Jack Sheppard (novel) for many months in the "Bentley's Miscellany": Dickens' "Oliver Twist". The plots are similar, in that both deal with an individual attempting to corrupt a boy. Ainsworth's boy is corrupted, whereas Dickens' is not. Both authors also cast Jews as their villains; they are similar in appearance, though Ainsworth's is less powerful. According to Frank Chandler, the novel "was intended as a study in the Spanish style". Such influences appear in Jack's physical description and in the words of the characters. Dramatist John Gay stated that Jack's story is related to the stories of Guzman d'Alfarache, Lazarillo de Tormes, Estevanillo
Boy (novel) 3's "Sunday Play" on March 16, 1996. "The New York Times", in Hanley's "Obituary", described "Boy" as "Mr. Hanley's partly autobiographical novel". However, Hanley did not run away to sea when he was thirteen but worked as a clerk for four years, before signing on as an ordinary seaman on the SS Nitonian, when he was seventeen. According to Hanley's son Liam, his father laughed at the suggestion that "Boy" was autobiographical. Hanley refers to "Boy", though not naming it, in "a short reminiscence entitled 'Oddfish', " in his collection of essays and sketches "Don Quixote Drowned" (1953). In this