Jack the Ripper in fiction

Jack the Ripper, the notorious serial killer who terrorized Whitechapel in 1888, features in works of fiction ranging from gothic novels published at the time of the murders to recent motion pictures, televised dramas and video games.

Important influences on the depiction of the Ripper include Marie Belloc Lowndes' 1913 novel The Lodger, which has been adapted for the stage and film, and Stephen Knight's 1976 work Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, which expanded on a conspiracy theory involving freemasons, royalty and the medical profession that features in many subsequent dramatisations. The literature of the late Victorian era, including Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes stories and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, has provided rich inspiration for story-makers who have fused these fictional worlds with the Ripper. The Ripper makes appearances throughout the science fiction and horror genres and is internationally recognised as an evil character. The association of the Ripper with death and sex is particularly appealing to heavy metal and rock musicians, who have incorporated the Ripper murders into their work.

Works of fiction inspired by the Whitechapel murders arose immediately after the atrocities were committed. The short gothic novel The Curse Upon Mitre Square by John Francis Brewer, which features the murder of Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square as a key plot element, was published in October 1888. Among works by other authors, In Darkest London by Margaret Harkness, who used the pseudonym John Law, was published in 1889. Harkness depicts the Ripper as a non-Jewish slaughterman who hides among the Jews in the East End of London.

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