{"product_id":"new-york-by-gas-light-and-other-urban-sketches-9780520067226","title":"New York by Gas-Light and Other Urban Sketches","description":"\u003cdiv\u003eFirst published in 1850, \u003ci\u003eNew York by Gas-Light\u003c\/i\u003e 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 \u003ci\u003eNew York Tribune,\u003c\/i\u003e 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 \u003ci\u003edemi-monde\u003c\/i\u003e 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, \u003ci\u003eNew York by Gas-Light\u003c\/i\u003e will be welcomed by students of urban social history, popular culture, literature, and journalism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEditor 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.\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"George G. Foster","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42959883796598,"sku":"9780520067226","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0671\/1374\/6550\/files\/CoreSourceHub_9511da55-ecfc-47d2-b37e-9294ffc73af3.jpg?v=1767777866","url":"https:\/\/ingramacademic.com\/products\/new-york-by-gas-light-and-other-urban-sketches-9780520067226","provider":"Ingram Academic \u0026 Professional","version":"1.0","type":"link"}