Charles Dickens' fifth novel was his first historical novel, his second and last being A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens was inspired by the historical novels popularized by Sir Walter Scott (The Waverley Novels, Ivanhoe) and Barnaby Rudge was to be his first serious work of literature.
Dickens signed a contract in 1836 to write the book, then titled Gabriel Varden-The Locksmith of London, for Richard Bentley of Bentley's Miscellany, where Oliver Twist was published, in the three-volume style popularized by Scott, for 200 pounds. With his fame skyrocketing after Pickwick, Oliver Twist and Nickleby, Dickens renegotiated the contract with Bentley and later bought out the contract and the novel was published weekly
in Master Humphrey's Clock by Chapman and Hall. The novel concentrates on the Gordon (anti-Catholic) Riots in London in 1780. The novel was illustrated by Phiz and George Cattermole.
Gathered round the fire at the Maypole Inn, in the village of Chigwell, on a foul weather evening in the year 1775 were John Willet, proprietor of the Maypole, and his three cronies. One of the three, Solomon Daisy, tells a stranger at the inn a well-known local tale of the murder of Reuben Haredale which had occurred 22 years ago that very day. Reuben had been owner of the Warren, an estate in the area, now the residence of the deceased Reuben's brother, Geoffrey, and his niece, Reuben's daughter Emma Haredale.
After the murder Reuben's gardener and steward were missing and suspect in the crime. The body of the steward was later found, identified only by clothes and jewelry. The gardener was never found and was assumed to be the murderer.
Joe Willet, son of the Maypole proprietor, quarrels with his father because John treats the twenty year old Joe as a child. Finally having had enough of this ill treatment, Joe leaves the Maypole and goes for a soldier, stopping to say goodbye to the woman he loves, Dolly Varden, daughter of locksmith Gabriel Varden.
The story advances five years to a wintry evening early in the year 1780. On the 27th anniversary of the murder of Reuben Haredale, Solomon Daisy, winding the bell tower clock, sees a ghost in the churchyard. He reports this hair-raising event to his friends at the Maypole and John Willet decides that Geoffrey Haredale should hear the story. He departs amidst a winter storm taking Hugh, hostler of the Maypole, to guide him.
These visitors prove to be Lord George Gordon, his secretary, Gashford, and a servant, John Grueby. Next day the three depart for London, inciting anti-Catholic sentiment along the way and recruiting protestant volunteers from which Ned Dennis, hangman of Tyburn, and Simon Tappertit, former apprentice to Gabriel Varden, are chosen as leaders. Hugh, finding a handbill left at the Maypole, joins the protestant throng Dickens describes as "sprinkled doubtless here and there with honest zealots, but composed for the most part of the very scum and refuse of London, whose growth was fostered by bad criminal laws, bad prison regulations, and the worst conceivable police."