As a longtime lover of Gothic literature, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on it, which became my book The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption. My second book on the Gothic, Vampire Groomsand Spectre Brides, explored how French and British Gothic authors influenced each other. The City Mysteries novels were part of that influence, as evidenced by how British author Reynolds borrowed the idea to write The Mysteries of London from French author Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris. After reading so many City Mysteriesnovels, I decided to write my own, complete with crossdressers, prostitutes, criminals, innocents, and the genre’s many other signature elements.
This book began the entire City Mysteries genre. When French novelist Eugène Sue published it serially in 1842-1843, it took the world by storm and became an instant bestseller. I love the intrigue in the novel. The main character, Prince Rodolphe, is in disguise as a working man in Paris among criminals and the poor with the intent to help them.
I love how the novel shows the complex personalities of the different characters and their backstories, explaining how many became criminals. The novel is full of Gothic atmosphere and helped to change the Gothic from being set in crumbling castles and the past to the present-day and the modern city. This Gothic cityscape reflected the trauma and displacement many felt living in crime-ridden metropolises.
The first new translation in over a century of the the brilliant epic novel that inspired Les Miserables
From July 1842 through October 1843, Parisians rushed to the newspaper each week for the latest installment of Eugene Sue's The Mysteries of Paris, one of France's first serial novels. The suspenseful story of Rodolphe, a magnetic hero of noble heart and shadowy origins, played out over ninety issues, garnering wild popularity and leading many to call it the most widely read novel of the 19th century. Sue's novel created the city mystery genre and inspired a raft of successors, including Les…
The Mysteries of Paris was so popular that Alexandre Dumas’ publisher wanted him to write a similar novel. The result was this book (1845), which focuses on Edmond Dantès, who is unjustly imprisoned by his enemies. Upon escaping and finding a great treasure, Dantès disguises himself as the Count of Monte Cristo and begins to exact his revenge.
The novel enters the criminal world of both Marseille and Paris. The count creates mystery by being a master of disguise and manipulating events without his victims knowing his identity or why their lives are crumbling. At the same time, the count is not without compassion and questions the morality of his own actions, thereby raising the novel to the status of true literature.
The epic tale of wrongful imprisonment, adventure and revenge, in its definitive translation
Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to use the treasure to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas' epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized…
British author George W. M. Reynolds had no qualms about stealing Sue’s idea and title and writing his own book called The Mysteries of London (1844-1846). I love this novel for its sensationalism, which caused it to be the ultimate Victorian bestseller, even outselling Dickens.
The novel brings together criminals, women forced into prostitution, murderers, crossdressers, and royalty. At the heart of it is the story of the Markham brothers, one good, one evil. We follow their paths as they interact with all the other people in London and become embroiled in conspiracies. One of them even ends up marrying royalty and ruling a small European country. Reynolds’ bold writing style and mastery of multiple plots makes this 2,500-page novel highly readable and shocking even today.
The government feared him. Rival authors like Charles Dickens, whom he outsold, despised him. The literary establishment did its best to write him out of literary history. But when George W.M. Reynolds, journalist, political reformer, Socialist, and novelist, died in 1879, even his critics were forced to acknowledge the truth of his obituary, which declared that he was the most popular writer of his time. And The Mysteries of London, which was published in 1844 in the "penny dreadful" format of weekly installments sold for a penny each, was his masterpiece and greatest success, selling 50,000 copies a week and…
This book might as well have been named The Mysteries of Philadelphia. It was the first American City Mysteriesnovel. Again, we see a plethora of good and bad characters and mysterious events occurring that many of the characters do not understand because criminals and a secret society manipulate innocent citizens.
My favorite part of the novel is the character Bug, who appears less than human. Another striking moment is a prophetic vision in which “Sodom” is destroyed and Independence Hall is in ruins, symbolizing how the birthplace of independence has failed to live up to the American Revolution’s ideals. The author, George Lippard, who was a friend of Edgar Allan Poe, offers a dark social critique of 1840s America.
America's best-selling novel in its time, ""The Quaker City"", published in 1845, is a sensational expose of social corruption, personal debauchery and the sexual exploitation of women in antebellum Philadelphia. This new edition, with an introduction by David S. Reynolds, brings back into print this important work by George Lippard (1822-1854), a journalist, freethinker and labour and social reformer.
This stands out fromCity Mysteriesnovels because it is nonfiction. Charlotte Führer borrows theCity Mysteries title to share her true recollections of being a midwife in Montreal, and her real-life experiences are just as shocking as anything in Sue or Reynolds’ novels.
As a midwife, Führer found herself having to keep many secrets since she was frequently called upon to be discreet in delivering illegitimate children in nineteenth-century Montreal. The book is written as a series of stories about different childbirths she was involved in, and she often provides updates on what happened to the people involved. I love how it is gossipy and shows that City Mysteriesfiction was not so sensational that it wasn’t accurately reflected in real life.
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.
When the Marquis de Marquette chooses to spend the summer of 1908 in Marquette, Michigan, a city named for his illustrious Jesuit relative, the residents are all astir with excitement. People begin vying to rub shoulders with the marquis, but he remains very private until he hosts a masquerade ball at the Hotel Superior. Only the finest families are invited, and even they feel slighted when he has eyes for only one dance partner.
Soon, inexplicable events begin to occur, events that threaten to expose the secrets of some of Marquette’s finest families. People begin to play a dangerous game to expose others’ crimes while maintaining their own façade of respectability. When all is over, who will have survived the Marquis’ revenge?
Shahrazad’s Gift is a collection of linked short stories set in contemporary Cairo — magical, absurd, and humorous.
The author focuses on the off-beat, little-known stories, far from CNN news: a Swedish belly dancer who taps into the Oriental fantasies of her clientele; a Japanese woman studying Arabic, driven mad by the noise and chaos of the city; a frustrated Egyptian housewife who becomes obsessed by the activities of her Western gay neighbor; an American journalist who covered the civil war in Beirut who finds friendship with her Egyptian dentist. We also meet the two protagonists of McCullough's Confessions of…
Shahrazad's Gift is a collection of linked short stories set in contemporary Cairo-magical, absurd and humorous. The author focuses on the off-beat, little-known stories, far from CNN news: a Swedish belly dancer who taps into the Oriental fantasies of her clientele; a Japanese woman studying Arabic, driven mad by the noise and chaos of the city; a frustrated Egyptian housewife who becomes obsessed by the activities of her Western gay neighbor; an American journalist who covered the civil war in Beirut who finds friendship with her Egyptian dentist. We also meet the two protagonists of McCullough's Confessions of a Knight…
