Hello! Hopefully you’ve been enjoying reading the monthly releases of GWM Reynolds’ short stories with Doctor Knight’s introductions. While those blog posts will continue to be released monthly, and we hope you’ll continue to read and engage with them, the society has also decided to make all of the stories available right now. If you … More Short Stories from the Knight Collection Public
By Stephen Knight 1. George William Macarthur Reynolds (1814-79) was the most widely-read novelist of the nineteenth century in Britain. He published over twenty million words in novels – five times as much as Dickens and twice as much as the famously popular Bulwer Lytton. This came from thirty-eight novels, many of them in the … More A General Introduction to “The Short Stories of W. G. M. Reynolds”
By Stephen Knight Having worked and published on Reynolds’ fiction for some years, starting with his grand The Mysteries of London as a major example of the mid-nineteenth century ‘Mysteries’ genre, and then moving through all his novels in my study of 2019, it kept coming to my attention that one of the elements in … More A Preface to “The Short Stories of G. W. M. Reynolds”
Hello! My name is Katelyn, and I am an undergraduate literature and history student working with the G. W. M. Reynolds society to release some of Reynolds’s short stories. Curated by Dr. Stephen Knight, Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne, these stories have been collected from Reynolds’s various newspaper and magazine publications. Despite his … More An Announcement
By Hayley Braithwaite I am really excited to be able to share the news of my first publication with the Reynolds Society. It is wonderful to be able to join the ranks of scholars to have published on Reynolds, and to share my research into Reynolds’s gothic with this incredible community. ‘“The Pretence of Civilisation:” … More New Publication: “The Pretence of Civilisation:” Gothic Progress in G. W. M. Reynolds’s The Mysteries of London
“We forge the chains we wear in life”: this simple yet powerful statement, contained in Mary Price (1851-1852) and Joseph Wilmot (1853-1855), served as a personal guide into the fascinating fiction of G. W. M. Reynolds… I came across Reynolds’s narratives by researching the novels written by Dickens on a previous project and I must … More G. W. M. Reynolds and Personal Empowerment: The Moral Struggle between Servitude and Dignity
VPFA are partnering with the Reynolds Society for a joint book launch to celebrate newly published books in our field by our members: • Rebecca Nesvet’s James Malcolm Rymer, Penny Fiction, and the Family (Routledge 2024) • Mary Shannon’s Billy Waters is Dancing (Yale UP, 2024) • Helena Esser’s Key Popular Women Writer’s monograph on … More Upcoming Event: Joint Book Launch!
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 … More Introductory Post from New Board Member Stephen Basdeo
By Helen Kingstone After attending the G. W. M. Reynolds panel at the British Association for Victorian Studies conference in September 2022, I decided to take up the panellists’ call for us to include Reynolds in our teaching. I incorporated some excerpts from The Mysteries of London in an MA module on Victorian London – … More Teaching The Mysteries of London to Masters Students
Join the Reynolds Society for an evening talk at the Bow Street Police Museum in London on Thursday 20th July 2023! Our very own Mary L. Shannon and Jennifer Conary will be discussing Reynolds, his life in Paris and London, and his brushes with the police. Mary and Jennifer will also be signing copies of … More Writing Up a Storm in Paris and London: Upcoming Reynolds Society Event
G. W. M. Reynolds Society 