| 'Most
Victorianists know the prolific G. W. M. Reynolds either
as a demotic Dickens or as a Chartist journalist, but he
was much more. While other popular authors have
disappeared, Reynolds's racy prose remains strikingly
readable; his formula of melodramatic plotting,
anti-establishment diatribes, bold women, and mysterious
villains can still capture many readers. His astonishing
versatility and vast oeuvre, published under different
pseudonyms, mark him as a man of his time; little is now
in print, and much remains unknown about the man. This
anthology is most welcome for its remarkable breadth, with
essays ranging from Reynolds's early life in Paris after
his revolt against a military career, through to his
reputation as a radical writer in twentieth-century
Britain and Bengal. Like any good collection, it both
defines current work and suggests new areas in need of
further research.' The editors have included an invaluable bibliography of Reynolds's known writings, and secondary material about him. They also unravel the complicated publishing history of his two-part masterpiece, The Mysteries of London (1844-48) and The Mysteries of the Court of London (1848-55 or 56). The series was first published as penny weekly numbers, then as monthly six-penny numbers, and finally as single volumes of fifty-two numbers, for a total of twelve volumes. Each initial number included a dramatic woodcut accompanying columns of tiny print; a penny bought you a lot of reading. Reynolds's Miscellany began as a monthly in 1846 and survived under several different names as a weekly until 1967 without losing its reputation as a radical working-class paper. Reynolds was a literary hack, but one with an uncanny ability to grasp the current mood of his readers and to exploit their interests, whether it be flogging in the Navy or the private life of the Queen.' Martha Vicinus, University of Michigan Review in Victorian Studies 51:4 (Summer 2009) |
| ... In a section of essays
on 'Popular Culture', Graham Law focuses on Reynolds's
understudied 'Memoirs' series of 'autobiographical
narratives of everyday life' published serially in the
1850s and argues that this inexpensive series provides a
precursor to the more well-known 'sensation' fiction by
Wilkie Collins, Mary Braddon and Ellen Wood that
flourished a decade later.
... Mark Turner, Review in Media History 16:3 (2010) |
| It has taken 17
authors to nail the challenge, but this collection is
the rounded assessment of Reynolds that has so long been
needed. The editors' modestly claim their team has 'only
begun to analyse or even understand Reynolds's career, his
place in his own culture and history, and his influence'
(p. 15). It succeeds in rather more than this. For
example, one key focus of the volume is Reynolds's fiction
beyond the much-cited Mysteries of London (four of
whose six volumes he wrote, 1844–48). Another is
Reynolds's political influence beyond the three years
(1848–51) that he occupied among Chartism's national
leadership. The result is a landmark in Victorian
scholarship that will command the attention of specialists
on the novel, the press, illustration, popular politics
and colonial literature alike. It is also compelling
testimony to the insight and influence of its senior
co-author, Louis James, whose seminal Fiction for the
Working Man (1963) did so much to open-up the lost
world of Victorian popular literature. James himself contributes a compelling essay to the volume, a close reading of twenty novels originally written for serial publication in the London Journal (1845–46) and Reynolds's Miscellany (1846–56). These, James argues, contradict the stock notion of Reynolds as a literary hack. Rather, they reveal invention, ingenuity, and substantial skill in 'the manipulation of concealed identity that makes him the true forerunner of the sensation novelists of the 1860s' (pp. 200–201). A similar argument is pursued by Graham Law in his analysis of four novels (1851–55) that purported to be the autobiographical memoirs of their subjects. Law does not speculate whether Reynolds was influenced by Jane Eyre: but it is striking that three of these four had female subjects, when Grace Darling alone had featured as an eponymous heroine in his earlier fiction. Malcolm Chase, Review in Journal of Victorian Culture 15:2 (2010) |