George W. M. Reynolds

George William MacArthur Reynolds (23 July 1814 – 19 June 1879) was a British fiction writer and journalist.

Reynolds was born in Sandwich, Kent, the son of Captain Sir George Reynolds, a flag officer of the Royal Navy. Reynolds was educated first at Dr. Nance's school in Ashford, Kent, and then attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was intended for a career in the British Army, but his parents died during 1829 and, with his subsequent inheritance, he decided to quit the military and devote himself instead to literary pursuits. He left Sandhurst on 13 September 1830 and for the next few years he traveled a great deal, particularly in France, and became a naturalised French citizen. He began residence in Paris in 1834, where he started a daily English newspaper. The venture failed, and Reynolds returned bankrupt to England in 1836.

Reynolds served as editor of ''The Teetotaler'' (a weekly journal advocating teetotalism) beginning in 1840.

Writing

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." 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.

''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 hogroped 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.Fisher, B. F.; "Wagner, the Wehr-Wulf",
in: Frank N. Magill, ed. ''Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature'', Vol 4. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press, Inc., 1983.
(pp. 2049–53) . ''Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf'' was republished in 1975 by Dover Books with an
introduction and bibliography of Reynolds by E. F. Bleiler.

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