Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack

<p>WINNER of the 2013 Katharine Briggs Award This book uses the nineteenth-century legend of Spring-Heeled Jack to analyse and challenge current notions of Victorian popular cultures. Starting as oral rumours this supposedly supernatural entity moved from rural folklore to metropolitan press sensation co-existing in literary and theatrical forms before finally degenerating into a nursery lore bogeyman to frighten children. A mercurial and unfixed cultural phenomenon Spring-Heeled Jack found purchase in both older folkloric traditions and emerging forms of entertainment. Through this intriguing study of a unique and unsettling figure Karl Bell complicates our appreciation of the differences interactions and similarities between various types of popular culture between 1837 and 1904. The book draws upon a rich variety of primary source material including folklorist accounts street ballads several series of -penny dreadful- stories (and illustrations) journals magazines newspapers comics court accounts autobiographies and published reminiscences. The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack is impressively researched social history and provides a fascinating insight into Victorian cultures. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in nineteenth-century English social and cultural history folklore or literature. Karl Bell is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth.</p>