When William Harrison Ainsworth wrote Rookwood, he was struggling against a recent bankruptcy of the business he shared with his father-in-law. Returning to the practice of law in 1830 and anticipating the birth of his third daughter, according to biographer Stephen James Carver, Ainsworth wrote to a friend asking whether he knew of any gypsy stories and any accounts of “authentic middle-age speeches delivered over the dead.” His interests signal that he had begun work on the manuscript that would propel him to long-lasting fame.

For a public mourning the recent death of Sir Walter Scott and still years away from recognizing the great talent that would be Charles Dickens, Ainsworth’s blend of Gothic and romance was heartily welcomed.

The novel’s gruesome tale begins with the legend that a branch falling from an old lime tree on the grounds of Rookwood Place always precedes a death. As predicted, the lord, Sir Piers Rookwood, dies and leaves behind one legitimate son, Ranulph, and one illegitimate son, Luke, to battle for the family fortune.

Into their conflict come the mad sexton Peter Bradley, actually Sir Piers’s long-lost brother, Alan, and Lady Maud Rookwood, Ranulph’s mother. They pit the brothers against one another in romance, as both fall in love with the beautiful Eleanor Mowbray. As Ranulph’s cousin and heir to a family fortune, Eleanor seems to be the key to a second prophecy that distant branches of the family will marry and then gain control over a powerful family empire.

One of several incantations and songs in the book, the prophecy reads:
“When the stray Rook shall perch on the topmost bough, /
There shall be clamour and screaming, I trow; /
But of right, and of rule, of the ancient nest, /
The Rook that with Rook mates shall hold him possest.”

Eleanor loves Ranulph but falls victim to Luke’s apparent obsession with her; he is urged to pursue his passion by Bradley. Luke rejects his gypsy lover, Sybil Lovel, and asks for help in winning Eleanor from the famous highwayman Dick Turpin. Instead of gaining Eleanor, Luke marries Sybil by mistake, as Eleanor has been drugged and kidnapped, hidden in a gypsy camp.

Sybil liberates Eleanor and then kills herself, causing her grandmother to send Luke a poisoned lock of Sybil’s hair, which leads to his death. As Lady Maud and Bradley, now revealed to be Alan Rookwood, fight in a tomb, it mysteriously seals itself, leading to two more grisly deaths. Lady Rookwood is crushed inside a sarcophagus, while Alan waits in vain for Luke to rescue him, not knowing of Luke’s death.

Ainsworth indulges in further melodrama as he describes Alan’s terror with the emotional hyperbole that characterizes the entire novel: “The dead, he fancied, were bursting from their coffins, and he peopled the darkness with grisly phantoms. They were around about him on each side, whirling and rustling, gibbering, groaning, shrieking, laughing, and lamenting . . . . The air seemed to grow suffocating, pestilential; the wild laughter was redoubled; the horrible troop assailed him.” His knuckles grow bloody and his nails “were torn off by the roots.”

While Ranulph and Eleanor are left to marry and realize their love, it is the novel’s horror, rather than its romance, that enthralled readers for decades.

Bibliography
Carver, Stephen James. The Life and Works of the Lancashire Novelist William Harrison Ainsworth, 1805–1882. Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003.