Recommendations
Books Like Barnaby Rudge
Best books to read after Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens's first historical novel (1841) renders the Gordon Riots of 1780 with extraordinary imaginative power — the burning of Newgate Prison, the manipulation of a crowd by cynical politicians, and the figure of simple-minded Barnaby at the center of violence he cannot understand. These recommendations extend the experience through Dickens's other novels, through other historical fiction of the Victorian period, and through Edgar Allan Poe, who acknowledged Grip the raven as his direct inspiration.
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A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
Dickens's later and more structurally accomplished historical novel, set during the French Revolution — if Barnaby Rudge feels somewhat diffuse, A Tale of Two Cities shows what Dickens could achieve when he had fully mastered the historical novel form; the crowd violence of the Terror recalls the Gordon Riots with greater structural confidence.
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The Raven
by Edgar Allan Poe
Poe explicitly acknowledged Grip the raven in Barnaby Rudge as his inspiration for the raven in 'The Raven' (1845) — the bird's uncanny repetitive speech directly suggested the repeated 'Nevermore'; reading Barnaby Rudge alongside Poe's poem reveals the literary genealogy of one of the most famous images in American poetry.
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Old Mortality
by Walter Scott
Scott's historical novel about the Covenanting rebellions of 1679 is the immediate predecessor to Barnaby Rudge's treatment of crowd violence and religious fanaticism — Scott's Covenanting mob and Dickens's Gordon rioters share the same historical type, the religiously motivated crowd manipulated by political interests.
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Bleak House
by Charles Dickens
Dickens's greatest novel and the work that best shows what he learned from the structural problems of Barnaby Rudge — Bleak House's double narrative, its systematic cross-cutting between social classes, and its sustained control of a complex plot are all improvements on the techniques Dickens was developing in his first historical novel.
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The Trumpet-Major
by Thomas Hardy
Hardy's most light-hearted novel, set during the Napoleonic Wars period and organized around the threat of French invasion — a historical novel about provincial English life during a period of national crisis that shares Barnaby Rudge's interest in how large historical events impinge on private lives.
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Romola
by George Eliot
Eliot's historical novel about Renaissance Florence is the most ambitious Victorian historical novel after Dickens's, and its treatment of political violence and moral corruption in a period of social upheaval recalls Barnaby Rudge's portrait of the Gordon Riots; both novels show their authors pushing beyond their usual domestic materials.
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The Old Curiosity Shop
by Charles Dickens
The novel that immediately preceded Barnaby Rudge in Dickens's career and shaped its composition — Barnaby Rudge was originally conceived before The Old Curiosity Shop but was set aside; the two novels' contrasting approaches to a similarly simple-hearted protagonist (Little Nell vs. Barnaby) show Dickens exploring the same emotional territory from different angles.
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Nicholas Nickleby
by Charles Dickens
Dickens's picaresque novel of the previous decade, which shows his development toward the historical and thematic ambition of Barnaby Rudge — Nicholas Nickleby's exposure of the Yorkshire schools shows Dickens using fiction for social reform in the same mode as Barnaby Rudge's engagement with the Gordon Riots.
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