Barnaby Rudge

A locksmith's household, a simple-minded boy with a raven, and the Gordon riots of 1780 burning Newgate down around them. This is Dickens's first historical novel, and the raven Grip was drawn from a bird he kept; Poe reviewed the book, admired the raven, and four years later published a poem about one. Fifty-seven interior scenes from 1842 to 1908, among them Stanhope Forbes's reading of the news of the Queen's death in a Cornish cottage, gather the hearths and rooms whose quiet the riots shatter.