Ainsworth was once a best selling author, and his sensationalist writng was much despised by Victorian critics.
I really enjoyed this, even though the characters lack emotional depth by modern standards. The author changes some of the details of Jack Sheppard's short life as a robber and escapologist, but the seemingly incredible details of his escapes from prison are in fact, true.
Poor Jack; he had exceptional talents, and from his true quotes, he was had an uncompromisng sense of thieves' honour and working class self respect. He would only have received a short sentance today for the crime for which he was executed at twenty-one, partly due to the vindictive Jonathan Wild.
A gripping read, well worth trying.
Harrison Ainsworth was once a best selling author, and his sensationalist writng was much despised by Victorian critics.
I really enjoyed this, even though the characters lack emotional depth by modern standards. The author changes some of the details of Jack Sheppard's short life as a robber and escapologist, but the seemingly incredible details of his escapes from prison are in fact, true.
Poor Jack; he had exceptional talents, and from his true quotes, he was had an uncompromisng sense of thieves' honour and working class self respect. He would only have received a short sentance today for the crime for which he was executed at twenty-one, partly due to the vindictive Jonathan Wild.
A gripping read, well worth trying.
September 6, 2017
Used this book as a way to keep my mind moving during breaks at work. The fairly short chapters and general constant action made it very entertaining for that purpose and despite the archaic language in spots a fairly quick read.
This is an embellished cautionary tale meant to sway impressionable children away from lives of crime. In that regard, it comes across as weak propoganda. Sheppard was clearly a folk hero for many of the poor in London, like Robin Hood.
Reading this as an adult, it can be taken with a proper grain of salt and be simply an entertaining action packed true crime novel.
This is an embellished cautionary tale meant to sway impressionable children away from lives of crime. In that regard, it comes across as weak propoganda. Sheppard was clearly a folk hero for many of the poor in London, like Robin Hood.
Reading this as an adult, it can be taken with a proper grain of salt and be simply an entertaining action packed true crime novel.
July 8, 2019
I was watching a topical BBC programme a couple of months ago and there was a piece about William Harrison Ainsworth and his friendship with Dickens. He was quite the superstar novelist in his day and it's a shame that he has almost been forgotten. This is an example of what were termed Newgate Novels which often glamourised famous criminals. Given that most of the characters in this novel actually existed this might now be termed faction rather than fiction. Well worth a read and I want to explore this author more.
September 27, 2021
One of the worst novels I’ve ever read, but it’s Camp mama 🌈
April 5, 2025
His best book
Read
September 19, 2025this needs to be adapted as a big budget early 2000s earnest adventure movie
July 29, 2015
Set in the eighteenth century, Jack Sheppard is a retelling of the story of real-life criminal turned tragic anti-hero Jack Sheppard. A sensationalist melodrama, the novel follows the life of its eponymous anti-hero from infancy to his death by hanging at the age of twenty-two years old. It combines the sensationalism of Newgate novels and Victorian historical realism.
There are many aspects to enjoy in Ainsworth's novel.
Jack's life is marked by fate and determinism -social and environmental-; a theme underscored by the novel's structure in three epochs (Jack's infancy, teenage years and early twenties) which follow Jack's inexorable descent into criminality and towards the gallows. This, as well as the comparisons established between Jack and his fellow apprentice and virtuous counterpart Thames Darrell, marks the novel's appartenance to Victorian literature's tradition of social criticism. It also echoes back to Ancient Greek tragedy — the irrevocable downfall of the Sheppard family, after Mr Sheppard's initial transgression is reminiscent of that of Tantalus and the House of Atreus (after Tantalus's initial transgression — feeding his own son to the gods - the House of Atreus is hit with a malediction: the destiny of its descendants is fraught with murder, parricide, infanticide and incest. Similarly, after Mr. Sheppard's hanging, Mrs. Sheppard starts drinking, and meets Van Galgebrok who predicts Jack’s own hanging, which he read into the baby's mole "shaped like a coffin", and the "deep line just above the middle of [his] left thumb, meeting round about in the form of a noose".) Having expected a clichéd succession of action, horror, and melodrama, I was certainly not disappointed, but nevertheless pleasantly surprised to find these themes revisited and developped upon.
The novel's historical content - its descriptions of 18th-century London, such as that of the Old Mint or Bedlam are fascinating in their details (I would recommend glancing at pictural representations of the Old London Bridge, which is faithfully and impressively described in the first epoch of the novel).
Other "authentic" details such as the use of slang in dialogue, or the various occurences of gallows songs and ballads are, if not necessarily convincing, still interesting to study.
Jack Sheppard’s closeness to Oliver Twist also offers many parallels to explore. Both novels were published in Bentley’s Miscellany as serials at a very close interval, and both were illustrated by George Cruikshank (Those were unfortunately not present in my edition of the novel, and my only impression of them was the grainy reproductions I found in an article I read while preparing my dissertation). The two novels' immediate popularity with the general public and their dissimilar reception within literary circles offer an insight into the conflict between Victorian literary movements. The two novels also have a connection to Hogarth’s works, as they both draw inspiration from Industry and Idleness (1747), or A Rake’s Progress (1735): their plots are very similar to Hogarth’s prints in that they oppose virtuous boys to idle boys in a quest for one’s identity.
All in all, an enjoyable read for readers of Victorian literature, fast-paced, overly dramatic, and packed with mystery. The ending did feel slightly rushed, however, and the virtuous/criminal character oppositions, while more nuanced than in Oliver Twist, ended up making respectable Thames Darrell and Winifred Wood seem a bit too saintly, flavourless and predictable.
There are many aspects to enjoy in Ainsworth's novel.
Jack's life is marked by fate and determinism -social and environmental-; a theme underscored by the novel's structure in three epochs (Jack's infancy, teenage years and early twenties) which follow Jack's inexorable descent into criminality and towards the gallows. This, as well as the comparisons established between Jack and his fellow apprentice and virtuous counterpart Thames Darrell, marks the novel's appartenance to Victorian literature's tradition of social criticism. It also echoes back to Ancient Greek tragedy — the irrevocable downfall of the Sheppard family, after Mr Sheppard's initial transgression is reminiscent of that of Tantalus and the House of Atreus (after Tantalus's initial transgression — feeding his own son to the gods - the House of Atreus is hit with a malediction: the destiny of its descendants is fraught with murder, parricide, infanticide and incest. Similarly, after Mr. Sheppard's hanging, Mrs. Sheppard starts drinking, and meets Van Galgebrok who predicts Jack’s own hanging, which he read into the baby's mole "shaped like a coffin", and the "deep line just above the middle of [his] left thumb, meeting round about in the form of a noose".) Having expected a clichéd succession of action, horror, and melodrama, I was certainly not disappointed, but nevertheless pleasantly surprised to find these themes revisited and developped upon.
The novel's historical content - its descriptions of 18th-century London, such as that of the Old Mint or Bedlam are fascinating in their details (I would recommend glancing at pictural representations of the Old London Bridge, which is faithfully and impressively described in the first epoch of the novel).
Other "authentic" details such as the use of slang in dialogue, or the various occurences of gallows songs and ballads are, if not necessarily convincing, still interesting to study.
Jack Sheppard’s closeness to Oliver Twist also offers many parallels to explore. Both novels were published in Bentley’s Miscellany as serials at a very close interval, and both were illustrated by George Cruikshank (Those were unfortunately not present in my edition of the novel, and my only impression of them was the grainy reproductions I found in an article I read while preparing my dissertation). The two novels' immediate popularity with the general public and their dissimilar reception within literary circles offer an insight into the conflict between Victorian literary movements. The two novels also have a connection to Hogarth’s works, as they both draw inspiration from Industry and Idleness (1747), or A Rake’s Progress (1735): their plots are very similar to Hogarth’s prints in that they oppose virtuous boys to idle boys in a quest for one’s identity.
All in all, an enjoyable read for readers of Victorian literature, fast-paced, overly dramatic, and packed with mystery. The ending did feel slightly rushed, however, and the virtuous/criminal character oppositions, while more nuanced than in Oliver Twist, ended up making respectable Thames Darrell and Winifred Wood seem a bit too saintly, flavourless and predictable.
January 28, 2012
[These notes were made in 1984:]. This is a markedly less "historianly" novel than others of Ainsworth that I've read lately. To balance Jack's untimely end, Ainsworth puts in a purely fictional noble-born hero, Thames Darrell. But Jack, too, proves to be part of the same family, and while at one place in the novel - notably at the beginning - Ainsworth seems to be espousing the genetic theory of criminality (like father, like son), later on, he makes Jack into a very romantic hero indeed. Love for and remorse towards his mother; an unrequited passion with one hopeless kiss - all rather unlikely after the insistence in the beginning on Jack's common-ness in looks and manners, compared to similarly-nurtured Thames Darrell. As with Guy Fawkes, Ainsworth takes gruesome delight in details of torture and execution, and I have no doubt whatsoever that this book is the grandfather of many a penny dreadful, so exactly does it cater to the tastes of young boys. The various prison escapes are where Ainsworth's "historical" pen takes over, and we get a step-by-step account of Sheppard's last and most daring escape from Newgate, illustrated rather nicely by George Cruikshank. This is, of course, a "Newgate novel," full of thieves' slang, which I find mildly irritating, but Ainsworth nearly manages to have it both ways with Jack; nearly makes him a ruffian and a nobleman at the same time - he's hanged, but still dies in the arms of his rival-brother. As pure storytelling, it does very well.
September 28, 2012
Read a Newgate novel and it gives you exactly what it promises to deliver. This was a nice, fast read (barring the sometimes slightly 'misplaced' historical digressions) with plenty of action. Sure, the plot twists might feel a little cliché to a modern readership at times - but they are clichés that work. I didn't find them too disturbing, anyhow. If anything, they added to the entertainment value of the book.
I wouldn't say this is something you absolutely have to have read in life (and no, I'm not in the mood to go into the distinction between 'Literature with a Big L' and 'popular fiction undeserving of any capitals'), but it's a nice, engaging read, as I imagine it was when it was first serialised and it will still be in the future.
I wouldn't say this is something you absolutely have to have read in life (and no, I'm not in the mood to go into the distinction between 'Literature with a Big L' and 'popular fiction undeserving of any capitals'), but it's a nice, engaging read, as I imagine it was when it was first serialised and it will still be in the future.
September 30, 2012
As I had to read this book for a course on Victorian Literature, I was really surprised to find it readable (as opposed to my former encounters with Victorian Literature...). Initially I had some trouble following who was who, who was with whom and what was actually happening, but once I sort of got that, the story unfolded very nicely. I can see why this was popular fiction, for it's action-packed, swiftly written and exciting. Parts of the plot were not exactly credible (Thames and Jack being related, for example) and the descriptions of the gaols were rather tedious, but most of the time I was really wrapped up in the story and its protagonist.
May 19, 2014
A slow start that accelerates into much Georgian Era intrigue, melodrama, violence & derring do. Fascinating to see the London Secofic locations described as they were in the early 1700s (from the point of view if an early 1800s writer) - the great open fields north of Oxford Street, the dense dark criminal haven of south London's "The Mint".
Currently reading
August 3, 2008The author is actually named William Harrison Ainsworth. This is one of the best-selling novels of the early 19th c., often cited as the most famous of the genre of sensational crime fiction known as the Newgate novel.
May 2, 2012
More lurid than I was expecting. The pace is quick, but sometimes borders on frantic. The characters are shallow, at least from a modern perspective, but it remains an entertaining read.
October 3, 2012
Very dramatic, sensational and above all, unlikely. But entertaining at times, if you overlook the gore and grime of all the bloody murders and such...
October 3, 2014
all Ainsworth's books are very funny and clever, especially for the time when they were written. If you see through the romance they are a delight, I think I have the entire set of works.
July 11, 2015
Ainsworth's best.
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