Alien Con-Man: Georges Darien's “Gottlieb Krumm”

The quotation is on p. 260 of the Penguin edition of Barry Lyndon (Harmondsworth, 1975 (1856)).

Gottlieb was also the forename of the top swindler, Raubvogel, in Darien's L'Epaulette.

Schurke (Scoundrel) and Lügner (Liar) also appear in L'Epaulette.

“A swindling group of phantom capitalists.” The “long” implies either working at a distance, or working on “long” credit. See Partridge E. , The Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang (Harmondsworth, 1978), 546.

Blair J. , The Confidence Man in Modern Fiction (London, 1979), 12 and 17.

Melville H. , The Confidence-Man (London, 1948 (1857)), 53.

See p. 272 of the novel, for evidence of Darien's familiarity with Stock Exchange practices.

Vizetelly E. , The Anarchists (London, 1911), 297. In the General Election of 1895, Joseph Chamberlain and his fellow Unionists obliged the Conservative Party to adopt restrictions on aliens as part of its social policy. The Trade Unions were also hostile to immigrants.

See Gartner L. , The Jewish Immigrant in England (1870-1940) (London, 1960), 33 and 75.

Auriant , Georges Darien et l'inhumaine comédie (Brussels, 1966), 144.

Williams E. , 'Made in Germany', (London, 1896), 157–61.

Gordon W. E. , The Alien Immigrant (London, 1903), 259–60.

Quoted in Gainer B. , The Alien Invasion (London, 1972), 204.

Ibid., 53.

Alter R. , Rogue's Progress (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 46.

Melville , The Confidence-Man, 135.

Fuller R. , quoting a letter by Melville , Introduction to The Confidence-Man, p. xii.

Thackeray , Barry Lyndon, 299.

Ibid., 158.

The problem of caring for a mentally sick wife obliged Thackeray to try his hand at potboilers. He more or less disowned Barry Lyndon subsequently.

Mann T. , Confessions of Felix Krull (Harmondsworth, 1958), 40.

Nietzsche , Beyond Good and Evil (Harmondsworth, 1973), 97.

Thackeray , Barry Lyndon, 271.

Blair , op. cit., 68.

Chandler F. W. , Romances of Roguery (New York, 1961 (1899)), 59–60.

Blair , op. cit., 24.

Alter , Rogue's Progress, 30.

Saintsbury G. , A Consideration of Thackeray (London, 1931), 96.

See my article, “Vallès and the Existential Pun“, Mosaic, ix, no. 3 (April, 1976), 27–39.

Anon , “A striking Satirical Novel: Gottlieb Krumm“, Reynolds Newspaper, 1 May 1904, p. 2.

Thompson A. , “Gottlieb Krumm“, The Clarion, 13 May 1904, p. 3.

Fels J. , quoted in Dudden A. Joseph Fels and the Single-Tax Movement (Philadelphia, 1971), 3.