The Mysteries of the Court of London
A penny-serial sensation novel by George W. M. Reynolds, issued in weekly parts in London around 1850 for a mass working-class readership and reprinted as bound volumes. The 105 wood engravings sit inside two-column letterpress pages and show domestic melodrama in middle- and upper-class interiors: women in wide crinolines and bonnets, maids confronting mistresses, men bent over documents, with drapery, pedestal busts, cast-iron tables and framed pictures behind them; useful for 1850s dress silhouettes, furniture details and figure groupings.
