The Napoleon of Crime was published by HarperCollins in 1997. Adam Worth (1844–1902) was a German-American criminal who, by the 1880s, ran an international network of theft, forgery, and fraud from his London base. Scotland Yard called him “the Napoleon of crime” — a phrase Arthur Conan Doyle appropriated for Professor Moriarty.
Worth’s most famous theft: in 1876, he stole Thomas Gainsborough’s portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, from Agnew’s gallery in London. He kept the painting for twenty-five years — not to sell it but because he was in love with the image. He carried it with him across multiple continents, through arrests and escapes, and eventually returned it (for a fee) when he was old and broke.
Macintyre uses Worth’s life to explore the Victorian fascination with the criminal as artist — the “gentleman thief” whose crimes are distinguished from ordinary criminality by their elegance, planning, and absence of violence. Worth never carried a weapon. He despised brutal crime. He saw himself as a professional — and Victorian society, while officially condemning him, was secretly fascinated.
Collecting The Napoleon of Crime
First edition (HarperCollins, London, 1997): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $20–$40
- US first (Farrar, Straus): $15–$30