City mysteries
Encyclopedia
City mysteries are a 19th century genre of popular novel
, in which characters explore the secret underworlds of cities and reveal corruption and exploitation, depicting violence and deviant sexuality. They were popular in both Europe and the United States.
Notable examples include:
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
, in which characters explore the secret underworlds of cities and reveal corruption and exploitation, depicting violence and deviant sexuality. They were popular in both Europe and the United States.
Notable examples include:
- The Mysteries of Paris (1842) by Eugène SueEugène SueJoseph Marie Eugène Sue was a French novelist.He was born in Paris, the son of a distinguished surgeon in Napoleon's army, and is said to have had the Empress Joséphine for godmother. Sue himself acted as surgeon both in the Spanish campaign undertaken by France in 1823 and at the Battle of Navarino...
- The Mysteries of LondonThe Mysteries of LondonThe Mysteries of London is a penny dreadful or city mysteries novel begun by George W. M. Reynolds in 1844. Reynolds wrote the first two series of this long-running narrative of life in the seedy underbelly of mid-nineteenth-century London. Thomas Miller wrote the third series and Edward L...
(1844) by George W. M. ReynoldsGeorge W. M. ReynoldsGeorge William MacArthur Reynolds was a British author and journalist.He was born in Sandwich, Kent, the son of Captain Sir George Reynolds, a flag officer in the Royal Navy. Reynolds was educated first at Dr. Nance's school in Ashford, Kent, and then passed on to the Royal Military College,... - Quaker City, or the Monks of Monk Hall (1845) by George LippardGeorge LippardGeorge Lippard was a 19th-century American novelist, journalist, playwright, social activist, and labor organizer. Nearly forgotten today, he was one of the most widely-read authors in antebellum America. A friend of Edgar Allan Poe, Lippard advocated a socialist political philosophy and sought...