In 1839–40 he returned to the Adelphi to write and star in a number of plays, including his extraordinarily successful play "Jack Sheppard", based on the novel of the same name published that year by William Harrison Ainsworth. After his return from a visit to the United States in 1840, where he met with little success, Buckstone played in his own play, "Married Life", at the Haymarket. He then appeared at several London theatres, among them the Lyceum, where he was Box at the first representation of "Box and Cox", by John Maddison Morton, in 1847. There he also created the role of Bob, in Dion Boucicault's "Old Heads and Young Hearts", and played several other memorable roles, including, Slowboy in "Cricket on the Hearth", Dan in "John Bull", MacDunnum of Dunnum in "A School for Scheming", Scrub in "The Beaux' Stratagem" and Golightly in "Lend Me Five Shillings", and several Shakespeare roles. For the Adelphi, he wrote "The Green Bushes" and "The Flowers of the Forest", both in 1847. He also dramatised "The Last Days of Pompeii".