Following close upon the previous volume, The Blacksmith's Hammer; or, The Peasant Code, in which the popular storm was seen gathering head under the atrocities of the gilded age of the Grand Monarch, the present story portrays that storm breaking in all the accumulated vigor of its centuries of postponement, and sweeping away the empty lay figures of an outgrown feudalism. True, one barrier to human liberty was thrown down only to disclose another. To the empire of birth and privilege was to succeed the empire of the shekel; to the rule of do-nothing kings, the rule of do-nothing plutocracy. But it is in the act of drilling itself for the overthrow of that final parasite class. . . .

Author Biography

Marie-Joseph "Eug ne" Sue (1804 - 1857) was a French novelist. He was one of several authors who popularized the genre of the serial novel in France with his very popular and widely imitated The Mysteries of Paris, which was published in a newspaper from 1842 to 1843. His naval experiences supplied much of the materials of his first novels, Kernock le pirate (1830), Atar-Gull (1831), La Salamandre (1832), La Coucaratcha (1832) and others, which were composed at the height of the Romantic movement of 1830. In the quasi-historical style he wrote Jean Cavalier and Latr aumont. His Mathilde (1841) contains the first known expression of the popular proverb "La vengeance se mange tr s-bien froide," lately expressed in English as "Revenge is a dish best served cold." He was strongly affected by the socialist ideas of the day and these prompted his most famous works, the "anti-Catholic" novels: The Mysteries of Paris and The Wandering Jew, which were among the most popular specimens of the serial novel. These works depicted the intrigues of the nobility and the harsh life of the underclass to a wide public. Les Myst res de Paris spawned a class of imitations all over the world, the city mysteries.