ABSTRACT
While George Balcombe and Nathaniel Beverley Tucker other well-known novel, the unabashedly political Partisan Leader, are treated separately here, the two works are most productively viewed as companion pieces that were probably completed at about the same time. Both George Balcombe and The Partisan Leader reflect Tucker's increasing concern over Jacksonian democratization, which he associated with social disorder and mob rule. William Napier Raby has become a man of authority within the family and by virtue of that, a model of civil authority. Before leaving George Balcombe, it is important to recognize that the novel's reordering is not the reshuffling of authority within a community. At the end of the novel, when Balcombe is returning to Virginia to take his place, the Raby authority has been divided between two men, both of whom are capable of leading in the family and the community. Montague's usurpation of the Raby birthright has disordered an extended family.
