An example of Newgate fiction, in which writers based novels on true criminal accounts, Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Eugene Aram established him as the most popular novelist of England during the same year Sir Walter Scott, to whom Bulwer-Lytton dedicated the book’s first edition, died.

Although some protested Newgate fiction as overly sensational and even immoral, it enjoyed a wide readership. It derived its name from the Newgate Calendar, a collection of 18th- and 19th-century descriptions of the careers of notorious criminals, providing popular reading material, especially for the semi-literate. Protesters claimed that Bulwer-Lytton’s novel lionized a common murderer and actually encouraged crime.

In fact, Aram was anything but common. An English philologist who lived from 1704 to 1759, Aram was the first to identify the relationship between the Celtic languages and other European languages. The Newgate Calendar account gives a biography that emphasizes his propensity for books and study, and notes that at age 16, he “found in polite literature much greater charms than in mathematics; which occasioned him now to apply himself chiefly to poetry, history and antiquities.”

Caught in an “unhappy” marriage, Aram would blame his later “misfortunes” on the “misconduct” of his wife. Those writing the report note a great inconsistency between Aram’s scholarly pursuits and the motivation of gaining mere wealth that “induced” him to commit a crime. The report explains that Aram convinced his friend, the shoemaker Daniel Clark, to convert his worldly goods to cash, of which Aram and a partner, Richard Houseman, planned to rob him; Houseman would later testify that he saw Aram murder Clark.

When a body discovered 14 years later was identified as Clark’s, Mrs. Aram testified that she believed her husband had murdered his friend. Authorities arrested Aram and charged him with murder in 1758 as he worked on an Anglo-Celtic lexicon. He was hanged on August 6, 1759, as indicated in The Complete Newgate Calendar, Volume III. Thomas Hood also based a ballad, titled “The Dream of Eugene Aram,” on the popular story, and the cave where Aram supposedly hid Clark’s body became a popular tourist site.

The novel relates in detail the story of Aram’s poverty-stricken childhood, which supposedly drove him to participate in the murder of his friend. The friend is reported missing, but no body is found. Self-educated, with an insatiable drive for knowledge, Aram distinguishes himself in studies. He matures into a scholar attempting to live a normal life, despite the terrible guilt he feels. His crime returns to claim him 14 years following the murder on his wedding day, adding to the sensationalism of the story, and he is tried and sentenced to death.

True to the facts of Aram’s real crime, the novel emphasizes the emotional and mental effects of a crime on its perpetrator, in the vein of William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794). Bulwer-Lytton used the Gothic style to sensationalize not only the horrors of the crime but also those that followed for Aram. Enhanced by Bulwer-Lytton’s research and literary elevation, the criminal subject matter gained a wide audience.

Bulwer-Lytton was not the first to feature a criminal sympathetically. He drew on a tradition that glamorized those outside the law, including that of Scott, who showed sympathy in his novels for smugglers, Gypsies, and the famous Robin Hood. Some criticism of the novel came from unsuccessful writers, annoyed that a social “dandy” politician like Bulwer-Lytton had transformed himself into a successful writer. However, the legitimate concern reflected the growing power of fiction to affect its readers, as well as a critical call for authors to develop a social consciousness.

Bibliography
Tarlton Law Library, University of Texas Law School.
“Eugene Aram.” The Complete Newgate Calendar, Vol. 3.
Available online. URL: http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/newgate3/aram.htm.
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Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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