ABSTRACT
The foundation stone of the whole hypothetical edifice is, of course, the collection of unpublished letters sent to Sue by his readers both during and immediately after the serial publication of Les Mystères de Paris in the Journal des dèbats. The letters from Sue's middle-class correspondents display a limited range of registers, dominated by the anaemically abstract idiom of utilitarian considerations. Conversely, Sue's middle-class correspondents (broadly from the 'progressive' fraction of the bourgeoisie enfranchised by the July Revolution) seek to redeem what is otherwise condemned by emphasizing Sue's public spiritedness with the 'social question'. Most of this is light years away from the concerns of Sue's working-class correspondents. If the latter are far less numerous, they are in many ways far more interesting. Unlike those from Sue's bourgeois correspondents, where we find a high degree of consistency, the reactions, interests and opinions of his working-class correspondents vary considerably.
