The Doom of the Great City

William Delisle Hay's The Doom of the Great City (1880) is relatively unknown today, even among scholars who specialize in Victorian literature. There is little scholarship on the novella, and it’s not commonly taught in high school or college classrooms. Our hope is that this critical edition will change that.

A Mystery in Scarlet

James Malcolm Rymer

Robert Louis Stevenson cherished the 1866 penny dreadful A Mystery in Scarlet, written by his "genuine influence" Malcolm J. Errym, the pseudonym of "Sweeney Todd" creator James Malcolm Rymer (1814-84) and illustrated by the celebrated "Phiz" (Hablot K. Browne, 1815-82).

Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

The short story originally published as “Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter. Being a Seventh Extract from the Legacy of the Late Francis Purcell, P.P. of Drumcoolagh” in Dublin University Magazine (May 1839) is widely recognized as the earliest masterpiece by the Irish novelist, short story writer, and journalist Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873).

Sartor Resartus

Carlyle, Thomas

Thomas Carlyle once described Sartor Resartus as “a Satirical Extravaganza on Things in General,” and the book has both inspired and confounded readers since its initial publication in 1833-34. Engaging with philosophy, theology, political economy, aesthetics, history, and science, Sartor Resartus in many ways defies classification.

The City of the Jugglers

William North

Set in the aftermath of Chartism, the European revolutions of 1848, and the bursting of the railway bubble, William North’s The City of the Jugglers; or, Free-Trade in Souls: A Romance of the “Golden” Age (H. J, Gibbs, 1850) is constructed around the rise and fall of an audacious commercial speculation in human souls, and, with it, England’s reactionary social order. Punctuated by... more

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