George W. M. Reynolds

Reynolds was a prolific writer of popular fiction starting from The Youthful Imposter, published in 1835 which was then republished later as The Parricide; or, The Youth's Career of Crime. After the publication of his first novel Reynolds then assumed the editorship of The Monthly Magazine, a position which he held between 1837 and 1838 and wrote articles under the pseudonym of "Parisianus."[3] Almost forgotten now, during his lifetime he was more read than Dickens or Thackeray; in his obituary, the trade magazine The Bookseller called Reynolds "the most popular writer of our times" ("Obituary" 600). His best-known work was the long-running serial The Mysteries of London (1844), which borrowed liberally in concept from Eugène Sue's Les Mystères de Paris (The Mysteries of Paris). It sold 40,000 copies a week in penny instalments and more than a million copies cumulatively before it was issued in bound volumes, enjoying an international circulation in French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations. Although it was outlawed by the authorities, the German version achieved the status of a cult favourite on the Russian black market.

The Mysteries of London and its even lengthier sequel, The Mysteries of the Court of London, are considered to be among the seminal works of the Victorian "urban mysteries" genre, a style of sensational fiction which adapted elements of Gothic novels – with their haunted castles, innocent noble damsels in distress and nefarious villains – to produce stories which instead emphasized the poverty, crime, and violence of a great metropolis, complete with detailed and often sympathetic descriptions of the lives of lower-class lawbreakers and extensive glossaries of thieves' cant, all interwoven with a frank sexuality not usually found in popular fiction of the time.

An illustration from The Mysteries of London

The Mysteries of London, like most of Reynolds' works, was published first as a weekly penny dreadful, or "Penny Blood", illustrated with lurid engravings and circulating mainly among readers of limited means and education. Although Reynolds was unusual in his religious skepticism (one of the main characters in The Mysteries of London was a clergyman turned libertine) and political radicalism, his tales were intended for his mostly middle- and lower-class readers; they featured "hump-backed dwarves, harridans and grave-robbers [who] groped past against a background of workhouses, jails, execution yards, thieves' kitchens and cemeteries. His readers could depend on him to bring in the theme of maiden virtue rudely strumpeted as often as possible."

Reynolds' Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf was a gothic novel which described how the title character became a werewolf after making a pact with the devil.[4] Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf was republished in 1975 by Dover Books with an introduction and bibliography of Reynolds by E. F. Bleiler.[4]

Reynold's novels remained in print on both sides of the Atlantic longer than those of many of his contemporaries. An 1875 edition of Reynolds's Ciprina, published in Philadelphia, lists 40 novels including Mysteries of London under the heading "George W. M. Reynolds' Great Works", priced between 50 cents and $1.00. The Mysteries of the Court of London, translated into Marathi as well as Urdu, remained a best-seller in India well into the twentieth century. The Marathi translation was done by K.B. Mande in the early 20th century and was titled The Secret Deeds of the Elites of London. It was very popular in the Marathi-speaking area, as is evident by numerous references to the text in early 20th-century Marathi literature.

The first issue of The Mysteries of the Court of London (1849-56)

Reynolds was also a major figure in the Chartist movement. In 1846, he founded two magazines, Reynolds' Miscellany (RM) and The London Journal (LJ). In 1849, he founded Reynolds's Political Instructor, which in May 1850 became Reynolds Weekly Newspaper, the leading radical newspaper of the post-Chartist era. It long survived him, ending publication in 1967 as the Sunday Citizen. Edwin Brett, a fellow chartist and publisher of penny dreadfuls, became a lifelong friend.[5]

For both Reynolds's Political Instructor and Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper, between 1849 and 1856, he would write a signed editorial every week in which he gave his opinion on the pressing political matters of the day.

In 1854, he relocated to Herne Bay in Kent, where he became one of the town's Improvement Commissioners. Reynolds was an advocate of British Republicanism; much of his journalism, especially during the 1870s, "promoted a levelling agenda against traditional social hierarchies and accentuated the difficulties of the British throne".[6]

A prolific novelist, the list of Reynolds's works is long; matters are made more complex by the fact that American publishers often attributed the authorship of various anonymously written books to Reynolds as well. Furthermore, although he is known as a penny blood author, not all of his works appeared as serialised penny instalments. The following works have, as a result of research by E. F. Bleiler, been confirmed to have been definitely authored by Reynolds:

• archive.org's snapshot of the Literature and Place George W.M. Reynolds article at the Wayback Machine (archived 28 September 2007).
• The Literary Encyclopedia G. W. M. Reynolds.
• Mapping History's Nightmares: A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction:27–33; Robert Mighall.
• The Library 1973 s5-XXVIII(4):319–26; "George W. M. Reynolds: A Bibliography".
• G.W.M. Reynolds: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Politics, and the Press, ed. by Anne Humpherys and Louis James, Ashgate 2008.
• BBC Radio 3 Sunday Feature: "The Other Dickens" (45-minute audio documentary).

Reviews and literary criticism

• Frank Jay's discussions of Reynolds from Spare Moments at the Wayback Machine (archived 26 October 2009) Published between 1918 and 1921. Posted by Justin Gilbert at GeoCities.
• "G. W. M. Reynolds" by E.F. Bleiler, in Bleiler (ed) Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1985, 205–11. Primarily an examination of Reynolds novels Faust, The Necromancer, and Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf.
• E.F. Bleiler. "Introduction"; and "Bibliography". in G. W.M. Reynolds, Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf. NY: Dover, 1975. (The only full modern statement on Reynolds, with much new information. The bibliography is the only disentanglement of Reynolds' exceedingly complex publications.)
• G. W. M. Reynolds: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Politics, and the Press, edited by Anne Humpherys and Louis James, Ashgate, 2008
• Andrew King, The London Journal 1845–1883: Periodicals, Production and Gender, Ashgate, 2004
• Dick Collins. "Introduction". George W.M. Reynolds, Wagner The Werewolf Hertforshire: Wordsworth Editions, 2006, ix–xvii.

Wikisource has the text of the 1885–1900 Dictionary of National Biography's article about Reynolds, George William MacArthur.

• George W. M. Reynolds at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• George W. M. Reynolds at Library of Congress, with 29 library catalogue records
• Works by George W. M. Reynolds at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about George W. M. Reynolds at Internet Archive
• Works by George W. M. Reynolds at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)