Born, in Manchester, 4 Feb. 1805. Educated at Manchester Grammar School, 1817–21. Articled in 1821 to Mr. Kay, solicitor, of Manchester. Contrib. to “Arliss’s Magazine,” “Manchester Iris,” “Edinburgh Magazine,” “London Magazine;” and started a periodical called “The Bœotian,” of which only six numbers appeared. In 1824 to Inner Temple. Married Anne Frances Ebers, 11 Oct. 1826. In business as a publisher for eighteen months. Life of literary activity. Visit to Switzerland and Italy, 1830. “Rookwood” begun in 1831. Series of novels published 1834–81. Editor of “Bentley’s Miscellany,” March 1839 to Dec. 1841. Edited “Ainsworth’s Magazine,” 1842–54. Edited “New Monthly Magazine,” 1845–70. Lived at Kensal Manor House. Entertained by Mayor at Banquet in Manchester Town Hall, 15 Sept. 1881. Died, at Reigate, 3 Jan. 1882. Buried at Kensal Green. Works: “Considerations as to the best means of affording immediate relief to the Operative Classes in the manufacturing districts,” 1826; “Rookwood” (anon.), 1834; “Crichton,” 1837; “Jack Sheppard,” 1839; “Tower of London,” 1840; “Guy Fawkes,” 1841; “Old St. Paul’s,” 1841; “The Miser’s Daughter,” 1842; “Windsor Castle,” 1843; “St. James’s,” 1844; “Lancashire Witches,” 1848; “Star Chamber,” 1854; “James the Second,” 1854; “The Flitch of Bacon,” 1854; “Ballads,” 1855; “Spendthrift,” 1856; Mervyn Clitheroe” (in parts), 1857–58; “The Combat of the Thirty,” 1859; “Ovingdean Grange,” 1860; “Constable of the Tower,” 1861; “Lord Mayor of London,” 1862; “Cardinal Pole,” 1863; “John Law the Projector,” 1864; “The Spanish Match,” 1865; “Auriol,” 1865; “Myddleton Pomfret,” 1865; “The Constable de Bourbon,” 1866; “Old Court,” 1867; “South Sea Bubble,” 1868; “Hilary St. Ives,” 1869; “Talbot Harland,” 1870; “Tower Hill,” 1871; “Boscobel,” 1872; “The Good Old Times,” 1873; “Merry England,” 1874; “The Goldsmith’s Wife,” 1875; “Preston Fight,” 1875; “Chetwynd Calverly,” 1876; “The Leaguer of Lathom,” 1876; “The Fall of Somerset,” 1877; “Beatrice Tyldesley,” 1878; “Beau Nash,” [1879?]; “Stanley Brereton,” 1881. The greater part of “December Tales,” published anonymously in 1823, was Ainsworth’s work; “Sir John Chiverton” (anon.), 1826, is probably by Ainsworth and J. P. Aston. Contrib. by Ainsworth are in “Works of Cheviot Tichburn,” 1822, and “A Summer Evening Tale,” 1825.

Personal

  Mr. Ainsworth, who had been a publisher at one part of his busy life, next set up “Ainsworth’s Magazine,” and in it wrote certain stilted nonsense—“The Tower of London,” “Old St. Paul’s,” “The Miser’s Daughter,” and so forth. Of these not one could hold the public without its illustrations. Some of Cruikshank’s best work went to these rubbishy books, which are now bought at large prices for the engravings…. Mr. Ainsworth is, we believe, as Lord Lytton is, we know, a wealthy man through his literature; but if every farthing each has received from his books, pensions and all, were a hundred-pound note, and employed in building reformatories for boy-thieves, the unhappy man could not undo the evil his perverted taste, vulgar admiration, and his fatal itch of writing to pander to the savage instincts of the thief and robber, has caused, and will yet cause, in years to come.

  This delicately drawn portrait of the novelist, just at the time that he had achieved his reputation,—hair curled and oiled as that of an Assyrian bull, the gothic arch coat-collar, the high neck-cloth and the tightly strapped trowsers,—exhibits as fine an exemplar as we could wish for, of the dandy of D’Orsay type, and pre-Victorian epoch…. One of Ainsworth’s earliest residences was the “Elms” at Kilburn. From this he removed to Kensal Manor House, on the Harrow Road, where, for a long series of years, he dispensed his genial and liberal hospitality to a large circle of friends,—chiefly literary men and artists,—who made it a rallying point. From this he removed to Brighton, and later on, to Tunbridge Wells. Subsequently in the retirement befitting his advancing years, he resided with his eldest daughter, Fanny, at Hurstpierpoint. He had also a residence at St. Mary’s Road, Reigate, Surrey; and here he died, on Sunday, January 3rd, 1882, in the seventy-seventh year, of his age. On the 9th of the same month his remains were interred at the Kensal Green Cemetery; the ceremony being of very quiet and simple character, in accordance with his express wish.

  I saw little of him in later days, but when I knew him in 1826, not long after he married the daughter of Ebers, of New Bond Street, and “condescended” for a brief time to be a publisher, he was a remarkably handsome young man—tall, graceful in deportment, and in all ways a pleasant person to look upon and talk to. He was, perhaps, as thorough a gentleman as his native city of Manchester ever sent forth. Few men have lived to be more largely rewarded not only by pecuniary recompense, but by celebrity—I can hardly call it fame. His antiquarian lore was remarkable, and he made brilliant and extensive use of it in his long series of historical romances.

  Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, at this time in the hey-day of his fame and popularity, was one of the four literary dandies of the period—all handsome men, and favorites of the ladies, as well for their personal graces as for their genius. These four were Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, Mr. Edward Lytton Bulwer, Mr. Charles Dickens, and Mr. Harrison Ainsworth. None could deny that Mr. Ainsworth was unquestionably the best-looking man of the four—the very Antinous of literature, in the prime of his early manhood, and in a full flush of a popularity that continued unabated until a late period of his life.

General

  I read with interest, during my journey, “Sir John Chiverton” and “Brambletye House”—novels, in what I may surely claim as the style

  With regard to the Newgate narrative of “Jack Sheppard” and the extraordinary extensive notoriety it obtained for the writer, upon the residuum of which he founded his popularity, so much just severity has already been administered from criticism and from the opinion of the intellectual portion of the public, and its position has been so fully settled, that we are glad to pass over it without farther animadversion. The present popularity of Mr. Ainsworth could not have risen out of its own materials. His so-called historical romance of “Windsor Castle” is not to be regarded as a work of literature open to serious criticism. It is a picture book, and full of very pretty pictures. Also full of catalogues of numberless suits of clothes. It would be difficult to open it anywhere without the eye falling on such words as cloth of gold, silver tissue, green Jerkin, white plumes…. “Old St. Paul’s, a tale of the Plague and the Fire,” is a diluted imitation of some parts of De Foe’s “Plague in London,” varied with libertine adventures of Lord Rochester and his associates. It is generally dull, except when it is revolting.

  It may appear unjust to the genius of Victor Hugo to say so, but to our minds the romances of Ainsworth possess more resemblance to the particular manner of “Notre Dame de Paris” than any other productions of English Literature…. The works of Ainsworth possess much of this fragmentary and convulsive character, and the erudition (often great) which he has lavished on his pictures of past ages, bears, like that of Victor Hugo, a painful air of effort—of having been read up for the purpose, and collected for the nonce. The most successful of Ainsworth’s romances are “Rookwood” (the first) and “Jack Sheppard:” the former owes its success chiefly to the wonderful hurry and rapid vividness of Turpin’s ride from London to York in one day, and in the latter the author has broken up what appeared to the public to be new ground—the adventures of highwaymen, prostitutes, and thief-takers. Defoe had done this before, and with astonishing power and invention and probability; but that great moralist has never confounded good and evil, and has shown his squalid ragamuffins as miserable in their lives as they were contemptible and odious in their crimes. Ainsworth, however, has looked upon the romantic side of the picture, and has represented his ruffian hero as a model of gallantry and courage. This, we know, is contrary to universal experience and probability; and while we read with breathless interest the escape of Jack from prison, we forget the monstrous inconsistencies of the story, and the mean and wolfish character of the real criminal, who is here elevated into a hero of romance. To the ignorant and uneducated, who are charmed, like everybody else, with the boldness, dexterity, and perseverance so often exhibited by the worst characters, and which are here dignified with all the artifices of description, but who cannot distinguish between the good and the evil which are mixed up even in the basest characters, this kind of reading is capable of doing, and has done, the greatest mischief; and the very talent—often undeniable—of such works, only renders them the more seductive and insidious.

  In the interest and rapidity of his scenes and adventures, Mr. Ainsworth evinced a dramatic power and art, but no originality or felicity of humour or character…. There are rich, copious and brilliant descriptions in some of these works, but their tendency must be reprobated. To portray scenes of low successful villainy, and to paint ghastly and hideous details of human suffering, can be no elevating task for a man of genius, nor one likely to promote among novel-readers a healthy tone of moral feeling or sentiment. The story of “Jack Sheppard,” illustrated by the pencil of Cruikshank, had immense success, and was dramatised.

  His novels, though readers have now turned to tales of another fashion, have never been without the merit of great skill in the shaping of a story from historical material well studied and understood. Ainsworth’s strength has lain in the union of good, honest antiquarian scholarship with art in the weaving of romance that is enlivened and not burdened by his knowledge of the past.

  It is deeply to be lamented that Cruikshank’s connection with Harrison Ainsworth—a connection in which the artist found some of his finer inspirations—was marred by quarrels, and was sundered finally with a controversy, which is the counterpart of that he engaged in with the biographer and the friends of Charles Dickens. I suspect that Thackeray involuntarily led Cruikshank to claim more than his proper share in the successes he and Harrison Ainsworth had together…. Thackeray, let it be said, was always unjust to Harrison Ainsworth. He caricatured him unmercifully in Punch, and never lost an opportunity of being amusing at his expense. His reasoning in regard to “Jack Sheppard” is manifestly unjust and unsound. “Jack Sheppard” was the natural sequence to “Rookwood” which, in popular parlance, had taken the town by storm, and had suddenly made the young author famous. “Dick Turpin’s Ride to York” became the talk of all England. Colnaghi published a separate set of illustrations, by Hall, of the principal scenes described by Ainsworth. Cruikshank was called in only to furnish some illustrations to the second edition. The success of “Rookwood” directed the mind of “Paul Clifford,” and probably suggested to Dickens “Oliver Twist.” Even Cruikshank himself admits that “Jack Sheppard” was “originated” by the author. A fashion for highwaymen and burglars as heroes of romance had been set by Ainsworth; and Bulwer and Dickens dived into the haunts of thieves to get at their argot, or “patter flash,” and their ways of thinking and acting. Both made great hits. “Paul Clifford” and “Oliver Twist” were the two books of the day. Mr. Ainsworth, irritated by the unceremonious manner in which his ground had been invaded, put forth “Jack Sheppard” (1839), on assuming the editorship of “Bentley’s Miscellany.” It was as natural a step from “Rookwood,” especially after “Paul Clifford” and “Oliver Twist,” as chapter two is from chapter one. Mr. Ainsworth had his revenge upon the trespassers, for “Jack” threw “Oliver,” for the moment, into the background.

  The charm of Ainsworth’s novels is not at all dependent upon the analysis of motives or subtle description of character. Of this he has little or nothing, but he realises vividly a scene or an incident, and conveys the impression with great force and directness to the reader’s mind.

  Equally fertile in production, but by no means comparable to Bulwer in ability…. In 1834 he made his first success with the novel of “Rookwood,” in which the praises of Dick Turpin, the highwayman, are sung with an ardour worthy of a better cause. It sprang at once into a popularity which was perhaps above its merits; it had, however, the advantage of being condemned by moralists as tending to the encouragement of vice. We are not tempted to join in the chorus of admiration, but will admit that there is some power in the description of the famous ride to York. A few years later, Ainsworth returned to the safer path of historical romance with the somewhat tedious novel of “Crichton,” but in 1839 again shocked the world with the history of “Jack Sheppard,” a work much inferior to “Rookwood” in literary merit.

  In the long succession of successful novels and romances that flowed for years from Mr. Ainsworth’s pen, there was an abundance of the “properties” of the historic past, but little of what is properly known as literature. Notwithstanding this, some of these fictions contain the results of a good deal of painstaking research into the past; and doubtless many young readers have received no little instruction from their pages.

  First essayed felonious fiction in his interesting but unequal romance, “Rookwood,” in which one of the leading characters was the notoriously coarse and crapulous highwayman and horse-thief Dick Turpin. Turpin’s ride to York, as a piece of word-painting, has been rarely, if ever, surpassed in the prose of the Victorian era. It is true that more than once it has been alleged that Harrison Ainsworth was not the writer of this astonishing episode, but that it was the composition of his friend Dr. William Maginn. As to the truth or falsehood of this allegation I am wholly incompetent to pronounce; but looking at Ainsworth’s marvellous pictures of the Plague and the Fire in his “Old St. Paul’s,” and the numerous picturesque studies of Tudor life in his “Tower of London,” I should say that Turpin’s ride to York was a performance altogether within compass of his capacity.

  Had a real knack of arresting and keeping the interest of those readers who read for mere excitement: he was decidedly skilful at gleaning from memoirs and other documents scraps of decoration suitable for his purpose, he could in his better day string incidents together with a very decided knack, and, till latterly, his books rarely languished. But his writing was very poor in strictly literary merit, his style was at best bustling prose melodrama, and his characters were scarcely ever alive.