Style and Success
His first success as a writer came with Rookwood in 1834, which features Dick Turpin as its leading character. In 1839 he published another novel featuring a highwayman, Jack Sheppard. From 1840 to 1842 he edited Bentley's Miscellany, from 1842 to 1853, Ainsworth's Magazine and subsequently The New Monthly Magazine.
His Lancashire novels cover altogether 400 years and include The Lancashire Witches, 1848, Mervyn Clitheroe, 1857, and The Leaguer of Lathom. Jack Sheppard, Guy Fawkes, 1841, Old St Paul's, 1841, Windsor Castle, 1843, and The Lancashire Witches are regarded as his most successful novels. He was very popular in his lifetime and his novels sold in large numbers, but his reputation has not lasted well. As John William Cousin argues, he depends for his effects on striking situations and powerful descriptions, but has little humour or power of delineating character.
Read more about this topic: William Harrison Ainsworth
Famous quotes containing the words style and, style and/or success:
“I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“If the British prose style is Churchillian, America is the tobacco auctioneer, the barker; Runyon, Lardner, W.W., the traveling salesman who can sell the world the Brooklyn Bridge every day, can put anything over on you and convince you that tomatoes grow at the South Pole.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self- complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1966)