Pierce Egan

Stephen Carver (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.06: English Writing and Culture of the Romantic Period, 1789-1837.
Vol. editors: Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Daniel Robinson (Widener University), Emily Rohrbach (University of Durham)

Dates

Born 1772
Died 1849
Activity 1792-1849

Places

Born in England
Active in England

Activities

Primary

Journalist
Novelist
Story-writer

Resources

Egan's Works

Save to Bookshelf

When the Victorians wanted to attack an author, they would invariably draw comparisons with the Regency writer Pierce Egan. John Forster, for instance, in a damning

Examiner

review of W.H. Ainsworth’s criminal romance

Jack Sheppard

in 1839, suggested that public decency had not been so threatened since “the time of Tom and Jerry.” Critics such as the formidable J. Hain Friswell were still keeping this tradition up as late as the 1860s. Nowadays these names are synonymous with the ultra-violent MGM cat and mouse cartoons of the late-1930s, but to a nineteenth-century ear, whether Regency or Victorian, they belonged to the rakish Corinthian Tom and his cousin from the country Jerry Hawthorne who, along with their friend Bob Logic, roamed the streets of the capital in search of a good…

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3827 words

Citation: Carver, Stephen. "Pierce Egan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 March 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1398, accessed 23 November 2024.]