A Study Guide for Michael Crichton's "The Great Train Robbery"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Michael Crichton's "The Great Train Robbery," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535837088

Book preview

10

The Great Train Robbery

Michael Crichton

1975

Introduction

The Great Train Robbery (1975) is a historical novel by Michael Crichton about a group of criminals who steal several hundred pounds of gold bullion from a moving train in England in 1855. The novel is based very loosely on a real event that Crichton became familiar with while reading about the criminal underclass in Victorian London. The Great Train Robbery was Crichton's third novel published under his own name, though he had already achieved great success as a mystery and suspense writer working under various pseudonyms, and it was his first venture into writing about a bygone era. The novel was a success, and Crichton continued his interest in historical fiction with his next novel, Eaters of the Dead (1976).

Though The Great Train Robbery focuses mainly on an elaborate plot to steal gold, Crichton provides many fascinating glimpses into Victorian life, particularly into the harsh conditions endured by London's poor and destitute in the slum area known as the Holy Land. The characters in the book also use a great deal of Victorian slang; some readers may find these words confusing in the early chapters, but most of the terms are either explained or easily understood when taken in context.

The Great Train Robbery was successful enough as a novel to attract interest in a film adaptation, which was written and directed by Crichton in 1979. The film, starring Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, and Lesley-Anne Down, was well received, and Crichton won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Screenplay in 1980. Although The Great Train Robbery has become overshadowed by some of the author's later novels, such as Jurassic Park (1990) and State of Fear (2004), it remains a beloved tale of a most unusual heist set in a fascinating historical era.

Author Biography

Crichton was born on October 23, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. His father was a journalist who was drafted to fight in World War II soon after his son was born. By the time he was thirteen years old, Crichton was six feet, seven inches tall; the shyness he experienced from being so different from other children led him to concentrate largely on reading and studying. Crichton grew up on Long Island, New York, and being around his journalist father led him to view writing as a natural career choice. He even sold a travel article to the New York Times—about Sunset Crater National Monument in Arizona, which he visited with his family—when he was only fourteen. While attending college at Harvard, however, he feared that writing was not a realistic career choice, so he chose instead to become a doctor.

Yet Crichton continued to write and even helped to pay for medical school by writing paperback thrillers under the pseudonym John Lange. The same year Crichton graduated from Harvard Medical School, he also won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his medical mystery novel A Case of Need (1968), originally published under the pseudonym Jeffery Hudson.

His earliest successes under his own name