[Defoe, Daniel, attributed to] — John Sheppard | A Narrative of All the Robberies, Escapes, etc. of John Sheppard

[Defoe, Daniel, attributed to] — John Sheppard 

A Narrative of all the Robberies, Escapes, etc. of John Sheppard…publish’d at the particular Request of the Prisoner. London: John Applebee, 1724

8vo (190 x 115 mm). Engraved hand-colored frontispiece; a few faint red-ink stamps, title page soiled, minor marginal repair to a single leaf, marginal dampstaining and spots throughout, upper right corner of D2 chipped, pencil notations on front pastedown. [With:] The Eventful Life and Unparalleled Exploits of the Notorious Jack Shepard, the Housebreaker. London: Thomas White, [1840], inlaid at front endpapers (215 x 150 mm), text in two columns; small tear at horizontal fold. Quarter brown morocco over red paper boards, spine labeled with short-title; boards rubbed and worn at extremities, minor tear at head of spine. 

Rare account of the notorious British criminal turned celebrity—John Sheppard.

Tales of the professional prison escapee John "Jack" Sheppard would captivate the British time and time again. First arrested for committing robberies alongside his brother, and his lover, Sheppard would escape the parish roundhouse prison of St. Giles-in-the-Fields by breaking a hole through the roof. Arrested for the second time, Sheppard and Elizabeth (known as Edgeworth Bess) escaped New Prison in Clerkenwell by scaling a 7.6 meter wall with a rope made from sheets. Unable to resist the temptation of petty crime, he was finally captured and detained at Newgate Prison. In 1724 at the age of 22, the notorious and artful Jack Sheppard was sent to the gallows at Tyburn.

Eight editions of the Narrative were published in the same year of his execution amongst multitudes of other pamphlets, broadsides, and theatrical works. Sheppard's memory and influence would most prominently live on through John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, which would later inspire Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. Despite the Narrative claiming that its text was handed to the publisher by Sheppard himself—it has long been attributed to Defoe.

REFERENCES

Moore 466; ESTC N506907