Abstract
G.W.M. Reynolds’s The Mysteries of London is a prominent example of mid-nineteenth-century commercial mass culture not only in its mediated and distributed form but also in its mediated content. To illustrate the fundamental changes brought about by industrialization, Reynolds employs multi-media strategies to explore and capitalize on the complexity of cultural and economic agency in the Victorian cultural industry. Moreover, his use of media in The Mysteries of London offers a useful lens through which to contemplate the narrative and aesthetic strategies of contemporary quality television series.
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Notes
- 1.
The actor Harold Lloyd “is the great-great-great-grandson of Charles Dickens” (“The Boy”). His character in the series dies in episode 6 of the first season.
- 2.
For a detailed overview on this topic, see Weber, Kultivierung, chapter 6.
- 3.
Unless otherwise indicated, quotations are from Volume 1 of the Vickers edition of The Mysteries of London (1845).
- 4.
Other female figures, such as Isabella, are branded with the label of virtue and therefore have no further character trait. Isabella is portrayed as an empty icon whose purity is absolute, and the virtue makes her incapable of acting. Virtuosity goes hand in hand with passivity (cf. Thomas, “Introduction” xvi).
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Weber, T. (2019). The Media Mysteries of London. In: Stein, D., Wiele, L. (eds) Nineteenth-Century Serial Narrative in Transnational Perspective, 1830s−1860s. Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15895-8_12
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