G. W. M. Reynolds Society

Reynolds’ association with Chartism is well known, but Chris Anderson asks whether there was a hidden side to it. In the revolutionary year of 1848, Reynolds made a dramatic public debut as a spokesman at the initial disturbances in Trafalgar Square on March 6th, which led onto a couple of nights of rioting in the … More Lord Stanley’s diary and the riddle of Reynolds.

Unfortunately we Reynolds scholars are not as lucky as those who study some of the more famous nineteenth-century novelists like Dickens, Eliot, and Scott. We don’t have access to decent reprints of Reynolds’s works and we can’t log on ebay or ABEbooks to get hold of a cheap Victorian hardback of one of his novels … More An Early Christmas Gift of Reynolds’s Early Writings – from Stephen Basdeo

It’s all change on the Reynolds Society board: it’s with great sadness we say goodby to Sophie Raine, who ends her term of office as Postgraduate Rep for the Society. Sophie was our very first Rep and threw herself into the role with enthusiasm and energy. She has developed the blog and our social media … More Reynolds Society Postgraduate Rep

We are currently looking for a new postgraduate representative to join our team at the Reynolds Society! We are looking for someone with an avid enthusiasm for Reynolds, his life and his works. As a postgraduate representative, your role will include: To register interest in this role, or to ask any further questions, please contact … More Postgraduate Rep Position

By Stephen Basdeo This post discusses a character in Reynolds’s masterpiece The Mysteries of London, although I do not focus on the oft-studied and well-known “First Series” but instead on the little-studied and unfairly neglected “Second Series” (and Reynolds scholars should indeed study the second series; there is absolutely no evidence to say that the … More “Emulative of the character of Robin Hood”: The Highwayman Thomas Rainford in the “Second Series” of The Mysteries of London (1844–48)

by Rachael Taylor My PhD research focuses on representations of female beauty and cosmetics use in British literature and culture from 1848 to 1901. From performing keyword searches of the JISC Historical Texts database for novels which frequently mentioned cosmetics use to gather my primary sources, I was led to an encounter with G. W. … More Walking the Streets and Treading the Boards: Cosmetics, The Prostitute and the Actress in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) and G. W. M. Reynolds’s Ellen Percy; Or, the Memoirs of an Actress (1857)