ABSTRACT

The influence of G.W.M. Reynolds on the development of the Urdu novel is little known, but between 1890 and 1930 he was the most published author in Urdu, due to many budding writers who translated him into Urdu and also tried to imitate him in their own works. While Reynolds can be described as being most influential in the emergence of the historical novel in Urdu, his Mysteries too inspired several Urdu writers to write original crime fiction on their model. They called their books mistriz. Compared to Reynolds’s sagas, the efforts in Urdu are at best puny, but they offer an opportunity to observe how a new ‘genre’ became briefly possible and what its proponents chose to take from Reynolds to combine with their own literary heritage and produce something new.