The Mysteries of the Court of London
A serial penny-fiction novel by George W. M. Reynolds, issued in London around 1850 for a mass weekly readership of working- and lower-middle-class buyers. Wood engravings set inside dense double-column type show melodramatic interior scenes: eighteenth-century drawing rooms, wide-skirted women, men in breeches and frock coats, curtained beds and fireplaces, with heavy hatching that reads well at small sizes and supplies period costume and furniture detail.
