Research Catalog

New York by gas-light and other urban sketches

Title

New York by gas-light and other urban sketches / by George G. Foster ; edited and with an introduction by Stuart M. Blumin.

Author

Foster, George G., -1856.

Publication

Supplementary Content

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

2 Items

Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	NYGB N.Y.C. G115.88	Offsite
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	IRGV 91-5132	Schwarzman Building - Milstein Division Room 121

Details

Additional Authors

Description

251 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

"First published in 1850, New York by Gas-Light explores the seamy side of the newly emerging metropolis: "the festivities of prostitution, the orgies of pauperism, the haunts of theft and murder, the scenes of drunkenness and beastly debauch, and all the sad realities that go to make up the lower stratum--the underground story--of life in New York!" The author of this lively and fascinating little book, which both attracted and offended large numbers of readers in Victorian America, was George G. Foster, reporter for Horace Greeley's influential New York Tribune, social commentator, poet, and man about town. Foster drew on his daily and nightly rambles through the city's streets and among the characters of the urban demi-monde to produce a sensationalized but extraordinarily revealing portrait of New York at the moment it was emerging as a major metropolis. Reprinted here with sketches from two of Foster's other books, New York by Gas-Light will be welcomed by students of urban social history, popular culture, literature, and journalism. Editor Stuart M. Blumin has provided a penetrating introductory essay that sets Foster's life and work in the contexts of the growing city, the development of the mass-distribution publishing industry, the evolving literary genre of urban sensationalism, and the wider culture of Victorian America. This is an important reintroduction to a significant but neglected work, a prologue to the urban realism that would flourish later in the fiction of Stephen Crane, the painting of George Bellows, and the journalism of Jacob Riis." --Publisher description.

Donor/Sponsor

Gift of New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.

Alternative Title

New York by gaslight and other urban sketches.

Subjects

Genre/Form

History.

Note

Consists of the author's New York by gas-light, and selections from his New York in slices, and Fifteen minutes around New York.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references.

Source (note)

New York Genealogical and Biographical Society;

Contents

Introduction: George G. Foster and the Emerging Metropolis 1 -- New York by Gas-Light: With Here and There a Streak of Sunshine 65 -- New York by Daylight: Selections from New York in Slices and Fifteen Minutes Around New York 199.

Call Number

IRGV 91-5132

ISBN

0520067215
9780520067219
0520067223
9780520067226

LCCN

90035290

OCLC

21375707

Author

Foster, George G., -1856.

Title

New York by gas-light and other urban sketches / by George G. Foster ; edited and with an introduction by Stuart M. Blumin.

Imprint

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references.

Source

Gift; New York Genealogical and Biographical Society; 2008.

Connect to:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description

Chronological Term

1775-1899

Indexed Term

Social life History, 1845-1861

New York (N.Y.)

Added Author

Blumin, Stuart M.

New York Genealogical and Biographical Society Collection.

Added Title

New York by gaslight and other urban sketches.

Research Call Number

IRGV 91-5132

NYGB N.Y.C. G115.88

View in Legacy Catalog