Anti-Punch; Or, the Toy-shop in Fleet-street

London: Dipple, 1847. First printing. Leather_bound. Near Fine. Bound in contemporary full calf with 5 raised bands to spine. Original cover bound into back
Length 87 pages
Edition Notes
By the author of "Anti-Coningsby" (i.e. William North).
Contributions Author of "Anti-Coningsby"., 1 plate :

Notes on one of his other novels: Introducing a "Lost" Victorian novel: The Elusive William North and The City of the Jugglers (1850)
What is the least known but most relevant novel of the 19th century? What if it began with a credit problem in the financial markets?
It was about four o'clock on a spring afternoon. The City was still in full activity. The gold was rattling on the bank counters, and the clerks were cashing their notes as coolly as if the whole affair had been anything but a gigantic juggle. Practical men- too practical to think were paying in their deposits with a touching and child-like confidence. No suspicion had they that they were trusting to a system which, "like the baseless fabric of a vision," might at any moment dissolve into nothingness.
Practical men do not understand the currency they despise theorists who do. They swear by Sir Robert the Devil and- everybody is in debt to everybody in consequence. (North, City 1)

That is the first paragraph of one of the most elusive books by one of Victorian literature's most elusive writers. The book, William North's The City of the Jugglers, or Free-Trade in Souls (1850) appears to survive, at least in libraries that catalogue their books into OCLC, in no more than three copies, only two of them in North America. According to one report after North's death, the book never sold a single copy.
England born Journalist, Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer who settled in New York.
In England he established a periodical North's Magazine, and in New York he began publishing sensational stories like "The Living Corpse" which appeared in Putnam's in 1853 and was later reprinted in the Saturday Press.