Barnaby Rudge Barnaby Rudge Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty (commonly known as Barnaby Rudge) is a historical novel by British novelist Charles Dickens. "Barnaby Rudge" was one of two novels (the other was "The Old Curiosity Shop") that Dickens published in his short-lived (1840–1841) weekly serial "Master Humphrey's Clock". "Barnaby Rudge" is largely set during the Gordon Riots of 1780. "Barnaby Rudge" was the fifth of Dickens' novels to be published. It had originally been planned to appear as his first, but changes of publisher led to many delays, and it first appeared in serial form in the
Charles Dickens Chesterton stated, "It is not the death of little Nell, but the life of little Nell, that I object to", arguing that the maudlin effect of his description of her life owed much to the gregarious nature of Dickens's grief, his "despotic" use of people's feelings to move them to tears in works like this. The question as to whether Dickens belongs to the tradition of the sentimental novel is debatable. Valerie Purton, in her recent "Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition", sees him continuing aspects of this tradition, and argues that his "sentimental scenes and characters [are] as crucial to