Pierce Egan

Stephen Carver (Independent Scholar - Europe)
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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…

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 19 March 2024.]

1398 Pierce Egan 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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