Jack Sheppard by William Harrison Ainsworth

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.