Barnaby Rudge

Barnaby Rudge dramatizes two of Dicken's major preoccupations: private murder and public violence. He plunges us into the tense atmosphere of England in 1780, just before the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots (450 people killed). Lord Gordon was a loony, but he had charisma; his mob marched on Parliament, burned down Newgate Prison and ruled London for a few days.

In his depiction of the event and its leaders -- one of them Barnaby Rudge, brain-damaged at birth -- Dickens is at...