The novelist, journalist and entrepreneur George Macarthur (1814-1879) is largely forgotten today. And yet during his lifetime he was as, if not more, successful than his great contemporary Charles Dickens. His novels were widely translated, including into Urdu, and were popular in Britain and the United States. In particular, his `Mysteries of London’ first issued in 1844 with several follow ups, with their lurid tales of crime, haunting and evil in the streets of the metropolis spawned a whole genre of Victorian Gothic horror. Today, however, his works are largely unobtainable, with the sporadic mentioning of him in, for instance, a BBC broadcast in 2012 about his work and his life story (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01k9t7k).
The son of a flag officer of the Royal Navy, Sir George Reynolds, George junior was born in Sandwich, and educated in Ashford. His original intention was to enter the military. To achieve this, he enrolled at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst. The death of his parents in 1829 however meant that he was able to withdraw and live off the inheritance they had left him. For a number of years he travelled extensively, particularly in France, where he eventually settled in Paris. He even became a naturalised French citizen in 1834. A business venture however saw him bankrupted by 1836. That necessitated his return to Britain.
Reynolds had started writing before his business misfortune. His first work, `The Youthful Imposter’ came out in 1835. Over the ensuing years, he published, mostly in serial form for what were termed `penny dreadfuls’ – a similar format to Dickens. And also like Dickens he wrote a vast amount of journalism, starting a magazine devoted to teetotalism in the late 1830s and then going on to write in support of a number of causes, some of them surprisingly radical in view of his background. He was a religious sceptic, a supporter of Chartism, and a republican. None of this detracted from the huge popularity his work enjoyed, with some of his writings selling a million copies. Of these, perhaps `Wagner the Werewolf’ are the most interesting to look at today.
From 1854, Reynolds moved back to Kent, to live at Herne Bay, living at Gothic House. Here he was an Improvement Commissioner for the town. His wife is buried in the churchyard at Herne with their eldest son. She died in 1858. His work clearly has a following today, with an international society – https://gwmreynoldssociety.com/