ESSAYS ON 19TH CENTURY LITERATURE & THE GOTHIC
A new post for the Wordsworth Editions blog In the United States, one of the first – if not the first – critics to discover the talented new British author Charles Dickens was Edgar Allan Poe. Poe reviewed Dickens’ first book, Sketches by ‘Boz’ in the June 1836 number of the Southern Literary Messenger, the year… Continue reading When Poe Met Dickens
A new post for the Wordsworth Editions blog Few stories ignite the British sense of national pride and identity quite as much as those when a small but valiant force hold their ground against a much bigger enemy. This is what the Battle of Britain was all about, the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, and probably most… Continue reading ‘We Happy Few’: Agincourt, History, and National Myth
The conclusion of a new blog for Wordsworth Editions Part Two: Boston, 1924 Growing increasingly bitter in his grief, Houdini never tired of exposing mediums, even while touring at the height of his fame. As he told a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, ‘It takes a flimflammer to catch a flimflammer.’ So it was… Continue reading Houdini and Doyle (Part 2)
A new piece for the Wordsworth Editions Blog... Part One: Atlantic City, 1922 Some of you may recall a few years back a TV series entitled Houdini and Doyle. Created by David Hoselton (previously a staff writer on House) and David Titcher (the creator of The Librarian fantasy franchise), the show used the real friendship… Continue reading Houdini and Doyle: A Modern Ghost Story (Part 1)
If anyone was wondering, this is what I'm currently writing. This project grew out of a panel I spoke on at The Bradford Literature Festival in 2019... THE OPIUM EATERS: High Literature and the Art of Addiction (Morton Books) When the brilliant Oxford drop-out and freelance journalist Thomas De Quincey published his seminal article ‘Confessions of… Continue reading The Opium Eaters – A Work in Progress
Recommended reading for the self isolating... As soon as the epic serial, The Tower of London concluded at the end of 1840, its author, the flamboyant ‘Lancashire Novelist’ William Harrison Ainsworth, threw an enormous celebratory party and promptly began the next serial, Old St. Paul’s, A Tale of the Plague and the Fire, the first… Continue reading Old St. Paul’s: A Tale of the Plague and the Fire
As a companion post to 'The Victorian Titanic', here are the two commemorative poems by Francis Hastings Doyle and Rudyard Kipling celebrating the heroes of the Birkenhead, lost off Danger point, February 26, 1852... ‘The Loss of the Birkenhead’ by Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, 2nd Baronet, Professor of Poetry, Oxford (Supposed to be told by… Continue reading The Birkenhead Poems
On the 168th anniversary of the wreck of Her Majesty's Troopship Birkenhead, which I once wrote a novel about and am now planning a history of, here's the true story... In the winter 1851, Her Majesty’s Troopship Birkenhead laid at anchor at Portsmouth, awaiting orders. A world away, the British Empire was fighting its third… Continue reading The Victorian Titanic: The Last Voyage of the HMS Birkenhead
It's been a long time coming, but my new biography of the 'Lancashire Novelist' William Harrison Ainsworth, The Author Who Outsold Dickens is published in hardback today from Pen & Sword Books. Here's the Prologue... On the evening of Thursday, 15 September 1881, the man they called the ‘Lancashire Novelist’ attended a mayoral banquet in his… Continue reading Man of La Manchester
New post for the Wordsworth Blog The sums involved in printer George Woodfall’s chancery suit against Henry Mayhew that killed off London Labour and the London Poor mid-flow were trivial. He made several attempts to arrive at a settlement, but Mayhew ignored him. This was a common pattern of behaviour in Mayhew’s life, going back… Continue reading London Labour and the London Poor
Ainsworth & Friends 