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Ainsworth's Historical Accuracy Reconsidered*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
Extract
After Sir Walter Scott made the historical novel popular with his Waverley novels, many other writers, including the major novelists Dickens and Thackeray and the minor novelists Ainsworth, G. P. R. James, Bulwer-Lytton, and Reade, took up the form. But while the major novelists are credited with artistry in their use of history, the minor ones are generally regarded as hacks who used history indiscriminately in any way they wished in order to “make saleable novels.” The disparaging criticism of William Harrison Ainsworth's use of history exemplifies this unreflective critical tendency.
For several probable reasons, critics have not been inclined to credit Ainsworth with using history responsibly; however, none of the reasons is based on an examination of his sources: his rapid ascension and decline as an important literary figure, his popularity with the common reading public, and his failure to progress artistically after his first few good novels. His artistic growth seems to have ended in 1840, forty-one years before the publication of his last novel. These critics have seen him as a “manufacturer of fiction,” and therefore not responsible in his treatment of historical fact and his use of historical documents, even though time and place are of crucial importance to Ainsworth. One could hardly regard Ainsworth more incorrectly. A close reading of Ainsworth's historical sources demonstrates that Ainsworth's history is extremely reliable in both generalities and particulars; his alterations, usually minor, serve only to adumbrate his concept of history as cycle. Thus, even though he is a novelist and not a historian, the faithful revelation of the past is central to his work. He examines history carefully in order to present truths about life and in order to demonstrate how history reveals these truths.
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- Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1972
Footnotes
*
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Pacific Northwest Section of the Conference, Calgary, Alberta, March, 1972.
References
Notes
1 Baker, Ernest A., The History of the English Novel (London, 1936), VII, 93Google Scholar; see also pp. 78, 94-95, and 97. For similar representative comments see Williams, Harold H., Two Centuries of the English Novel (London, 1911), p. 306Google Scholar; Whiteford, Robert Naylor, Motives in English Fiction (New York, 1918), p. 356Google Scholar; Craik, George Lillie, Manual of English Literature (London, 1909), p. 338Google Scholar; Allen, Walter E., The English Novel: A Short Critical History (New York, 1955), pp. 162-63Google Scholar; Russell, Percy, A Guide to British and American Novels (London, 1895), pp. 37, 153Google Scholar; and Sheppard, Alfred Tresidder, The Art and Practice of Historical Fiction (London, 1930), pp. 169-70.Google Scholar
2 (London, n. d.).
3 Faurot, Ruth Marie, “The Early Novels of William Harrison Ainsworth (from 1826 to 1852),” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1953), pp. 207-8.Google Scholar
4 Ainsworth, The Tower of London, Bk. I, ch. I.
5 (Amsterdam and Paris, 1766).
6 (2 vols.; London. 1839).
7 Nouveaux Eclaircissements, pp. 69-70 and passim.
8 England, II, 299ff.Google ScholarPubMed
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10 Griffet, , Nouveaux Eclaircissements, p. 51.Google Scholar
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13 Tytler, , England, II, 382.Google Scholar
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15 The Growth of the English Novel (London, 1951), p. 118.Google ScholarPubMed
16 Novels of the Eighteen-Forties (Oxford, 1954), p. 141Google Scholar. See also Cross, Wilbur L., The Development of the English Novel (New York, 1899), pp. 141-42Google ScholarPubMed; Stark, Beverly, “William Harrison Ainsworth,” Bookman, 16 (1902-1903), 570Google Scholar; Patrick, David, ed., Chamber's Cyclopaedia of English Literature (Edinburgh, [1922]). III, 378Google Scholar; Baker, , History of the English Novel, VII, 94, 96Google Scholar; Baugh, Albert C., ed., A Literary History of England, Book IV: The Nineteenth Century and After, by Chew, Samuel C. (New York, 1948), p. 1276Google Scholar; and Buchan, John, ed., A History of English Literature (New York, 1923), p. 458.Google Scholar
17 (London, 1837).
18 For example, see Furnivall, Frederick J., ed., “Of Sundry Kinds of Punishments Appointed for Malefactors,” Harrison's Description of England in Shakespere's Youth (London, 1877), I, 221-32Google Scholar. Because Harrison's account appeared in Holinshed's Chronicles, it is likely that Ainsworth saw it; Ainsworth relied heavily on the Chronicles for historical detail and for speeches in The Tower of London. He did not, however, use this source directly for examples of punishments and tortures.
19 Use of Torture, p. 13.
20 Ibid., p. 59.
21 Ibid., p. 68.
22 Ibid., p. 27.
23 Ibid., p. 34.
24 Ibid., pp. 14-15.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid., p. 32.
27 Ibid., p. 48; see also pp. 16, 20-21, 36, 67.
28 Ibid., p. 17.
29 Ibid., p. 65.