Claude Duval Samuel Butler ("A Pindarick Ode"), John Gay ("The Beggar's Opera") and William Harrison Ainsworth ("Rookwood" and "Talbot Harland") to create the iconic image of the gentleman highwayman still beloved today. Mackie, Erin. "Rakes, Highwaymen, and Pirates. The Making of the Modern Gentleman in the Eighteenth Century" Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2009. Sharpe, James. "Dick Turpin: The Myth of the English highwayman". London: Profile, 2005. . Sugden, John. 'The Merry Dance of the Highwayman', "History Today", March 2017, vol. 67, no. 3, pp. 48–52. Sugden, John and Philip. "The Thief of Hearts: Claude Duval and the Gentleman Highwayman in Fact and Fiction".
Dick Turpin around the turn of the 19th century. It was, however, the story of a fabled ride from London to York that provided the impetus for 19th-century author William Harrison Ainsworth to include and embellish the exploit in his 1834 novel "Rookwood". Ainsworth used Turpin as a plot device, describing him in a manner that makes him more lively than the book's other characters. Turpin is introduced with the pseudonym Palmer, and is later forced to escape on his horse, Black Bess. Although fast enough to keep ahead of those in pursuit, Black Bess eventually dies under the stress of the