University of Virginia Library

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THE GREAT BOOK!

THE GREAT BOOK!

THE MYSTERIES OF LONDON.

Translated by Henry C. Deming, Translator of the Mysteries
of Paris.—2 Vols.—Price One Dollar.

This splendid romance has produced an excitement in France
which was hardly transcended by the “Mysteries of Paris.”
The recent journals from the French Capital are filled with speculations
concerning the authorship, and the mystery which bangs
over it is an element of interest that is only excelled by the startling
romance of the narrative. Private letters from Paris inform us
that this novel is the joint production of the English aristocracy
and the French literateurs that compose the celebrated Jocky
Club of Paris. Lord Seymour, an English nobleman, who, for
several years, has been the leader of the Parisian ton, is said to
furnish the local facts upon which the novel is founded; and Jules
Janin, Eugene Sue, and Roger de Beauvoir, weave them into the
intensely interesting narrative which we propose to present to the
American readers. The brotherhood of authors write under the
assumed name of Sir Francis Trollope, and annex that designation
to the feuilletons of the Courier Francais. In a preliminary conversation
between the author and the publisher, the former proposes
to detail, in the ensuing narrative, all the lights and shadows,
the romance, the crime, the misery, and the mystery of the
world of London. He brings the two extremes of life in juxtaposition,
and displays, with the same accuracy, the magnificent
drawing-rooms of Belgrave square, and the cellars of St. Giles—
pictures of proud wealth and oppressed humanity. It falls within
his plan to display the greatness as well as the boundless depravity
of London life—scenes in Parliament, Corporation banquets,
lunatic asylums, the Court of the Queen, the Mysteries of the
Theatre, the Opera House, the Turf, the Clubs, and the Hells of
the Metropolis, constitute the strange variety of many-colored
life which he proposes to present.

He has also a higher object; he would expose and remedy
those laws which perpetuate misery and hinder all social improvement;
the odious statutes regulating guardianship; the
oppressive manufacturing system; political corruption, and the
unnatural financial and economical policy of England.

“In writing such a book,” says he, “to heaven alone I should
appeal for the relief of suffering mankind; the debased maiden
should be purified by reviving the holy instincts of her nature;
the voice of God in the soul should prompt the high born Duchess
to discharge the duties of benevolence; vice should be punished
by vice, and those great virtues of all ages, Faith and Hope,
should be sustained by Charity.” Can any one doubt the absorbing
interest of a story with such an outline, conducted by the
combined genius of the celebrated authors whose pens are employed
upon the present work?

BURGESS, STRINGER & CO. Publishers,
222 Broadway, New York.