Greatest 12 Characters of the 1830's

Who is on this list, what this list is about and how they got on the list!

Synopsis
This is one of a set of lists I made showing a progression of the greatest characters in a heroic style throughout time. Focusing for the most part on one decade at a time. The heroes that we know and love today were inspired by heroes before them. Some are even real people who moved into folklore. Before comics there were pulp magazines. Before that there was dime novels and before that was the penny dreadfuls. There were many others as well like Gothic novels, story papers and yes even a real novel.   
 
The List 
These are the greatest characters of the 1830' between the years 1830 and 1839.     These would be characters who will go on to be the biggest influences in comics either directly or indirectly.  In other words these will become great inspirations to future comic characters and stories. Right now they are in order of year.
 

New Stuff
The first thing many will have to do when they look at this list is get the Disney versions of literature out of their heads.  For example The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a lot more Dramatic than Disney's and the characters are much more full and in some cases tragic. 
 
Here is the past list
Greatest 12 Characters of the 1820's  
Here is the next list   
Greatest 12 Characters of the 1840's

List items

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  1. The Hunchback of Notre Dame

  The Hunchback or better called Quasimodo is a wonderful tragic character. He and all the others in this book are much darker and more tragic than the Disney cartoon. He got his first appearance in Notre-Dame de Paris in 1831.

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  2. Esmeralda

  Esmeralda is a strong female character especially for the 1830's. Her tragic story first appeared in Notre-Dame de Paris in 1831. Her Disney love interest Phoebus faces a worse tragedy than all He gets married.

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  3. Claude Frollo

  Claude Frollo is just another reason celibacy is a bad idea. He is a very complex and real villain. He first appeared in Notre-Dame de Paris in 1831.

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  4. Davy Crockett

  Another real life person Davy Crockett became a legend in his own time. Books like dime novels were written about him doing miraculous things like wresting tornado's. The first appearance in fiction was the Life and Adventures of Col. David Crockett of West Tennessee in 1833.

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  5. Captain Blackbeard

  Blackbeard use to fight with lit fuses in his hair and beard. He was a character to be reckoned with. It is hard to even determine what was true and what was fiction. Some earlier accounts of Blackbead may have been exaggerated but the 1835 work Blackbeard: A page from the colonial history of Philadelphia is perhaps his fist appearance in fiction.

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  6. Egaeus

  Egaes is one of the few narrators with an actual name in a Poe story. Like many other narrators he is mad. He would eventually removes all the teeth from his wife's mouth in the short story Berenice in 1835.

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  7. Goldilocks

  Breaking and Entering and theft. Not bad for a little girl. Goldilocks first appeared as Goldenhair in the short story the Three Bears written in 1837

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  8. The Little Mermaid

  The original Little Mermaid was written in 1837. Unlike the Disney version that everyone loves the original story does not end happily.

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  9. Nicholas Nickleby

  Nicholas Nickleby is much like Oliver Twist only not as depressing. He first appeared in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby in 1838.

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  10. Artful Dodger

  "He was a snub-nosed, flat-browed, common-faced boy enough; and as dirty a juvenile as one would wish to see; but he had about him all the airs and manners of a man. He was short of his age: with rather bow-legs, and little, sharp, ugly eyes. His hat was stuck on the top of his head so lightly, that it threatened to fall off every moment--and would have done so, very often, if the wearer had not had a knack of every now and then giving his head a sudden twitch, which brought it back to its old place again. He wore a man's coat, which reached nearly to his heels. He had turned the cuffs back, half-way up his arm, to get his hands out of the sleeves: apparently with the ultimated view of thrusting them into the pockets of his corduroy trousers; for there he kept them. He was, altogether, as roystering and swaggering a young gentleman as ever stood four feet six, or something less, in the bluchers." His first appearance is in Oliver Twist 1838.

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  11. Bill Sikes

  Bill Sikes is a sick madman who even tries to drown his own dog because it reminds him to much of himself. His first appearance is in Oliver Twist in 1838.

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  12. Roderick Usher

  Roderick Usher is driven mad by his own haunted home and He is eventually killed by the corpse of his own sister. He first appeared in The Fall of the House of Usher in 1839.