Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 72

# Catalog Note

The Heiress of Fifth Avenue: A Story of New York Hearths and Homes by Albert W. Aiken runs in this issue (Vol. VI, No. 72, July 16, 1879). The narrative opens on Broadway in March 1870, where Edmund Mordaunt, a destitute former actor ruined by alcoholism, begs from a well-dressed young stranger who gives him five dollars and a card bearing the name Allyne Strathroy of Fifth Avenue. Mordaunt is struck by the stranger's resemblance to a man who had spurned him earlier that evening. Suspicious that Strathroy may be walking into danger in the disreputable Baxter Street neighborhood, Mordaunt decides to follow. The story then shifts to a Baxter Street tenement, introducing James Kidd, a young thief and outcast, and John Duke ("the Slasher"), a professional criminal and ward politician. Kidd confesses to Duke that he has fallen in love with an eighteen-year-old woman he glimpsed at the Academy of Music—a Fifth Avenue girl wholly beyond his reach. The narrative promises mystery involving these intersecting characters and their hidden connections.