The Mysteries of London

Recent scholarship has uncovered that it "was almost certainly the most widely read single work of fiction in mid-nineteenth century Britain, and attracted more readers than did the novels of Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton or Trollope.

"[1] There are many plots in the story, but the overarching purpose is to reveal different facets of life in London, from its seedy underbelly to its over-indulgent and corrupt aristocrats.

Installments were published weekly and contained a single illustration and eight pages of text printed in double columns.

It inspired Reynolds to write and publish a penny part serial, The Mysteries of London (1845), in which he paralleled Sue's tale of vice, depravity, and squalor in the Parisian slums with a sociological story contrasting the vice and degradation of London working-class life with the luxury and debaucheries of the hedonistic upper crust.

(79) Later Victorian editions of The Mysteries of London carried the subtitle: Stories of Life in the Modern Babylon.