Jack Sheppard is a novel by William Harrison Ainsworth serially published in Bentley's Miscellany from 1839 to 1840, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. It is a historical romance and a Newgate novel based on the real life of the 18th-century criminal Jack Sheppard.Jack Sheppard was serially published in Bentley's Miscellany from January 1839 until February 1840.[1] The novel was intertwined with the history of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, which ran in the same publication from February 1837 to April 1839. Dickens, previously a friend of Ainsworth's, became distant from Ainsworth as a controversy brewed over the scandalous nature around Jack Sheppard, Oliver Twist, and other novels describing criminal life. The relationship dissolved between the two, and Dickens retired from the magazine as its editor and made way for Ainsworth to replace him as editor at the end of 1839