In the middle 1800s, the market for long-distance tourism began to grow, and with that came what we can consider as the modern city guidebook. Publishers primarily focused on printing guidebooks about major cities so to inform tourists or visitors about them. But there was likely a significant population of readers who went to these urban sketches to learn on the vices and underground lifestyles in major metropolises.
Mysteries and Miseries of America’s Great Cities
The MEAP collection includes Mysteries and miseries of America’s great cities by James W. Buel (1882). Buel seeks to “dispel illusions, and present pictures of vice” in metropolitan areas across the U.S., including New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and New Orleans. As seems to have been a trend in urban sketchbooks during the 1800s, Mysteries and miseries tries to uncover the secret seediness and immoralities that seem to be synonymous with city living. In doing so, the sketchbook consists of a persistently frank voice to describe trends in these cities, the narrator even says “No apology shall be offered for the language…for I have diligently striven to avoid pruriency by using chaste euphemisms.” Urban sketchbooks, similar to city mysteries and the later muckraking stories of the turn of the century, have the goal of enlightening the populace with the knowledge of scandals and malpractice in these cities.
What is unique about urban sketchbooks, and what is especially notable in the Buel’s work, is the presentation of cities to outsiders. In doing so, Buel often victimizes visitors or demonizes city residents. Buel dedicates a significant portion of his section on New York to the fate of women, particularly chaste, “easily beguiled” ones, visiting the city for the first time. Mysteries and miseries cites specific parts of town will “destroy her wholesome decisions” and “turn her into the path that leads away from God.” In Salt Lake City, Buel devotes much of the beginning to describing the habits of Mormons and demonizing the people and their practices. Rather than actually talking about the city, Buel uses the Salt Lake City to denounce Mormonism, claiming Joseph Smith a fraud using polygamy to indulge in extensive sexual behavior and even bestiality.