Barnaby Rudge

This historical novel is indeed one of Dickens’ lesser known works. However, it is filled with memorable characters and a great sense of time and place, just like those found in his more famous works.

Barnaby Rudge, a simple soul, leads a carefree life with his mother and his raven Grip. But then, he gets involved in the Gordon Riots, an anti-Catholic demonstration that turns into violence and looting, putting his life in danger.

This is a very dark book, featuring a number of different villains who cause mayhem and trouble among their families and acquaintances. The historical detail is fascinating, and Dickens vividly brings the riots to life by describing their impact on ordinary people caught up in the violence, as well as the subsequent actions to end the riots and punish the perpetrators.

Alongside the historical story, there is a more familiar one of family secrets and betrayal, which is both engaging and intriguing. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel and believe it should probably be more widely read.

**Sins of the Fathers...**

In 1775, a group of elderly men gather in the Maypole, an ancient inn owned by John Willett. They tell a stranger about a murder that occurred nearby years ago. Mr Harefield, the owner of a large house in the neighbourhood, was killed during an apparent robbery. Later, another body was found, identified as his servant, also murdered. The servant's son, Barnaby Rudge, was born an idiot, presumably due to the shock his widow suffered during pregnancy. Now, Barnaby is a happy young man. He earns a little money by running messages and spends the rest of his time running wild in the countryside, delighting in the natural world he loves. However, Barnaby is gullible and easily influenced, which will one day lead him into serious trouble.

Skip forward five years to 1780, and trouble is abroad in the streets of London. Lord George Gordon is leading protests against an act that will remove some legal restrictions on Catholics. Gordon, a weak man, is surrounded by unscrupulous men using him for their own ends. Some of his followers are truly religious, albeit bigoted, but honourable in their own way. However, many others are the dregs of the London streets - drunks, thieves, the violent, and the cruel. There are also the desperate - those with no hope, whose argument with the government has nothing to do with religious questions. Together, these men and women form the mob, wild, destructive, and terrifying. Among them and affected by them are the characters we met in the Maypole, including young Barnaby Rudge.
Structurally, this novel is a bit of a mess. The two halves are excellent in their own right, but the sudden time shift and change of central characters and tone break the flow and lose the emotional involvement built up in the first section. Barnaby Rudge is an unsatisfactory hero as an idiot with no hope of improvement. There is no romance for him, nor does he get to be heroic. However, even a weaker Dickens novel is enjoyable, and this is no exception. My four-star rating is in comparison to other Dickens novels - compared to most books, this is still far superior.
If I were Dickens, I would have called it "Dolly Varden" - she pulls the two strands together more than most other characters. Daughter of locksmith Gabriel, Dolly is the major love interest of Joe Willett, the son of the Maypole's owner. Young, flirtatious, and silly, Dolly plays hard to get at the wrong moment, and Joe enlists in the army and goes off to fight the American colonists. Five years later, Dolly is still single, secretly hoping Joe will return. But her beauty makes her a target for other men, including two who play major roles in the second half of the book. Dickens often shows how vulnerable women are to unscrupulous men, and with Dolly, he takes it a step further. There is a particular scene where she is the victim of what can only be described as a sexual assault, and later, in the riots, Dickens doesn't hold back from showing how rape is an aspect of social breakdown. While it's all done through hints and suggestions, mild to our modern eyes, it must have been shocking to the original readership. Dolly is an intriguing Dickens heroine - unlike many of his weak damsels, she's fun, revels in her beauty and its effect on men, while still being kind-hearted and true. He allows her to grow and mature in those five years, which is not always the case with his heroines, and she's a great mix of vulnerability and strength of character.
The first half is typical Dickens fare - various eccentric characters, young lovers, and a mystery in the past, similar to "Oliver Twist" or "Martin Chuzzlewit". The second half is more reminiscent of the later and better "A Tale of Two Cities". The mob scenes are just as horrifying, but the characters aren't as memorably drawn as Sidney Carton or Madame Defarge. More importantly, it seems as if Dickens is less sure of where his sympathies lie. The Gordon rioters are fighting to keep anti-Catholic laws in place, and clearly, Dickens thinks this is abhorrent. But that means he almost comes across as pro-Establishment, as the Establishment wants to do away with those laws. So, while in "A Tale of Two Cities" he's against the mob but understanding of the poverty and inequality that drive them, here he gets a bit muddled - he wants to suggest it's all because they're poor and uneducated but also has to show they're religious fanatics, fighting not to better themselves but to keep others down. However, I thoroughly enjoyed Dennis the hangman, who is not only a typically Dickensian villain but also based on a real-life hangman of the time, giving Dickens an opportunity to show the gruesome barbarity of this form of social control.
As always with Dickens, there are too many aspects to cover in a review without it becoming as long as one of his novels. Overall, this is a novel where the individual parts may not come together as well as in his greatest works, but it's still well worth reading for the riots and for the interest of seeing Dickens experiment with the historical novel. I read the Oxford World's Classics version - my first experience of a Dickens novel in their edition - and thoroughly enjoyed the informative introduction and especially the notes, which I found extremely helpful as this is an episode of history I knew little about. The book is also generously illustrated with the original illustrations. I say it every time, but I'm so glad I live in a world that once had Dickens in it!

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Oxford World's Classics.

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Please provide the article that needs to be rewritten and expanded so that I can help you.

This was Dickens' first historical novel, preceding "A Tale of Two Cities", and it is an outstandingly good read.

Dickens, of course, is a master storyteller, and this work is exquisitely crafted, with multiple layers and plots intricately woven together. It begins slowly, but upon reflection, one realizes that this is by necessity. The groundwork is essential for the upcoming plot; he needs to introduce the characters, establish their positions, and lay the foundation for their interactions with each other and the historical events he will depict: the "Gordon Riots" of London in 1780.

Dickens' sense of character, his ability to clearly define a character in terms of attitude and even speech patterns, is renowned, and it does not disappoint here. Although "Barnaby Rudge" gives his name to the book, he is not the lead but rather one of several equally important characters in the story, and all are fully developed (except, perhaps, Elizabeth Haredale), though some more than others.

The story is divided into two interconnected but sometimes separate "halves" or parts: that of the ill-fated loves and their families, and that of the underclass of London, both genteel and common, who will all be involved in fomenting the riots. Among them, Hugh and Sir Chester stand out as fantastically portrayed characters. The detail and the clear vision Dickens presents of them both are remarkable. The same goes for "Dennis the Hangman" and Gashford - all distinct characters with their own vices and voices.

The riots, in particular, are fantastically well-described, almost horrifically so. Despite writing for a nineteenth-century audience, he does not hold back, and some of the details of the horrors inflicted by the mob (usually on themselves in their frenzy, it must be said) are truly appalling and do much to evoke the scene of horror he is attempting to depict. To mention that we have two "would-be rapists" clearly presented as such tells a great deal, and there is a genuine fear on more than one occasion that he is going to come dangerously close to describing such a thing - certainly the threat is very real.

The heroes are heroic and dashing, and the villains are drawn so well as to be believable, not caricatures in the least (unlike Fagin in "Oliver Twist", for example, who is close to a caricature). Hugh is a truly terrible, charismatic beast.

This is a very good read that I highly recommend.

Oh, and Grip, the raven, is simply fantastic. It is interesting that he was very possibly the inspiration for Poe's poem.

"Barnaby Rudge" has often been condemned as "the least loved and the least read" of Dickens’ novels. However, his classic wit, irony, and sharp eye for the absurd always shine through in his writing. This novel is no exception, with an abundance of these qualities. The scenes in the second half, set during the Gordon Riots, are especially captivating. There are also several classic Dickensian characters to enjoy.

The novel was serialized in 1841 and is the first of Dickens’ two historical novels (the other being "A Tale of Two Cities"). It was written in conscious imitation of Sir Walter Scott’s historical romances, which Dickens greatly admired. Dickens follows Scott in mixing styles, genres, and plots, and combines realism with the conventions of melodrama and romance.

Set during the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780, which were long forgotten by Dickens’ time but still fresh in the public’s mind, this choice was not as strange as it might seem. The riots were not only the largest, deadliest, and most prolonged urban riots in British history but also occurred only two generations before, making them still vivid in the minds of his readers.

Dickens may have sympathized with the working-class poor, but he had an ingrained horror of political violence. He clearly had no sympathy for the Protestant anti-Catholic rioters, whom he portrayed as a mindless mob led by opportunist upper-class leaders in a movement that was part attempted coup d'état, part popular uprising, and which became a religious pogrom. His breathtaking riot scenes reflect his great fear of the “mob,” a fear shared by his readers.

Another unusual and perhaps risky feature of the book is Dickens’ decision to make Barnaby Rudge, a young man with a mental handicap since birth, his central character. Portrayed as a somewhat caricatured fool and idiot who wanders around with his pet raven, Grip, Barnaby is a gift of a character to an absurdist like Dickens. The reader may well find themselves laughing out loud at Grip’s inappropriate contributions. Grip was also the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem, "The Raven." Poe admired Dickens and paid tribute to Grip in a review of "Barnaby Rudge" that he wrote for a magazine, saying that a raven should have served “a more symbolic prophetic purpose.”

The novel has Gothic and melodramatic elements but also plenty of typical Dickensian comic interludes. Some of the funniest scenes are centered on Miggs, the maid in the household of Gabriel Varden, the honest locksmith to whom Simon Tappertit, a leading agitator in the riots, is apprenticed. These scenes invariably involve Miggs in a comical alliance with Martha Varden against her husband, as both the servant and the wife are ardent supporters of the Protestant cause.

Although Dickens does not sympathize with the cause of the rioters, he provides a sympathetic portrayal of the way in which poor, frustrated, ill-educated, or illiterate individuals are drawn into participating in the disturbances. The novel is also marked by several passages highly critical of the English ruling class. One of the most captivating aspects of Dickens' prose is undoubtedly his descriptive passages, which usually paint a vivid, often dark and gloomy portrait of London. In this sense, "Barnaby Rudge" is a very dark and nightly novel.

There is no doubt that the most powerful scenes are those depicting the riots. But, as usual, Dickens goes beyond. The story opens with a tale of a double murder related around the fire in a cozy pub to a mysterious stranger - the perfect Gothic setting! Throughout the book, this murder and its repercussions seem to haunt certain characters. Real or imagined ghostly figures appear throughout and play on the conscience and secrecy of those involved. The idea of guilt and conscience is thus examined, and the experience of men laboring under suspicion, whether real or imagined, deserved or not, is cleverly contrasted.

There are some interesting characters throughout, and their morality and behavior are often affected by their surroundings and upbringing. However, there are also instances when certain characters react in opposition to their familial background. The question of personal conscience or morality in contrast with inherited values and expectations is quite gripping.

As in many other Dickens novels, rural or country life is portrayed as an aspirational, wholesome idyll, in contrast with the chaos of a city such as London. Barnaby and his mother seek refuge and anonymity in quiet country life. Animal companions are also interesting. Barnaby has his cantankerous and characterful Raven, Grip, at his side throughout, and Grip is often portrayed as keenly insightful.

Perhaps some of the most powerful aspects of this book are those that deal with people’s motivations for “good” or “bad” behavior. Dickens does well to highlight the prejudice behind the riots and question any “true” religious motivations. The discussion of the motivations for and the behavior of the rioters is unfortunately still relevant to much of what is happening in the world today when ignorance and intolerance prevail. Personal responsibility for moral behavior is also a prevalent theme.

Although it might not be Dickens' best achievement, perhaps due to its strange structure with a sharp break in the narrative that occurs when the story moves abruptly forward five years in chapter 34 and the lives of characters begin to intertwine with the events of the Gordon riots, "Barnaby Rudge" is still a brilliant read - very atmospheric, with some great Dickensian characters. Barnaby and Grip were a delightful duo. The portrayal of the riots was immersive, making the heart race and creating disgust for such horrific and hypocritical behavior. In true Dickens style, it all works out in the end, but perhaps there is a more sober ending for some than others. His novels are nonetheless worthwhile and thought-provoking reads and, sadly, still relevant in our times.

Wow! This is truly a new favorite!

I was completely captivated by the historical aspect of this story. It had a certain charm that reminded me of Tale Of Two Cities, yet it maintained its own unique identity. The evil characters were portrayed with such vividness and depth. They were so malevolent, yet the author's writing made them seem almost real. There were several creepy scenes that sent shivers down my spine and really made me feel a range of emotions.

However, despite the presence of these darker elements, the entire story was incredibly engaging and a joy to read. I have always admired Dickens for his ability to write so many diverse novels, each with its own distinct flavor. I am truly excited to complete his works this year and discover more of his literary masterpieces.

Review of Barnaby Rudge; Read again (2nd time) Jan 2012

It has been a decade since I last delved into this book. Either I have evolved into a more perceptive reader during this time, or the book has improved. Which is more probable? Nevertheless, as always, I am nearly speechless with wonder... but of course only nearly, else this review would end here.

If you know me (or my other Dickens reviews), you may already have an inkling of my unashamed fondness for Mr. Charles Dickens. I have never found him to disappoint, fail to amuse, or fail to touch me; he always transforms me in some profound manner.

A few years ago, I heard a man whom I greatly respect and trust in terms of learning and reading compare two books and suggest that the one that was completely marked up and filled with 3M sticky flags must be more powerful and important than the other that was clearly not as well-used. It so happened that this was true for those two particular books, and at the time, I thought that was a valid and plausible statement. However, as I have recently been revisiting some of the less-read or acclaimed Dickens' books, I have discovered that I now disagree with that statement in a general sense - I find that it simply doesn't always hold true.

Of course, there are instances when that statement is quite accurate. I have numerous books that are marked from cover to cover, with something on nearly every page, and the bindings expanded by my countless sticky tabs. Those books are undeniably great.

But Dickens is a different kind of great. And I am going to speak of him now as if he is still among us, because he is and he deserves to be regarded in the present tense. A few of the Dickens books in my collection are extensively marked up, in the rare instance that he "tells." But in the vast majority, I believe his genius lies in his ability to "show." He creates an atmosphere so vivid for me that I am completely immersed and submerged into his world and his stories. I feel as if I live there, know the people, love them, hate them, fear them, fall in love with them - all of it. I wonder, does he know he can do that? Does he know he is a master hypnotist?

I may or may not ever visit London in person, but I've been there! Many times has my friend and guide Mr. Dickens taken me there and introduced me to his remarkable friends and relations. He and they have changed my life and expanded my heart.

Barnaby Rudge is one of Dickens' earliest novels. In my edition, I am informed that he had the idea for it just after completing Sketches by Boz, but the idea was put aside, and he didn't complete it until after finishing Pickwick, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and The Old Curiosity Shop. He finished Barnaby in his 29th year. May I borrow a word from him? Prodigious!

It may be true that in this book, there are no characters quite as comparable to some like Mr. Peggotty, Captain Cuttle, Jerry Cruncher, Joe, or Mr. George, or... perhaps he hadn't quite reached his peak in character creation at this point (although I'll have to think hard about that statement and perhaps read Curiosity again before I can quantify it). Nevertheless, the overall feel and tone of the book are pure Dickens, pure genius, pure light. Dickens has a way of presenting difficult things without damaging my soul, but rather, motivates me to change the world in positive ways after glimpsing injustice, cruelty, and despair. I literally feel my heart change when I read his books, despite Sir John Chester's views on that organ.

It's true, at least for me, that Barnaby doesn't stand on an equal footing with Bleak House, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, or Little Dorrit, but it is surely the forerunner, and they stand on Barnaby's shoulders. All in all, it is a phenomenon in its own right and a truly beautiful book.

One more interesting aspect of this book is that it is Dickens' only other historical fiction book. This historical incident, the Gordon Riots, seemed to have been enacted just to be written about by him.

There are a couple of passages I want to share.

-“To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an air of mystery. Is to invest it with secret charm, and power of attraction which to the crowd is irresistible. False priests, false prophets, false doctors, false patriots, false prodigies of every kind, veiling their proceedings in mystery, have always addressed themselves at an immense advantage to the popular credulity, and have been, perhaps, more indebted to that resource in gaining and keeping for a time the upper hand of Truth & Common Sense, than to any half-dozen items in the whole catalogue of imposture. Curiosity is, and has been from the creation of the world, a master-passion. To awaken in, to gratify it by slight degrees, and yet leave something always in suspense, is to establish the surest hold that can be had, in wrong, on the unthinking portion of mankind.” (Chapter XXXVII, p. 286)

Tell me if that is not still completely true and credible (and used)!

-“Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means. Those that cannot, are bad; and may be counted so at once, and left alone.” (Mr. Haredale; Chapter LXXIX, p. 610)

--

I have one question and two more observations: What was the origin of the animosity between Haredale and Chester the Elder? Did I miss that somewhere?

1 - I began this book via Audible Audio, narrated by Sean Barrett, a NAXOS production. I just have to say he was brilliant, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to take that route. I just couldn't wait to finish it that way; it's slower for me than reading, plus I don't like to walk around with something plugged into me all the time.

2 - This edition, circa 1941 by Heritage Press, is GORGEOUS!! The pictures are magnificent!

Dickens's 'other' historical novel is centered around the 'no Popery' riots in the 18th century. It not only includes a romance but also an unsolved murder from the past. However, I found this work nowhere near remotely close to the genius of A Tale of Two Cities. My current (lack of) general knowledge around the 'no Popery' issues of the past didn't help my understanding either. I would rate it 5 out of 12.

2009 read

Expanded version:

Dickens's 'other' historical novel takes us back to the 18th century, specifically centering around the tumultuous 'no Popery' riots. This complex narrative weaves in a captivating romance and an intriguing unsolved murder from the bygone era. However, in my opinion, it falls far short of the sheer genius that is A Tale of Two Cities. My limited general knowledge regarding the 'no Popery' issues of the past also hindered my full appreciation of the story. Overall, I would give this novel a rating of 5 out of 12.

2009 read