Guy Fawkes or The Gunpowder Treason by William Harrison Ainsworth

Ainsworth assumes the audience is well acquainted with the history and conspiracy theories surrounding the Gunpowder Plot. If you have no idea what the Gunpowder Plot is, don't read this book. You wrote a book that is so bad, its good. A worthy goal, my dear Ainsworth, but while you may be a contemporary of Charles Dickens, you lack his skill with the pen. The author's stated goal for this book was that it be an exploration in the need for religious tolerance. Full rights restored in 1826 by the Catholic Emancipation Act. This book was published in 1841, 50 some years after William Wilberforce had finally in 1791 passed the Catholic Relief Act via Parliament. Edgar Allan Poe described the style of writing as 'turgid pretension'. The novel was very popular, and marked the beginning of Ainsworth's 40-year career in historical romances, but it was not universally admired.

He invented the character of Viviana Radcliffe, daughter of the prominent Radcliffe family of Ordsall Hall – who becomes Fawkes's wife – and introduced gothic and supernatural elements into the story, such as the ability of the alchemist, John Dee, to raise the spirits of the dead.

Ainsworth relied heavily on historical documents describing the trial and execution of the conspirators, of whom Fawkes was one, but he also embellished the known facts.

The first of William Harrison Ainsworth's seven 'Lancashire novels', the story is based on the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, an unsuccessful attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament. It was subsequently published as a three-volume set in July 1841, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. The novel Guy Fawkes first appeared as a serial in Bentley's Miscellany, between January and November 1840.

Guy Fawkes or The Gunpowder Treason by William Harrison Ainsworth