Customer Reviews

"Venus in Boston" and Other Tales of Nineteenth-Century City Life

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I had to read the second story in this book, City Crimes, for a college class in 19th century American literature focusing on antebellum literature. Although it is not canonical it is important and interesting to know about popular fiction from certain time periods which this provides.
I enjoyed the second story so much that I want to read the rest of the book.
Brought up a lot of different class discussions that were very interesting.
Not well documented stories, so this is a very good source to learn about an American author that is not studied often. The third section of the book is his autobiographer.
Parts of stories can be grotesque in nature, but that is the kind of popular literature at the time.
Fun read!

These two samples of Nineteenth Century popular fiction make
for lurid and thrilling, if somewhat violent reading.
"City Crimes" especially would be a film far more gripping
than "Gangs of New York", although not for the faint-hearted.
Most of the works of this genre exist only on reels of
microfilm and hopefully one day will become more accessible.