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'Victorian moralists raged against these disreputable books'. The Mysteries of London, like most of Reynolds' works, was first published as a weekly penny dreadful or 'Penny Blood, ' illustrated with lurid engravings and circulating mainly among readers of limited means and education. Although Reynolds was unusual in his religious skepticism (one of the main characters in The Mysteries of London was a clergyman turned libertine) and political radicalism, his tales were aimed squarely at the tastes of his mostly middle- and lower-class audience; they featured hump-backed dwarves, harridans and grave-robbers [who] groped past against a background of workhouses, jails, execution yards, thieves' kitchens and cemeteries. His readers could depend on him to bring in the theme of maiden virtue rudely strumpeted as often as possible. Reynolds' Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf was a gothic novel which described how the title character became a werewolf after making a pact with the devil. Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf was republished in 1975 by Dover Books with an introduction and bibliography of Reynolds by E. F. Bleiler. Reynold's novels remained in print on both sides of the Atlantic much longer than many of his contemporaries. An 1875 edition of Reynolds's Ciprina, published in Philadelphia, lists 40 novels including Mysteries of London under the heading George W. M. Reynolds' Great Works, priced between 50 cents and $1.00. The Mysteries of the Court of London, translated into Marathi as well as Urdu, remained a best-seller in India well into the twentieth century. The Marathi translation was done by K.B. Mande in early 20th century; i.e. the secret deeds of the elites of London. It was very popular in the Marathi-speaking world, as is evident by numerous references to the text in early 20th-century Marathi literature.

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George William MacArthur Reynolds (23 July 1814 - 19 June 1879) was a British author and journalist. He was born in Sandwich, Kent, the son of Captain Sir George Reynolds, a flag officer in the Royal Navy. Reynolds was educated first at Dr. Nance's school in Ashford, Kent, and then passed on to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was intended for a career in the British Army, but on the death of his parents in 1829 and his subsequent inheritance, he decided to leave the military and devote himself instead to literary pursuits. He left Sandhurst on 13 September 1830 and for the next few years he traveled a great deal, particularly in France, and became a naturalised French citizen. He took up residence in Paris in 1834, where he started a daily English newspaper. The venture failed, and Reynolds returned bankrupt to England in 1836. Reynolds served as editor of The Teetotaler (a weekly journal advocating teetotalism) beginning in 1840.

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