George W. M. Reynolds


George William MacArthur Reynolds 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. He married fellow writer Susannah Frances Reynolds in 1835.
Reynolds served as editor of The Teetotaler 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". His best-known work was the long-running serial The Mysteries of London, which borrowed liberally in concept from Eugène Sue's Les Mystères de 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 and political radicalism, his tales were intended for his mostly middle- and lower-class readers; they featured "hump-backed dwarves, harridans and grave-robbers 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. Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf was republished in 1975 by Dover Books with an
introduction and bibliography of Reynolds by E. F. Bleiler.
Reynolds'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.

Chartism

Reynolds was also a major figure in the Chartist movement. In 1846, he founded two magazines, Reynolds' Miscellany and The London Journal. 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.
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".

Works

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:

Novels

The Youthful Imposter - The Baroness: A Novel - Pickwick Abroad; or, The Tour in France - Alfred de Rosann; or, The Adventures of a French Gentleman - Grace Darling; or, the Heroine of the Ferne Islands - Robert Macaire in England - The Steam Packet: A Tale of the River and Ocean - Master Timothy's Bookcase - The Mysteries of London; First Series - Faust: A Romance of the Secret Tribunals - The Mysteries of London; Second Series - Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf - - sequel to FaustThe Days of Hogarth; or, the Mysteries of Old London - The Coral Island, or the Hereditary Curse - The Mysteries of the Court of London; First Series - The Pixy; or, The Unbaptised Child -.The Bronze Statue; or, the Virgin's Kiss - The Seamstress; a Domestic Tale -
  • Pope Joan, the Female Pontiff - The Mysteries of the Court of London; Second Series -
  • Kenneth; a Romance of the Highlands - The Necromancer -
  • Mary Price; or the Memoirs of a Servant Girl - The Mysteries of the Court of London; Third Series -
  • The Massacre of Glencoe; a Historical Tale -
  • The Soldier's Wife -
  • The Ryehouse Plot; or, Ruth, the Conspirator's Daughter -
  • Joseph Wilmot; or, the Memoirs of a Man-Servant -
  • Rosa Lambert; or, the Memoirs of an Unfortunate Woman - The Mysteries of the Court of London; Fourth Series -
  • May Middleton; or, The History of a Fortune -
  • Omar, a Tale of the War -
  • The Loves of the Harem: A Romance of Constantinople - Ellen Percy; or, The Memoirs of an Actress -
  • Agnes; or, Beauty and Pleasure -
  • Leila; or, the Star of Mingrelia -
  • The Empress Eugenie's Boudoir -
  • Margaret; or, the Discarded Queen - The Young Duchess; or, Memoirs of a Lady of Quality - - sequel to Ellen Percy
  • Canonbury House; or, the Queen's Prophecy -
  • Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots -

Shorter fiction and short stories

The Father - Mary Hamel - The Appointment: A Tale - The Drunkard's Tale - Noctes Pickwickianae - Pickwick Married - The Assassin - Margaret Catchpole - The Matrimonial Advertisement - The Castellan's Daughter - The Greek Maiden; or The Banquet of Blood -
  • The Janizary; or, The Massacre of the Christians -.
  • The Prophecy; or, The Lost Son -
  • The Young Fisherman -

Translation

Poetry

  • ''A Sequel to Don Juan''

Miscellaneous works

  • The Errors of the Christian Religion Exposed
  • The Modern Literature of France, 2 vols
  • The Anatomy of Intemperance
  • The French Self-Instructor
  • 'The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire'.
  • ''The Self-Instructor''

Journalism career

The London and Paris Courier The Monthly Magazine of Politics, Literature, and the Belles-Lettres
  • The Teetotaller The London Journal Reynolds's Miscellany Reynolds's Political Instructor Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper Bow Bells.