Baldwin by Richard Barham (1820)

This was published under a pseudonym, namely 'An Old Bachelor', and considerably anticipated Barham's great success with The Ingoldsby Legends. So much so, that it has generally been completely forgotten, as has his other novel, and he is regarded as a one-trick pony. On the basis of this, that verdict seems very unfair. This novel is an unusual amalgam, though less so given its era, of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It has not only the flavour of its own post-Napoleonic era, but also that of Smollett and Fielding. It begins with the discovery one morning in the snow of the body of a lonely man who'd left a coach near his home the night before. Then his lawyer discovers that his fortune is not as has been reputed; his young son and heir is nowhere near so well off as expected. These parts are marked with some ramshackle humour. Then the story progresses into one of love in the local village, where an almost Austenian tone prevails of gentle farce. There is also in this part a diversion to Oxford and the university, and some more rumbunctious wit. The endgame comes with an assignation in a summer-house, and a belatedly discovered murder in which young Baldwin, the heir, is almost uncounterably implicated. Barham takes the reader right up to the point of his hanging before a last minute reprieve in the form of the confession of an as yet unknown other. He then slowly relates a backstory to explain how the murder occurred, and to fully flavour young Baldwin's history and the reason for his diminution of fortune. Moments of wit and satire punctuate the good majority of all this, making a colourful feast of variety and event. The print-on-demand edition I read has the usual faults of very poor photocopying and so on; there are also a few missing pages. One can only hope that this book will get a proper republication, and Barham's reputation a boost which it thoroughly deserves, sooner rather than later.