In Literature
- A record of executions conducted at the prison, together with commentary, was published as The Newgate Calendar, which inspired a genre of Victorian literature known as the Newgate novel.
- The prison appears in a number of novels by Charles Dickens, including Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty and Great Expectations, and is the subject of an entire essay in his work Sketches by Boz.
- The prison is also depicted in:
- Daniel Defoe's novel Moll Flanders
- William Godwin's novel Caleb Williams
- Michael Crichton's novel The Great Train Robbery
- Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle
- Leon Garfield's novel Smith
- Joseph O'Connor's novel Star of the Sea – where one section concerns a character's imprisonment and subsequent escape from Newgate.
- Louis L'Amour's novel To The Far Blue Mountains – where the main character Barnabas Sackett is first imprisoned and later escapes from Newgate.
- Bernard Cornwell's novel Gallows Thief
- David Liss's novel A Conspiracy of Paper and the sequel, A Spectacle of Corruption
- John Gay's Ballad Opera The Beggar's Opera
- Richard Zacks's novel The Pirate Hunter (The True Story of Captain Kidd)
- Wachowski brothers' film V For Vendetta
- George MacDonald Fraser's novel Flashman's Lady
- Jonathan Barnes' The Somnambulist
- Marguerite Henry's novel King of the Wind
- C J Sansom's novel Dark Fire
- Jackie French's novel Tom Appleby Convict Boy
- Coventry Patmore's poem A London Fete
- James Norman Hall and Charles Nordhoff's novel Botany Bay
- Kathleen Winsor's novel Forever Amber
- Donald Thomas's short story "The Execution of Sherlock Holmes."
- Robert McCammon's novel Speaks The Nightbird Volume 2 – Evil Unveiled
- T.C. Boyle's novel Water Music
Read more about this topic: Newgate Prison
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made the gradual and conscious expression of his personality in literature the aim of his life, has no right to suppress himself any carefully considered work which seemed good enough when it was written. Suppression, if it is deserved, will come rapidly enough from the same causes that suppress the unworthy members of a man’s family.”
—J.M. (John Millington)
“The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as I love literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)