Les Mystères de Paris. Volume 2

Marie-Joseph "Eugène" 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 Latréaumont. His Mathilde (1841) contains the first known expression of the popular proverb "La vengeance se mange très-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 Mystères de Paris spawned a class of imitations all over the world, the city mysteries.