Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty

by Charles Dickens

Barnaby Rudge, published by Charles Dickens in weekly parts in 1841, was his first historical novel. It opens in 1775 at the Maypole inn outside London with the retelling of an unsolved murder committed twenty-two years before, and it gathers a cast that includes the simple-minded Barnaby and his raven Grip, his anxious mother, the locksmith Gabriel Varden and his apprentice Simon Tappertit, the Catholic Haredale family and the rakish Sir John Chester. Five years later all are caught up in the Gordon Riots of 1780, when anti-Catholic mobs burned houses and chapels and stormed Newgate prison. Dickens's crowd scenes are the heart of the book, and the raven was drawn from his own pet. The full text is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, and the first chapter is free.