Neolan

Dandy Dick; or, The King’s Highway (1900-1901), written by Ned Neolan and Ben Brightly and here edited and introduced by J. S. Mackley, was originally serialised in The Halfpenny Marvel over forty-two issues between April 1900 and February 1901. Unlike the earlier penny-dreadful tales of Spring-Heeled Jack, this narrative casts the leaping phantom as a mysterious side figure while its focus turns to the gallant world of English highwaymen.

Set against the romanticised backdrop of eighteenth-century London and the wilds of Finchley Common, the story follows Dandy Dick, a wrongly-accused nobleman turned outlaw, whose adventures bring him into the company of legendary figures-Dick Turpin, Colonel Blood, Jack Sheppard, and the sinister thief-taker Jonathan Wild. Their clashes of honour and corruption evoke a folkloric England poised between chivalry and criminality.

The extensive introduction explores how the serial transforms criminal folklore into heroic romance, blending Gothic sensationalism with historical myth-making. The figure of Spring-Heeled Jack, glimpsed as a spectral protector amid highway skirmishes, bridges the gap between supernatural horror and patriotic adventure. Through Mackley’s annotations, this volume illuminates how Victorian readers re-imagined earlier centuries as moral theatre, where even the outlaw could embody virtue.

Drawing on British Library copies and previously inaccessible materials, this is the first collected edition of Dandy Dick and its sequel Dandy Dick’s Double. It offers modern readers both a thrilling glimpse of Edwardian serial fiction and a critical reappraisal of Britain’s enduring fascination with gallant crime and Gothic justice.