SOURCE: "Ingoldsby's Fame: Contemporary and Posthumous," in Richard Harris Barham, University of Missouri Press, 1967, pp. 206-22.

In the following essay, Lane discusses the critical and popular reception of Barham's The Ingoldsby Legends.

We own we expect to see fresh Tennysons, fresh Thackerays, and fresh Lyttons, before we again fall in with that peculiar combination of qualities required for the production of the Ingoldsby Legends.

FRASER'S MAGAZINE, LXXXII (1871), 304

From the first appearance of the Legends, Ingoldsby was said to be "a most pleasant fellow in his mirthful mood" ("The 'Monstre' Balloon" or "The Coronation") and, in a different manner, "when making the flesh creep with terror in some old ghastly goblin legend."¹ One might hesitate to believe that these ghastly goblin Legends were ever capable of having quite so strong an effect upon listeners were there not supplementary evidence. John Hughes's writings of a few years later assure us...