ROOKWOOD.

A Romance.

BY

WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH, ESQ.

"I see how Ruin, with a palsied hand,

Pegins to shake our ancient house to dust."

YORKSHIRE TRAGEDY.

A New Edition.

LONDON:

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS,

THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE;

NEW YORK; 416, BROOME STREET.

MEMOIR

OF

WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH.

BY LAMAN BLANCHARD.

A RECENT review in a leading journal of France bears testimony to the great popularity which has been obtained in that romance-reading nation by the writer of whom we are now to offer some account. The estimation in which he is held by his own countrymen is evinced by the large sale which each new production of his pen successively commands. In America his writings have been extensively read. They have all been translated into German, and some of them into Dutch. Dramas have been founded upon them; their more striking passages have become as familiar as household words; and their subjects, in some important instances at least, are associated with the most memorable features of English history. The biography of a writer who has secured so prominent a position may be supposed calculated to awaken a more than ordinary curiosity; not merely with respect to those early dawnings of intellect, and those traits of personal character, to which a deep interest always attaches, but in relation to the family from which he has sprung. Happily, in the present instance, we are able to gratify the reader's curiosity.

WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH unites in his own name the names of two familes which, in the eminent success of various members of them, had obtained celebrity long prior to the present generation. Amongst his paternal ancestors are, Robert Ainsworth, the well-known scholar and author of the Latin Dictionary, and Henry Ainsworth, the Brownist, who flourished at the commencement of the seventeenth century. The latter was one of the most profound Hebrew scholars of his time, and author of "Annotations upon the