Thomas Skinner Surr adapted the play into the three-volume novel George Barnwell, published in 1798.[19]
The use of The London Merchant as a tale for the moral edification of apprentices is satirized by Charles Dickens in Great Expectations. Pip is subjected by Mr Wopsle and Mr Pumblechook to a reading of "the affecting tragedy of George Barnwell" in which Pip is stung by their "identification of the whole affair with my unoffending self".
In On Liberty, philosopher John Stuart Mill mentions Barnwell's murder of his uncle to illustrate the grounds for punishing wrongdoing: "George Barnwell murdered his uncle to get money for his mistress, but if he had done it to set himself up in business, he would equally have been hanged."[20]
