It has been, as of 2024, eleven years since I first picked up a tattered copy of The Mysteries of London, by an author then unknown to me, to study for my MA dissertation on the representation of Victorian organised crime. Since then, Reynolds has become one of my favourite authors and I find myself always returning to him. I am therefore delighted to have been appointed to the Advisory Board of the G.W.M. Reynolds Society.
More generally, my research interests have always revolved around the study of Victorian popular fiction, with a particular focus on (obviously) Reynolds as well as Reynolds’s friend and contemporary Pierce Egan the Younger, Eugene Sue, and Victor Hugo. It was a pleasure to return to Reynolds in 2022 when I published a biography of him (Victorian England’s Bestselling Author). More recently, I have begun researching Portuguese language works which were inspired by both Reynolds and Sue, which culminated in the publication of an article in Victorian Popular Fictions Journal on Juana Manso’s Mistérios del Plata (Brasil, 1852), a novel which paid homage to Reynolds in the introduction.
In addition, I am currently translating Camillo Castelo Branco’s Mistérios de Lisboa (1854, Mysteries of Lisbon), its sequel O Livro Negro de Padre Dinis (1855, Father Dinis’s Black Book) and Alfredo P. Hogan’s Mistérios de Lisboa (1852), neither of which have been translated into English before, and previews of which can be found on my website. Anyone who picks up these novels (or the recent 4 hour film adaptation of Branco’s Mistérios) will clearly see the influence of both Reynolds and Sue at work.
I invite anyone interested in the life and works of Reynolds to reach out to me whenever they want—I’m always keen to discuss anything relating to Reynolds!
Dr Stephen Basdeo
Senior Lecturer
Elizabeth School of London
G. W. M. Reynolds Society 