John C. Wright's Journal

Surely no one is impatient for a book review from one hundred eighty years ago, and no one will mind if I add material. The Penny Dreadful tale of Spring-Heeled Jack is interesting, at least to me, because it is the precursor of similar nocturnal avengers, as The Shadow and The Batman, and because the great difference between the Penny Dreadfuls of 1840 and the Pulps of 1930.

I took the liberty of adding the following paragraphs to my review from earlier this week:

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Spring-Heeled Jack

The Terror of London

First published in The Boy’s Standard, London, in the 1840’s.

From such odd acorns are mighty oaks to grow!

I have once or twice heard tell of the penny dreadful story of Spring-Heeled Jack, which was the first example, perhaps the inspiration, for such pulp heroes as The Shadow and The Spider, who are, in turn, the inspiration for The Batman and similar nocturnal vigilantes. So I resolved to seek it out to read it.

Spring-Heeled Jack is himself not a fictional character, any more than Jack the Ripper, but one who, like him, was incorporated into fictional stories later, including science fiction stories.

If the fictional Spring-Heeled Jack has landed fewer guest star spots in science fiction or steampunk, it is because the original news stories were also less famous: although, at the time, they caused considerable commotion and stir among the London suburbs.

Newspaper reports of Spring-Heeled Jack ran from 1838 to 1904, from one end of the reign of Queen Victoria to the other, where he seems to be a ghost, or a devil, or a bear. What to make of those reports is beyond the scope of this column, which is concerned only with a story review.

Whether the real Spring-Heeled Jack, if he were real, was a prankster or a lunatic or an extraterrestrial, the reader must turn to wiser sources to seek out that answer.

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