George Walker (novelist)

Walker's anti-Jacobin novel, The Vagabond: A Novel (1799) anachronistically sets the Gordon Riots of 1780 amidst the political events of the late 1790s.

After attending a lecture by "Citizen Ego", a character based on John Thelwall, the narrator unwittingly becomes a prominent figure in the riots.

Inverting radical accounts of the significance of the riots, The Vagabond portrays them as solely destructive and acquisitive.

[2] In the novel's dedication, Walker describes the novel as "an attempt to parry the Enemy with their own weapons" and to undermine radicalism's political romance".

[3] Literary critic Ian Haywood reads The Vagabond as evidence that the Gordon Riots "still exerted a powerful hold on popular memory" at the time of its publication.