“Life-like Delineations of Real Life”: Illustrating Wilfred Montressor; Or, The Secret Order of the Seven, a New York City Mystery of 1846
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Wendy Jean Katz
Abstract
This article tracks how an 1846 serial, Wilfred Montressor; Or, The Secret Order of the Seven, and its illustrations, produced by and for members of the fraternal order of the Odd-Fellows, and its subsequent reprintings, including an 1855 edition by a German-language newspaper publisher in the United States, led to the creation of a hero with ties to both nativism and working-class solidarity. The serial’s author, Park Benjamin, had pioneered the pirating of British and European novels in the U. S. in his newspaper the New World. Benjamin adapted the city mystery genre for the New York Odd-Fellows’ newspaper, defending secret associations as necessary in a city where criminal and economic systems are ineffective if not corrupt. But Tompkins Matteson’s nearly 100 illustrations invited the youthful, Protestant, artisanal, and male subscribers to the weekly Golden Rule to project themselves into New York’s high and low life. Matteson’s illustrations of novel readers may have condemned their absorption in fantasy, but his pictures in the serial created seductive objects of desire that crossed ethnic and gender boundaries. Later, as a cheap novel, the illustrations and the text were both ordered more conventionally, while the fraternal image of manhood, one that attracted Germans and native-born, survived.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Preliminary Remarks
- Introducing Serial Circulation: Print Cultures and Periodical Modernities
- Iterative Circulation in Chaucer: Medieval Contexts of Seriality
- Medieval Modes of Reading: The Circulation Culture of Late Middle English Romances from William Caxton’s Press
- “In a course of publications”: Seriality, Public Recognition, and Judith Sargent Murray’s The Gleaner (1792–1798)
- The Laughing Mrs. Churchill: Longfellow’s Kavanagh (1849) and the Earliest Anglo-American Mathematics Journals
- “Life-like Delineations of Real Life”: Illustrating Wilfred Montressor; Or, The Secret Order of the Seven, a New York City Mystery of 1846
- Circulating Superheroes in City Mystery Novels: Prefigurations of a Popular Serial Figure
- The Experiment of Condensed Fiction in the Review of Reviews
- Erasure and Seriality: The “Serial Attitude” in A Humument and Tree of Codes
- Power the Dark Lord Knows Not: The Fractal Serialities of Fanfiction
- Reviews
- Annette Kern-Stähler and Elizabeth Robertson (eds.). 2023. Literature and the Senses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, xix + 544 pp., 20 illustr., $ 155.
- Martin Procházka (ed.). 2024. From Shakespeare to Autofiction: Approaches to Authorship after Barthes and Foucault. London: UCL Press, 207 pp., 10 figures, £40.00.
- Irmtraud Huber. 2023. Time and Timelessness in Victorian Poetry. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, viii + 288 pp., £ 95.00.
- Arnaud Schmitt (ed.). 2024. Hybridity in Life Writing: Combining Text and Images. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, xii + 296 pp., 20 figures, CHF 177.00.
- Richard Müller (ed.). 2024. The Emerging Contours of the Medium: Literature and Mediality. Thinking Media. New York, NY: Bloomsbury, xvi + 501 pp., 17 figures, 4 illustrations, 4 tables, 4 diagrams, £ 90.00.
- Yvonne Reddick. 2024. Anthropocene Poetry: Place, Environment, and Planet. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, xiii + 389 pp, € 139.09.
- Ann Rea (ed.). 2024. Sexuality and Gender in Fictions of Espionage: Spying Undercover(s). London/New York: Bloomsbury, xi + 235 pp., £ 85.00.
- Susan E. Kirtley. 2021. Typical Girls: The Rhetoric of Womanhood in Comic Strips. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 268 pp., 59 illustrations, $134.95.
- Matthew Scully. 2024. Democratic Anarchy: Aesthetics and Political Resistance in U. S. Literature. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 256 pp., 5 illustr., $ 125.00.
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Preliminary Remarks
- Introducing Serial Circulation: Print Cultures and Periodical Modernities
- Iterative Circulation in Chaucer: Medieval Contexts of Seriality
- Medieval Modes of Reading: The Circulation Culture of Late Middle English Romances from William Caxton’s Press
- “In a course of publications”: Seriality, Public Recognition, and Judith Sargent Murray’s The Gleaner (1792–1798)
- The Laughing Mrs. Churchill: Longfellow’s Kavanagh (1849) and the Earliest Anglo-American Mathematics Journals
- “Life-like Delineations of Real Life”: Illustrating Wilfred Montressor; Or, The Secret Order of the Seven, a New York City Mystery of 1846
- Circulating Superheroes in City Mystery Novels: Prefigurations of a Popular Serial Figure
- The Experiment of Condensed Fiction in the Review of Reviews
- Erasure and Seriality: The “Serial Attitude” in A Humument and Tree of Codes
- Power the Dark Lord Knows Not: The Fractal Serialities of Fanfiction
- Reviews
- Annette Kern-Stähler and Elizabeth Robertson (eds.). 2023. Literature and the Senses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, xix + 544 pp., 20 illustr., $ 155.
- Martin Procházka (ed.). 2024. From Shakespeare to Autofiction: Approaches to Authorship after Barthes and Foucault. London: UCL Press, 207 pp., 10 figures, £40.00.
- Irmtraud Huber. 2023. Time and Timelessness in Victorian Poetry. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, viii + 288 pp., £ 95.00.
- Arnaud Schmitt (ed.). 2024. Hybridity in Life Writing: Combining Text and Images. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, xii + 296 pp., 20 figures, CHF 177.00.
- Richard Müller (ed.). 2024. The Emerging Contours of the Medium: Literature and Mediality. Thinking Media. New York, NY: Bloomsbury, xvi + 501 pp., 17 figures, 4 illustrations, 4 tables, 4 diagrams, £ 90.00.
- Yvonne Reddick. 2024. Anthropocene Poetry: Place, Environment, and Planet. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, xiii + 389 pp, € 139.09.
- Ann Rea (ed.). 2024. Sexuality and Gender in Fictions of Espionage: Spying Undercover(s). London/New York: Bloomsbury, xi + 235 pp., £ 85.00.
- Susan E. Kirtley. 2021. Typical Girls: The Rhetoric of Womanhood in Comic Strips. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 268 pp., 59 illustrations, $134.95.
- Matthew Scully. 2024. Democratic Anarchy: Aesthetics and Political Resistance in U. S. Literature. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 256 pp., 5 illustr., $ 125.00.
