A “DARLING OF THE MOB”: THE ANTIDISCIPLINARITY OF THE JACK SHEPPARD TEXTS
2013; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 41; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1017/s1060150313000041
ISSN1470-1553
Autores Tópico(s)Crime, Deviance, and Social Control
ResumoThe story of Jack Sheppard , a jailbreaker hanged for theft in 1724, inspired William Harrison Ainsworth in 1839 to write a historical romance chronicling and fictionalizing Sheppard's exploits. Though first published in a middle-class magazine, Ainsworth's serialization of Sheppard's career in Jack Sheppard: A Romance (1839–1840) subsequently caused a sensation among lower-class audiences for whom the novel was not originally intended. The wide dissemination of Sheppard's story among the lower classes in ballads, songs, cheap plagiarisms, and theatrical performances created a moral panic for contemporary middle-class critics who were concerned with the implications of such material in lower-class culture. Thus, despite the novel's initial reception in the middle-class press as another pleasant and harmless romance, it soon became reviled as a source of inspiration for would-be Jack Sheppards everywhere.
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