Richard Maxwell uses nineteenth-century urban fiction-particularly the novels of Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens-to define a genre, the novel of urban mysteries. His title comes from the ""mystery mania"" that captured both sides of the channel with the runaway success of Eugene Sue's Les mysteres de Paris and G. W. M. Reynold's Mysteries of London. Maxwell's approach to the nature and evolution of the mysteries genre includes examinations of allegorical theory, journalistic practice, the conventions of scientific inquiry, popular psychiatry, illustration, and modernized wonder tales (such as Victorian adaptations of the Arabian Nights). In The Mysteries of Paris and London Maxwell employs a sweeping vision of the nineteenth century and a formidable grasp of both popular culture and high culture to decode the popular mysteries of the era and to reveal an evolving consciousness of the city.