Edward Lloyd’s 200th Anniversary – 1815-2015

[1] Publisher Edward Lloyd.

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 TODAY  marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Victorian publisher Edward Lloyd (1815-90). Lloyd’s first publication is generally accepted as Lloyd’s Stenography, published in 1833 when he was eighteen years old. Advertisements for the publication appeared in the Poor Man’s Guardian throughout 1834.

    [2] Poor Man’s Guardian, May 24, 1834.

 ACCORDING  to Joel H. Wiener, author of A Descriptive Finding List of Unstamped British Periodicals 1830-1836, published in London by The Bibliographic Society in 1970, Lloyd’s first publication was The Weekly Penny Comic Magazine; or, Repertory of Wit and Humour, for which he gives the very specific publishing date of August 18, 1832, for the first number. Contents featured were “illustrated satirical ballads, anecdotes, and varieties, some of them written by (Thomas) Prest.”

[3] Ada the Betrayed No. 4, illustration by G.T.R. Bourne, Esq.

 THOMAS PECKETT PREST  began writing and performing comic songs in the 1830’s in the saloons and clubs of working class London and edited The British Pocket Vocalist for George Drake. After plagiarizing several Dickens novels for Lloyd he wrote a best seller called Ela the Outcast; or, the Gipsy of Rosemary Dell (1839) a melodramatic romance which the author’s 1841 Preface claimed was:

“in the course of publication for two years, its sale has never, in the least, flagged; and in proof of the deep interest, as a work of fiction, it has excited, I need only state, that its weekly sale has been thirty thousand copies, and the present is the eighteenth edition!” 

[4] Edward Lloyd’s periodicals, 1847.

 BEST SELLER  Ela the Outcast was a reworking of Hannah Maria Jones popular book The Gipsey Girl; or, The Heir of Hazel Dell published by William Emans in 1836. Prest wrote melodramas for the Royal Pavilion Theatre and Ela the Outcast, starring Miss Adelaide Cooke as Ela, was performed there for one hundred successive nights. Lloyd paid Prest 10s. per week, most of which he was reputed to have spent in the White Swan tavern in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street.

 THOMAS FROST  who in the 1840s wrote penny bloods for publishers Edward Lloyd and George Purkess, said that

“The Salisbury Square school of fiction did a good work in its day. It was the connecting link between the Monmouth Street Ballads and ‘last dying speeches,’ lives of highwaymen, and terrific legends of diabolism which constituted the favourite reading of the masses fifty years ago, and the more wholesome refined literature enjoyed by them at the present day.” — Thomas Frost, 1880

[5] Lloyd’s Weekly London News, 1872.

 LLOYD’S FIRST PERIODICAL  venture was The Penny Sunday Times and Weekly Police Gazette, a miscellany comprised of fiction and faked police reports. Advertisements for The Penny Sunday Times proclaimed the writing was “Sketched with the Humour of a “Boz.” The Penny Weekly Miscellany was edited by James Malcolm Rymer, author of the fictional Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood, and claimed a weekly sale of sixty thousand.

[6] Blanchard Jerrold.

 PENNY FICTION  was eventually abandoned by Edward Lloyd; since 1853 he  concentrated on Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper with Douglas William Jerrold as editor. On Douglas Jerrold’s death in 1857 he was replaced by his son Blanchard Jerrold. The weekly had been launched in 1842 under the title Lloyd’s Illustrated London Newspaper, published without a newspaper stamp. The following year the stamp was paid and the paper retitled Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper. In 1860 the price was dropped from twopence to a penny. The title came to an end in 1960 when it merged with the Sunday Graphic.

[7] Hoe cylinder press of the Chicago Tribune, 1864.

 EDWARD LLOYD  detected a new mechanical advancement in the Parisian office of La Patrie – its state-of-the-art printing press. He swiftly ordered his own six-cylinder Hoe rotary press from the US. This powerful modern machine was erected in his office at Salisbury Square, Fleet Street, London, the following year.

 THE CHICAGO DAILY TRIBUNE  bought a Hoe cylinder press in 1852 and described the steam-driven machine as a real improvement —

“It had a self-inking attachment. It printed direct from a flat form or chase, and the sheets were hand-fed to the impression cylinder, but they were delivered automatically to a sorting table after they had been printed. This was the first power driven Tribune press. Steam to run its engine was drawn from the plant of the Democratic Press, next door. The revolving cylinder which made the impression remained stationary, and the chase, which was set upon the press bed, moved backward and forward beneath the cylinder, in synchronization with its revolutions.” — Chicago Daily Tribune, June 10, 1947

[8] Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper masthead, 1871.

 EDWARD LLOYD  born on February 16, 1815, died on April 8, 1890, at the age of seventy-five years.

See Edward Lloyd’s historical family site HERE.

* The portrait of Edward Lloyd comes from page 190 of: Journalistic London. Being a series of sketches of famous pens and papers of the day. By Joseph Hatton. Profusely illustrated with engravings from drawings by M.W. Ridley; together with many original portraits of distinguished editors, and writers for the press. [Reprinted, with Additions, from Harper’s Magazine.] London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington; Crown Buildings, 188, Fleet Street. 1882.

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The Legend of Highland Jessie Brown

[1]

by John Adcock

R.J.O. — The story of Jessie Brown, of Lucknow, was a fiction, and no doubt was concocted by some hard-up but clever penny-a-liner. – Notices to Correspondents, in The London Journal, No. 785, 1860

THE TRICK for the enterprising penny-a-liner was to sell his fabulous paragraphs to as many newspapers as possible. If the story was picked up by a reputable newspaper it took on a life of its own. One of those reputable newspapers was The Illustrated London News which published a long letter on December 19, 1857, supposed to have been written “by a lady, one of the rescued party.”

[2] Letter “by a lady,” Illustrated London News, 1860

Frederick Goodall A.R.A. (1822-1904) painted a stirring picture of Jessie Brown titled ‘The Campbell’s are Coming’ in September 1857 (Listen HERE). Same year, in October, Henry Lea published The Indian War Chronicle “The Sepoy Mutiny” in penny illustrated numbers. Dion Boucicault wrote and staged Jessie Brown; or, the Relief of Lucknow which was opened at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth in November 1858 for a long run. Boucicault’s play acknowledged the infamous letter by a lady as his source for the stirring melodrama.

[3] Reynolds's Miscellany, February 15, 1858

BEST USE. The best use of the invented character was in James Malcolm Rymer’s fine serial romance, The Sepoys; Or, Highland Jessie, a Tale of the Present Indian Revolt, from Reynolds’s Miscellany, February 15, 1858. Sometime in the 1870s John Dicks reprinted the tale (with lovely Frederick Gilbert cuts taken from the original blocks) in Every Week, retitled Highland Jessie; or, the Cawnpore Massacre. Rymer’s Jessie Brown was no shrinking violet; she defended the besieged British men, women and children with rifle, bayonet and cutlass.

[4]

Another legend of the Indian Mutiny involved another woman, Ulrica Wheeler. Wheeler’s fantastic and fraudulent exploits included the murder of a sowar and his entire family:

…when he came home drunk and fell asleep, she took a sword and cut off his head, his mother’s head, two children’s heads, and his wife’s, and then walked out in the night air; and when she saw other sowars, she said, “Go inside and see how nicely I have rubbed the rissaldar’s feet.”… — The History of the Indian Mutiny by Charles Ball

[5] ‘A Scene of the Mutiny’

LEA. Henry Lea published another penny partswork, The Sepoy’s Daughter, a True Tale of the Indian War by an Eywitness, in 870 pages. This anonymous work was probably the last work of Thomas Peckett Prest, who died in 1859, although it has also been attributed to John Bridge.

[6] ‘Astonishing the Natives’

[7] ‘Perilous Position of the Fugitives’

[8] ‘The Thug Exercises his Vocation’

[9] ‘The Sergeant in the Folds of the Serpent’

[10] ‘The Attack’

[11] ‘Jeffur Ahib Attacking the Serpent’

[12] ‘The Shazadaii Beheads the Courtier’

[13] ‘The Entrance Into Lucknow’

See also ‘Ulrica Wheeler’ HERE.

‘Hard-Boiled Heroines’ HERE.

‘The Boys From Clerkenwell’ HERE.

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The London Miscellany

The London Miscellany, No. 2, February 17, 1866

The London Miscellany, vol. I, No. 1, was begun February 10, 1866. The editor (and possibly proprietor) was James Malcolm Rymer. The penny weekly was printed and published by Charles Jones, West Harding Street, Fetter Lane. Illustrators were Hablot Knight Browne (‘Phiz’) and Robert Prowse.

The first serial, ‘A Mystery in Scarlet,’ by Malcolm J. Errym (Rymer), was illustrated by Phiz and ran through the first eighteen numbers. Errym also wrote the secondary serial ‘Emmeline: or, The Serpent of the Wreath.’ Frank Jay wrote that

“ ‘A Mystery in Scarlet' created a mild sensation at the time, and the late Robert Louis Stevenson offered a reward for a copy.”

It’s hard to understand why he held this serial in such high esteem. Rymer wrote better penny dreadfuls in ‘Edith the Captive; or, the Robbers of Epping Forest,’ and ‘The Dark Woman,’ both of which were borrowed from to produce the plot of ‘A Mystery in Scarlet.’

The London Miscellany, No. 9, April 7, 1866

‘The Withered Hand: A Story of Woman’s Love and Hate,’ by Julian St. George began in No. 9, April 7, 1866. It has been conjectured that Julian St. George was a pen-name of Charles Henry Ross but it may have been another Rymer authored serial.

The London Miscellany, No. 8, March 31, 186

If Charles Henry Ross did write for The London Miscellany he may have been the author of ‘Mr. Honeybun’s Proposals: A Serious Story for Maids, Wives, and Widows, Young Married Men, and Very Old Bachelors,’ a humorous serial of love and romance.

The London Miscellany, No. 7, March 24, 1866

‘The Fair Savage: A Story of an Indian War Trail,’ was written by William H. Hillyard. William Heard Hillyard was fairly prolific. He was the author of ‘Recollections of a Physician: Or, Episodes of Life, Collected from Thirty Years' Practice,’ and ‘Catalina; or, The Spaniard’s Revenge,’ published by John Dicks in 1847. A poster exists for a London Miscellany serial called ‘Mysteries of a London Convent,’ by author of ‘The Fair Savage’ which presumably appeared in the New Series. This would have been written by William H. Hillyard.

  

The London Miscellany, No. 15, May 19, 1866

On February 24, 1866, it was announced that a series of papers titled ‘London Revelations’ would begin, “...written by a gentleman who at our request undertook a tour of inspection among the outcasts of the metropolis.” The articles would include “the strange, the curious, and the terrible in the Dark Side of London.” They would also “serve to dissipate a few of the illusions engendered by clap-trap romances, especially among the younger class of readers.”

The London Miscellany, No. 17, June 2, 1866

On April 28, The Editor wrote under the heading LONDON REVELATIONS that

“...hitherto he has paid no attention to certain anonymous letters containing absurd threats, because he thought them to be beneath contempt. As, however, since the receipt of a letter dated the 5th of April affairs in one quarter have assumed a serious aspect, he begs to say that the proprietors of the LONDON MISCELLANY have placed the matter in the hands of their solicitor, and proceedings will forthwith be taken against the offending parties.”

The charade continued on May 5, when something incredible happened to the intrepid London author-reporter.

TO THE PUBLIC: Last week we announced a paper by the writer of the LONDON REVELATIONS, entitled “A Quiet Cup of Tea in the Haymarket.” The gentleman in question had promised to forward us his manuscript in the usual way, but at the last moment we received the startling intelligence that he was lying at his house in a very dangerous state, having been waylaid and brutally assaulted by a band of ruffians, upon whose traces, however, we are happy to say the police have at once been set by the writer’s friend, Mr. Addison.

For some time past both the Editor of this journal and the writer of the LONDON REVELATIONS have received a series of threatening letters, supposed to come from certain disreputable persons alluded to in a recent article called “The Happy Hunting Grounds,” and we can easily trace this last disgraceful outrage to the same source. We take this opportunity of informing the parties interested that we shall pursue the course we have laid down for ourselves, and the LONDON REVELATIONS will continue fearlessly to expose the various haunts of crime unhappily still existing in this metropolis. The article published this week in the LONDON REVELATIONS was, fortunately in our possession before the accident, and we sincerely hope that our talented contributor may so far have recovered during the course of the next few days as to be able to write the promised article about the Haymarket in time for the next number.

The last issue of the first series was dated June 9, 1866 (No. 18). An announcement appeared on the last page (288) that the first number of a new series of the publication under new management would begin on June 12, 1866. The editor’s (Rymer’s) office on that date is given as The London Miscellany, 1 Savoy Street, Strand, The Trade supplied at 147 Fleet street (Offices of the Newsagents Publishing company). The new or second series finished its run at No. 29, on December 29, 1866. 

The London Miscellany, No. 3, February 24, 1866

*The first 18 Numbers of The London Miscellany are online HERE.  
Originals from Indiana University.

The Boys from Clerkenwell

By John Adcock

James Malcolm Rymer, popular author of Varney the Vampyre and The String of Pearls, which introduced the monstrous Sweeney Todd to English mythology, grew up in Clerkenwell, the second son of Malcolm Rymer, engraver and print-seller, and Louisa Dixon, milliner. When Dickens wrote of Oliver Twist entering London he was describing the area James Malcolm knew well; the boundaries were between St. John’s Road and Saffron Hill.

As John Dawkins objected to their entering London before nightfall, it was nearly eleven o’clock when they reached the turnpike at Islington. They crossed from the Angel into St. John’s Road; struck down the small street which terminates at Sadler’s Wells Theatre; through Exmouth Street and Coppice Row; down the little court by the side of the workhouse; across the classic ground which once bore the name of Hockley-in-the-Hole; thence into Little Saffron Hill; and so into Saffron Hill the Great; along which the Dodger scudded at a rapid pace, directing Oliver to follow close at his heels.

James Malcolm Rymer was born 1 Feb 1814 at Holborn, London, and his first known dwelling was on St. John’s Street abutting that part of Clerkenwell known as the “Cow-Cross” district -- a district full of prostitutes, burglars, gin-shops, poverty, and half-starved, half-naked, lice-infested juvenile delinquents. Police and Ragged-school workers were routinely assaulted, the women fought as viciously as the men and gin-shops remained open on Sunday.

The Illustrated London News described this part of Clerkenwell on May 22 1847 as a place where “amid the dingy, swarming alleys, crowded with tattered, sodden-looking women, and hulking unwashed men, clustering around the doors of low-browed public houses, or seated by dingy, un-windowed shops, frowsy with piles of dusty, rickety rubbish, or reeking with the odour of coarse food; lumps of carrion-like meat simmering in greasy pans, and brown crusty-looking morsels of fish, still gluey with the oil in which they have been fried.”

“The keeper of the “fence” loves to set up in business there -- low public houses abound where thieves drink and smoke -- Jew receivers lurk at corners -- brazen, ragged women scream and shout ribald repartees from window to window. The burglar has his “crib” in Clerkenwell -- the pickpocket has his mart -- the ragged Irish hodman vegetates in the filth of his three-pair back. It is the locality of dirt, and ignorance, and vice -- the recesses whereof are known but to the disguised policeman, as he gropes his way up rickety staircases toward the tracked housebreaker’s den; or the poor, shabby genteel City Missionary, as he kneels at midnight by the foul straw of some convulsed and dying outcast.”

James Malcolm Rymer’s family was probably better off than most. He must have worked in his father’s shop, Rymer & Sons, with his brothers Gavin, born 1812, and Chadwick Francis, born 1816. Gavin (see “Peep Show” print immediately below) and Chadwick were engravers by profession, and by tradition. The boys’ grandfather was James Rymer, an Edinburgh engraver who had a conflict with one of his apprentice’s in 1781 that was recorded in Scotland’s Decisions of the Court of Sessions from 1752-1808.

In May 1776 James Rymer had taken an eleven year old boy as an apprentice and the papers were witnessed by Gavin Rymer, shoemaker, and Adam Richardson, “ditto.” The witness was probably James’s brother or son, and the namesake of James Malcolm’s brother Gavin. James Malcolm's other siblings were Thomas, born 1815, Malcolm, born 1820, and Louisa, 1826. Chadwick Francis Rymer had some success as an artist who specialized in “cattle” scenes and exhibited five oil paintings in London between 1843 and 1848.

Clerkenwell was north and slightly uphill of the City of London and Smithfield. After the Napoleonic wars the population swelled and fine streets became slums filled with workshops, tenements, squalid alleys and courts, millinery sweatshops and Ragged Schools. The Fleet River was a stinking sewer, outbreaks of cholera were common, and the Smithfield cattle market was a health hazard until it was removed in 1855. Clerkenwell was a vital centre for radicalism largely due to the poverty, crime and overcrowding. In 1832 the new police and the unemployed had a bloody clash in Cold Bath Fields which led to the ‘Clerkenwell Riot.’ Clerkenwell Green was a popular meeting-place for Chartist orators.

Clerkenwell’s grim House of Detention was built in 1616. Jack Sheppard and his mistress Edgeworth Bess were imprisoned there in 1724 but escaped by sawing through the bars. It was demolished in 1890. William Hepworth Dixon, writing in 1850 of The London Prisons, said that Clerkenwell “is low London of low London…”

“We take it for granted that Clerkenwell is known to every breakfast table in this Kingdom. To the careful reader of the police reports, the name of this district must be as familiar as the commonest household word… chief scene of violence and outrage which the capital has to boast. Although not so exclusively the haunt of thieves, burglars, prostitutes and vagabonds as St. Giles’s and the low neighbourhoods about the Broadway, Westminster, it is, nevertheless, far more remarkable for crimes of the darkest kind than either of those notorious localities. More murders and attempts at murder take place in Clerkenwell than in any other part of London….

…Threading his way from Newgate, through Smithfield market, along Cow-cross, and by Saffron-hill, into the heart of Clerkenwell, the pedestrian passes through some of the worst quarters of the great city… He traverses narrow dirty streets and courts, crowded and filthy as the by-places in Houndsditch, miserable and destitute of light, water, almost of air; he sees property dilapidated and falling to a mass of foul and ugly rubbish; children with pale and ghastly faces; forms hideous with premature disease, arising from the unnatural and unhealthy circumstances into which they are helplessly cast.”

In 1839 James Malcolm Rymer, a ‘civil engineer,’ was living in close proximity to the House of Detention at 7, Cobham Row. Mayhew and Binny described the area round the prison in The Great World of London (1862) as a place “where few people care to reside… it may account for the dingy and distressed appearance of the buildings that surround the jail in Coldbath Fields… in Cobham Row, the heavy white sashes to the casements, the curious iron-work, and the peculiar style of brick-work, strongly indicate the old-fashioned character of the buildings.”

Once past the prison Clerkenwell was described as “notoriously the hardest-working quarter of London,” filled with brass-founders, grocer’s canister-makers, brush-board makers, and undertakers. “Turning down Phoenix Place we see yards converted into saw-mills, and jets of steam bursting out of the midst of tiled sheds; and we hear too, the grating, hissing sound of machinery.” At the northern side of the prison wall was an unpaved ground where “boys have established their play-ground, and amuse themselves with pitch-in-the-hole, tossing for buttons, and games at marbles, or else they perform their gymnastic exercises on the thick rails and posts, placed across the broad rude pathway to obstruct the passage of cabs and cattle.”

James Malcolm lived in Clerkenwell until his marriage to Caroline Huttly in 1839 when he was 25 years old, then moved to Bloomsbury. Soon after, in 1842 he was to be found editing a sixpenny monthly, Queen’s Magazine: a Monthly Miscellany of Literature and Art. In 1843 he took up writing penny bloods for Edward Lloyd, starting with Ada the Betrayed; or, the Murder at the Old Smithy, which began as a serial in the first number of Lloyd’s Penny Weekly Miscellany and was then issued in penny numbers.

In an article titled “Popular Writing” Rymer wrote for Queen’s Magazine in 1842, shortly before he took his own advice, that “If an author then, wishes to become popular… he should, ere he begins to write, study well the animals for whom he is about to cater…

“But it may be said, How are we to account for the taste which maintained so long for works of terror and blood -- those romances which abounded with mysterious horrors, and reveled in the supernatural? Most easily. It is the privilege of the ignorant and the weak to love superstition. The only strong moral sensation they are capable of is fear. The dishes of horror served up by a Radcliffe, a Walker, or a Lewis, served as the piquant sauces to the plain meat, nicely done, of a Richardson, a Mackenzie, or a Burney. Is the superstitious terror of a nursery maid, who reads her allowance of rushlight with indescribable dismay, ‘The Blood Spangled Monk; or, the Inhuman Shreik,’ to be called a love of imaginative literature? As well we might accuse her of a sublime notion of the supernatural, when she threatens one of her infant charges with the immediate appearance of a mysterious personage, known in many establishments as ‘The Old Man,’ ‘Bogie,’ &c. The taste for the horrible is by no means surprising. It has been, and ever will be. There are millions of minds that have no resource between vapid sentimentality, and the ridiculous spectra of the nursery.”

*Edith the Captive; or, The Robbers of Epping Forest.* By James Malcolm Rymer,
Illustrated by C. F. Sargent and C. Bonner, 104 Nos. London: John Dicks. May 12, 1860.

Sweeney Todd Gallery

“Upon my word,” thought Tom, quickening his pace, “I don’t know what John will think has become of me. He’ll begin to be afraid I have strayed into one of those streets where the countrymen are murdered; and that I have been made meat-pies of, or some such horrible thing.” -- Martin Chuzzlewit, Jan 1843-July 1844.

The String of Pearls, a Romance, an anonymous serial written by James Malcolm Rymer, was serialized in Edward Lloyd's The People's Periodical in 18 installments between November 21, 1846, and March 20, 1847 (issues 7 to 24). Under the title of The String of Pearls; or, The Sailor’s Gift, this romance then appeared in 92 weekly penny numbers from Edward Lloyd. The story is believed to have been based on a French crime of the 15th century involving cannibalism and pastry. The perpetrators were Barnabé Cabard and his accomplice Pierre Miquelon, a barber and a pastry-maker. You can read the original String of Pearls serial HERE.

There is still a mystery remaining however. As shown in my quote above from Dickens, at least two years before Rymer’s People’s Periodical serial, there was already an on-going tradition in London of meat-pies containing human flesh. Dickens described "preparers of cannibalistic pastry, who are represented in many standard country legends as doing a lively retail business in the Metropolis." James Malcolm Rymer invented and named Sweeney Todd, but he used parts of the French stories, London cannibal legends, and elements of the old stage melodrama The Dog of Montargis.

The melodrama of The Dog of Montargis was written by Gilbert Pixerecourt in 1814. Here is a contemporary description from a Playbill advertising RIENZI and THE LANCERS and THE DOG OF MONTARGIS at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Monday 27 October 1828;

"To conclude with the popular Melo-Drama of The Forest of Bondy, or Dog of Montargis, with the original Music, Decorations, etc. The facts on which this Piece was founded rests on a circumstance during the reign of Charles XVth, and may be found among remarkable Instances of Sagacity in the Brute Creation. Macaire, the Murderer of Aubri, is discovered by the Dog, who returns to the Inn, and conveys the Hostess to the Spot where the horrid Deed has been perpetrated, and by a Chain of most wonderful Events, The Murderer is Detected And Pursued by the Dog, who [the murderer, not the dog] throws himself down the Precipice. A Pistol is dropped by the Assassin, which the Dog Seizes, and Fires after Him. The Dog of Montargis by Tiger."

In 1878 Charles Fox issued Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street in 48 12 page numbers. The British library credits Charlton Lea, pen-name of Alfred Sherrington Burrage. The illustrations may be by Harry Maguire.

Gentleman Jack

“Pull slowly and quietly,” said Dick.

The bucket came up to the surface, and then Claude stretched out his hand and got hold of it.”

“All’s right,” he said, “I have it.”

He drew it towards him, and then, in a rather odd voice, he said --

“The light, Jack.”

Jack picked up the lantern from the floor and held it over the bucket, and then they all three looked in silent horror at what it disclosed to them.

Floating in the water they had got up from the well was a portion of an infant’s hand and arm, and a large piece of a skull with hair still upon it.

The water itself had a shiny, oily look, and upon its surface floated fatty globules, and what appeared to be pieces of half decomposed flesh.

“Horrible!” said Claude.

Jack turned aside sick and faint at the sight.

“Good God!” said Dick.

That was Sixteen-string Jack (the Gentleman of the title,) Claude Duval, and Dick Turpin, the heroes of Gentleman Jack; or, Life on the Road, published by Edward Lloyd in 1842. It was published weekly in penny numbers for a total of 544 pages, Nos. 2, 3, & 4 Gratis with No. 1. The title-page enlarged on the title; Gentleman Jack; or, Life on the Road, a romance of interest abounding in hairbreadth escapes and of the most exciting character. The fanciful woodcut illustrations were by G. T. R. Bourne.

Nine years later, in 1851, Abel Heywood, a seller of cheap literature in Manchester told a House of Commons committee that his best selling penny weekly numbers were Claude Duval (550), Gentleman Jack (400), Paul Clifford (350), and Three-Fingered Jack (350). “Gentleman Jack” was pirated by New York publisher Robert M. De Witt who published the entire serial in 100 page installments at twenty-five cents a volume. From the looks of the De Witt cover below even the colorful Bourne woodcut was copied for the cover.

Gentleman Jack was anonymous but over time the authorship came to be attributed to Mrs. Elizabeth Caroline Grey (a hoax). More recently Helen Smith has attributed authorship of the Grey/Lloyd titles to James Malcolm Rymer. A good chunk of the De Witt piracy of Gentleman Jack (wrongly attributed to Edward Viles) is on Google Books HERE. James Malcolm Rymer’s Ada the Betrayed, and Jane Brightwell, HERE.