THE NEWGATE NOVELS and DRAMA of TIIE 1830S ADRIAN PHILLIPS Phd the UNIVERSITY of YORK JULY 2001
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THE NEWGATE NOVELS AND DRAMA OF TIIE 1830s ADRIAN PHILLIPS PhD THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE JULY 2001 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements IV Abstract `' Note on the 'Texts VI INTRODUCTION I CHAPTER I Ruiwer's Newgate Novels and the Reformatory Spirit 23 i Respectability, Truth, and the Workings of Justice: Paul Clifford and Caleb Williams 30 ii Natural Law versus Human Law: Eugene Aram and Utilitarianism 60 iii Working-Class Defiance, Victorian Gentility, and Regency Dandyism: Paul Clifford and Pelham 74 iv Corruption or Correction: Romantic Love and the Shaping of Self 93 CHAPTER 2 Thieves and Thief-Takers: the Newgate Novel, Literary Self-Consciousness, and the Field of Cultural Production 99 i The Newgate Novels and Literary Controversy 104 ii Pelham, the 1820s, and the Privileged Control of Culture 1>; iii hie Criminal as Author: Paul Clifford, Rookw'ood, and the Changing Literary Order I39 iv faul Clifford and the Literary Critic 155 v 'l lie Newgate Novelists and a very Personal Struggle 160 CHAPTER 3 Theatre, Politics, and the Jack Sheppard Adaptations 185 1 The 'Jack Sheppard' Controversy 188 II ii Deceptions and Disguises: Radical Rhetoric and Early 19th-Century 71ieatrc 197 iii Buckstone's'Jack Sheppard' and Other Dramatic Adaptations 221 CONCLUSION 262 BIBLIOGRAPHY 274 A_(-KNOWLE GEN N'I S I would like to thank Dr Jane Moody for her invaluable comments upon two of the chapters in this thesis, and especially her expert advice on 19th-century theatre research. I am most grateful to Rebecca Edwards for her thorough and very helpful reading of the text at short notice. I also wish to acknowledge the assistance of the staff at the University of York Library and the British Library, and the Arts and humanities Research Board for the studentship award which funded this study. Many thanks to my friends, family and girlfriend for supporting me, and, most importantly, providing frequent and welcome distractions. Finally. I should like to express nry immense gratitude to Dr Greg Dart for agreeing to supervise me as his first doctoral student, for sharing his deep knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, the period, and for offering endless guidance and encouragement over the course of the last few years. IN AB TRACT This study explores the issues raised by the Newgate novels of the 1830s, and the dramatic adaptations which stemmed from the most notorious of these, Jack Sheppard. It suggests that they contained a unique mixture of political, social and cultural registers, which, at this particular historical moment, provoked a controversy unrivalled in 19th-century literary history. Chapter- I focuses upon the novels of Edward Bulwer, the first of the Newgate novelists. It examines his hooks as novels of ideas whose demands fir radical social and legal reform seemed threatening at a time of profound instability. It also, however, notes the ambiguous nature of these texts which reflected deep uncertainty within the author himself about the contemporary transition from the Romantic to the Victorian. Chapter 2 considers the Newgate novels as acts of literary radicalism. It argues that they were simultaneously catalysts for, and products of, changes taking place within the field of cultural production. For these writers, the criminal became a figure for self-identification, symbolic both of their own positions as unestablished authors striving to achieve recognition, and of the new role of the professional author catering for a vastly expanded readership. Chapter 3 concentrates upon the theatrical versions of Jack Sheppard, and the different ways in which the tale became politicised through Its transferral fi-om the novel to the stage. Reaching a more solidly lower-class audience. and frequently beyond the eye of the censor, the plays were radical not because they presented a sophisticated political philosophy, but because of the immediacy of their form, and their susceptibility to varied and unpredictable interpretations both from spectators and managers. V NOTE ON THE_"I'LXTS The references to the Newgate novels in this thesis are all to first editions, with the exception of Rookwood, where I have used a second edition. The success of Roolol, ood meant that five editions were published within three years. The popularity of the flash songs in the novel led Ainsworth to increase their number from twenty-three to flirty in the fourth edition of' 1837. However, there were no major changes in the second edition. Where I refer to later prefaces of Ainsworth's novels, I use The Original Illustrated Edition of his works published by Routledge in the 1890s. Similarly, where I refer to the prefaces of later editions of Bulwer's novels, I use The New Knebworth Edition of his works which contains all the prefaces to these subsequent editions- I lowever, neither these editions, nor the recent collection of Newgate novels edited by Juliet John, use first editions in reproducing the main body ofthe texts. In referring to J. B. Buckstone's dramatic adaptation of Jack Sheppcirel. I use the text printed in Webster's Acting National Drama, probably in 1840, which claimed to be taken frone the original prompter's copy at the Theatre Royal Adelphi. References to all other versions are taken from the original manuscripts submitted to the Lord Chamberlain and held in the Manuscript Students' Room of the British Library. vi INTRODUCTION The tern 'Newgate', fastened to novels of the 1830s and 1840s which featured criminals prominently among their characters, referred at its most basic level to the formidable prison in London which survived despite being razed to the ground during the Gordon Riots in 1780.1 More specifically, it echoed the immensely popular collection of criminal biographies entitled the Neugate Calendar: or, i/n' Malefactors' Bloody Register, first published in 1773.2 In fact, the books which became embroiled in the considerably heated Newgate controversy bore only a passing resemblance to The Newgate Calendar, which, while titillating its readers with the lives of notorious criminals, was generally severe in condemning its subjects. Although the Newgate novelists often used genuine criminals in their tales, frequently drawing information fi-orn The Newgate Calendar, a lack of pronounced moral stricture was one of the many charges levelled against them. Furthermore, the books grouped within by Edward Bulwer, William Harrison this 'school' - primarily consisting of works Charles in 3 For Ainsworth, and Dickens - varied considerably their aims and methods. Dickens focused upon the dramatic events surrounding the destruction of Newgate in Barruabv Rudge (184 I ). The prison had also been damaged by fire on several other occasions. See Etv-v I ictoriati England I S'3O-I,SOS, ed. by G. M. Young, 2 voll (London: Oxfbrd University Press. 1951), 1,198. 2 For a discussion of the origins of The Neugate Calendar, see Keith Hollingsworth, The Neugate Novel, 1830-1847: Huhver, Amswort/i, Dickens cntd Thackerav (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963), p. 6.1iollingsworth notes that dieing the 1830s, The Newgale Calejidar usually meant the collection by two attoreys, Andrew Knapp and William Baldwin, which appeared in 1809 and 1810. 3 Although by the end of bis career his füll name was Edward George Earl Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, the first of the Newgate novelists was usually known as Edward 13ulwer during the years with which this study is predominantly concerned. He received a baronetcy in 1838, and inherited Knebwoitli, the ancestral home, in 1843, 7 contemporaries, the 'Newgate' label was one of derogation, and in the broadest sense the controversy was a struggle between those attempting to attach the tag and those 4 attempting to avoid it. However, to view it in such an arbitrary way is to miss the complex inix of issues involved. The battle was fought upon grounds of politics, law, morality, class, literary theory, and personality, and the term 'Newgate' encompasses them all. As Juliet John has observed, the reception of' these books was 'narked by extreme moral, aesthetic and ideological confusion'. 5 It can be difficult for the modern reader to widerstand the depth of hostility which the Newgate novels attracted. Novels of the 18th century which had taker) crime for their subject, like Daniel Defoe's Aloft Flanders (1722 ), f lenry Fielding's Jonatfirnt Wild (1743) and William Godwin's Caleb Willwins (1794), had been accorded a mild reception by comparison. This must be accounted for by changes both in the circumstances of the period in which the Newgate novels appeared, and in the declarations that the authors were making for their texts. The rise of evangelical and respectable consensus among the middle classes brought a fresh set of sensibilities made especially sensitive by a determination to retain and consolidate their new social and political influence. Developments in the publishing trade and the -rowth of literacy meant that the tales could reach a considerably broader and less predictable public. And the Newgate novels, especially those of ßulwer, 'made serious claims for the novel as the high art genre' in a way that the earlier versions did not. Deioe's novel, for example, packaged itselfas'(ironic) spiritual autobiography. '6 Caleb Williams could be regarded as political or philosophical (fictional) autobiography. By contrast, 13ulwer when he rather pompously hyphenated the patronymic. 4 The term was first used in a deeply critical review of Bulwer's works following the publication of Paul Clifford in 1830. See 'Mr Edward Lytton Bulwer's Novels, and Remarks on Novel-Writing', Fraser's laga_i; re, I (June 1830), 509-32 (p. 530). s ,t Cult Crim intals: The Neia'gale Noi, e/s 1830-1847, ed. by Juliet John, 7 vols (London: Routledge, 1998), 1, p. v. 6 Ibid., 1, p.