The Mysteries of London Series by George W. M. Reynolds & Louis James & Dick Collins & Mary L. Shannon
Requirements: Epub Reader, 7.3MB, 6.6MB, 13.8MB | Retail
Overview: George William MacArthur Reynolds was a journalist and, as author of "penny dreadful" serials, one of the most popular authors of Victorian England. He was also a leading proponent of the working-class Chartist movement for expanded suffrage and other populist Parliamentary reforms.
Genre: Crime|Mystery|Gothic|Dark Fiction|Classics
The Mysteries of London, Vol. I [Unabridged & Illustrated]:
Valancourt Classics: 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 over a million more when published in volume form.
The Mysteries of London, Vol. II [Unabridged & Illustrated]:
Picking up right where the first volume left off, this second volume of George W.M. Reynolds’s The Mysteries of London continues and concludes the epic story. The virtuous hero, Richard Markham, is hot on the trail of the ferocious villain Anthony Tidkins, the "Resurrection Man", while the enigmatic George Montague Greenwood continues his rise to wealth and power. And in this volume, we meet new characters: Katherine Wilmot, an innocent girl falsely accused of murder; Gibbet, the deformed son of the public executioner; Lord Ravensworth, whose dastardly brother Gilbert Vernon plots his demise; the Marquis of Holmesford, a debauched libertine; young Albert Egerton, whose fortune becomes the target of the notorious rogues Arthur Chichester and Sir Rupert Harborough; and many more.
From the majestic ballrooms of Buckingham Palace and the great houses of the aristocracy to the lowest drinking and gambling dens and the bowels of Newgate prison and Bethlem madhouse, Reynolds’s novel sweeps the reader along at a breakneck pace, leaving no part of the great metropolis unexplored as it uncovers the sensational mysteries of Victorian London.
Additional Information:
The First Edition: ‘The Mysteries of London, Vol I’ is a sprawling tableau, seeking to depict life as Reynolds saw it in mid-Victorian London and expose what he viewed as gross injustice toward the poor. Some of the notable storylines involve Richard Markham and Eliza Sydney, two virtuous but ingenuous youths inveigled into the fraudulent schemes of rogues; George Montague, a libertine who appears literally out of nowhere and nearly overnight becomes one of the richest and most powerful men in London; Anthony Tidkins, the "Resurrection Man," a ruthless murderer and body-snatcher; and Ellen Monroe, an impoverished girl forced to submit to the worst degradations to earn money to feed her elderly father. The story takes us from royal drawing rooms, offices of cabinet ministers, and chambers of Parliament to the bowels of Newgate prison, the workhouse, and the lowest of taverns and gambling dens as Reynolds unfolds his thrilling plot, which never flags for an instant over the course of nearly 1,200 pages.
The Second Edition: The first in over 100 years, includes the unabridged text of the complete first series of The Mysteries, including its illustrations, more than fifty in all, and features a new foreword by Victorian scholar Louis James and annotations by Dr. Dick Collins.
Originally published as a "penny dreadful" and sold in weekly installments for a penny each, The Mysteries of London was the best-selling novel of its era, selling more than 50,000 copies per week and over a million in the course of a decade. But as readers of this new edition will discover, Reynolds’s novel is no mere antiquarian curiosity: it is an unputdownable page-turner and a classic of Victorian fiction that deserves to be ranked with Dickens’s Bleak House and Trollope’s The Way We Live Now. This edition reprints the unabridged text of the 1846 first edition, including all its illustrations, and includes a new introduction by Mary L. Shannon.
Download Instructions:
The Mysteries of London, Vol. I [Unabridged & Illustrated]:
http://gestyy.com/wX8gon
http://gestyy.com/wX8goR
The Mysteries of London, Vol. II [Unabridged & Illustrated]:
http://gestyy.com/wX8goO
http://gestyy.com/wX8goF
Both Volumes:
http://gestyy.com/wX8goL
http://gestyy.com/wX8goB
