The Spring-Heeled Jack Library

The legend of Spring-Heeled Jack has haunted Britain's imagination for nearly two centuries. Leaping across rooftops, terrifying Victorian London and inspiring countless stories, he has become one of the country's most remarkable folkloric figures. Twenty-five years after his reign of terror began in 1837, serial stories started to transform the mysterious assailant into one of Victorian fiction's most enduring anti-heroes.

​

The Spring-Heeled Jack Library brings together rare, forgotten and influential works relating to this extraordinary legend. From sensational Victorian penny dreadfuls and contemporary newspaper accounts to long-forgotten serials published in nineteenth-century story papers, the series traces Spring-Heeled Jack's remarkable literary evolution: from the terror of London, to a morally ambiguous masked aristocrat, and finally to a vengeful inventor driven by revenge. Alongside these primary sources, selected volumes include modern scholarship exploring his influence on Gothic literature, horror, folklore and popular culture.

​

Each volume is carefully edited and presented with contextual introductions, annotations and supporting material, making these fascinating texts accessible to modern readers while preserving their historical character. In several cases, surviving copies held in libraries are incomplete; these editions restore the missing instalments and present the stories in their complete form for the first time.

​

Beautifully produced and meticulously edited, the Spring-Heeled Jack Library allows today's readers to experience the texts that created—and sustained—one of Britain's greatest urban legends.