The Mysteries of London. Series I, Vols. I & II.

First edition thus. 8vo. Pp. xxvii, 337. Black cloth, lettered in gilt to spine. Introduction, Bibliography, Appendix. Illustrated with the original Victorian wood engravings.

Excised title leaf [pp. iii-iv], tail of spine 'pushed in' half an inch in two places, ditto d/w, else Fine.

Serial novel inspired by Eugène Sue's Les mystères de Paris (1842–43) and considered amongst the seminal works of the Victorian "urban mysteries" genre – a style of sensational fiction which focused on the shocks of life following the Industrial Revolution. Into the bare bones of a plot of two rivalrous siblings trying to make it in London, Reynolds adds a cocktail of gothic horror, romance, impassioned social protest and journalistic observations.

Originally published by George Vickers in the "penny dreadful" format of weekly installments, which sold for a penny each, the novel ran in two series (1844 to 1848). It then continued as The Mysteries of the Court of London, from 1848 to 1855. Book contains Vols. I and II of the First Series, which can lay claim to being "the most widely read single work of fiction in the early Victorian period", according to the TLS. Reynolds's obituary in the Bookseller in 1879 described him as "the most popular writer of our time".

[Hubin, p.343, The Bibliography of Crime Fiction, 1749–1975]