This historical novel is one of Dickens’ lesser known works, but it has the memorable characters and great sense of time and place that are found in more famous works. Barnaby Rudge is a simple soul who enjoys a carefree life with his mother and his raven Grip. Then he becomes involved in the Gordon Riots, an anti-Catholic demonstration that descends into violence and looting, and finds his life in danger.

This is a very dark book with a number of different villains who sow mayhem and trouble among their families and acquaintances. The historical detail is fascinating and Dickens brings the riots to life with vivid descriptions of their impact on ordinary people caught up in the violence, and the subsequent actions to end the riots and punish the perpetrators. Alongside the historical story runs a more familiar one of family secrets and betrayal and this is engaging and intriguing.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and feel it should probably be more widely read.

Papists. Riots. Fires. Prison-breaking. Murders (various). Abduction. Arrest. Decades-old mysteries. Drunks. Idiots. A locksmith's daughter. An eccentric hangman. Ghosts. Ruins. A band of disaffected, violent, and pseudo-medievalist apprentices. Escape through the wine vaults. Gallantry. A one-armed man. Lost. Fled. Found. Storms. Taverns. Swordfights. Funereal bells. Dark secrets. Disguises. True love. Schemes. Destinies.

And an immortal talking raven.

Is this the least-read Dickens novel? According to Goodreads, yes. Only 121 reviews on this one, with Martin Chuzzlewit a close second at 141. The reason? Lack of cinematic exposure hasn’t helped. Disney can’t turn an historical narrative about the Gordon Riots of 1780 into a feel-good schmaltz-fest, especially when the protagonist has the sinister talking raven that inspired Poe’s poem about a raven (I forget what it was called) as a best mate. A silent adaptation was made in 1915 (Crikey! Our prison is burning down!) followed by a BBC production in 1960 which isn’t a hot topic on those I-Love-the-60s clips shows. But I digress. It is what I do well. I am not here to write fluent, entertaining reviews with educational content. Or to take paragraph breaks. Barnaby Rudge was Dickens’s attempt to branch out as a “serious” novelist after the picaresque modes he’d written in prior (although his previous books contained hard-hitting content)—to do this, he chose to imitate Sir Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian. So what we have here is an awkward mash-up of the romantic Scott plots, detailed historical re-enactments, and the usual irrepressible Dickens comic mischief. This mix makes for an uncertain novel—the characters don’t impose themselves on your cerebrum as in his prior books (except perhaps Barnaby or Lord Gordon) and the three central plots—the romance, the riot and the ghost story—don’t sit comfortably. So this would seem to be for the most patient Dickens devotees. When it works it soars: the riot scenes (esp. the prison break) are riveting and Lord George’s hopeless cronies fall victim to a satirical evisceration. Barnaby almost succeeds as the moral or emotional crux of the novel but as an “idiot” he isn’t that vividly rendered. The raven steals the show with its chant: “I’m a devil I’m a devil I’m devil! No popery no popery!”