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Richmond (novel)

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Richmond
AuthorThomas Skinner Surr
(or Thomas Gaspey)
LanguageEnglish
GenreCrime
PublisherHenry Colburn
Publication date
1827
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint

Richmond, or, Scenes in the Life of a Bow Street Officer is an 1827 crime novel published anonymously and often attributed to Thomas Skinner Surr. The journalist Thomas Gaspey has also been credited as the author.[1][2] It was originally published in three volumes by Henry Colburn of New Burlington Street. It blended a depiction of the crime world of the Regency era with the fashionable silver fork novel, also functioning as an adventure novel.[3] The protagonist Tom Richmond, a picaresque figure, joins the Bow Street Runners after a misspent youth. It forms a bridge been early eighteenth century crime novels such as Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack with the future development of the full detective novel.[4]

It was published shortly before the creation of the Metropolitan Police by Robert Peel. It was part of the group of Newgate novels that lasted into the early Victorian era.[5]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Kucich & Taylor p.124
  2. ^ Garside & O'Brien p.403
  3. ^ Garside & O'Brien p.403
  4. ^ Kucich & Taylor p.124
  5. ^ Moon p.20

Bibliography

[edit]
  • Garside, Peter & O'Brien, Karen Elisabeth . English and British Fiction, 1750-1820. Oxford University Press, 2015.
  • Kucich, John & Taylor, Jenny Bourne (ed.) The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume 3: The Nineteenth-Century Novel 1820-1880. OUP Oxford, 2012.
  • Moon, Jina. Domestic Violence in Victorian and Edwardian Fiction. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016.