THE WIT OF MOUNT STREET – A LITERARY INTELLECTUAL ROMANCE

The Wit of Mount Street; or, Her Heart in Numbers — A Literary Intellectual Romance

This Day is Published, and will be continued in Numbers,

The Wit of
Mount Street;

or,

Her Heart in Numbers.

A Literary Intellectual Romance of London in the Years 1819–1821; in which two Authors, unknown to each other, are found to be conducting a Correspondence in the public Prints, to the great Entertainment of the Town and the Alarm of their Proprietors.

Chapter the First: A Sheet and a Half.

Chapter the First will appear in these pages To-morrow, Monday, the 26th of October; and the Public are respectfully informed that no Number will be delayed on account of the Rent.

Edited by Michael Cummins.

Intellicurean · London, Salisbury Square to Grosvenor Square · MDCCCXIX

A note from the proprietor

The Wit of Mount Street is a serial novel, published here one chapter at a time, as novels were in the magazines of the Regency, before Dickens made the practice respectable.

It is a love story between two minds that never meet. In Salisbury Square, off Fleet Street, a young woman writes a comedy of Mayfair by the sheet to keep her family fed. Two hundred yards away, in chambers overlooking the Temple garden, a man with ten thousand a year writes a grave medieval novel that nobody reads. Neither knows who the other is. One of them is about to steal a sentence.

It is what we call a Literary Intellectual Romance: two people come to know each other’s minds long before they know each other’s faces, and the argument is the courtship. It is a comedy of manners with a grave heart, told in the only form that love could honestly take: not in letters, which a Regency woman could not send, but in print, where the whole of London reads them without knowing what they are.

An engraved plan of London in 1819, from Grosvenor Square and Mayfair in the west, by the Strand and Fleet Street, to St Paul's and Bread Street in the east, with the Temple and its garden on the river between. A dotted line marks the walk from Grosvenor Square to Salisbury Square. Five buildings are numbered: I, a house in Grosvenor Square; II, chambers in King's Bench Walk; III, two pair of stairs over a law-stationer's in Salisbury Square; IV, the Albemarle; V, the Ludgate.
A Plan of the Country lying between Grosvenor Square and Bread Street, 1819. The dotted line is the walk from Grosvenor Square to Salisbury Square, which neither of them has ever taken. Between the two lies the Temple and its garden. References. I. A House in Grosvenor Square. II. Chambers in King’s Bench Walk. III. Two Pair of Stairs over a Law-Stationer’s. IV. The Albemarle. V. The Ludgate. Drawn for The Wit of Mount Street, after Horwood’s Plan of London. Select the plan to see it at full size.
Chapter One appears to-morrow. Monday, the 26th of October New chapters will follow every few days. This page will carry the index.

On the Making of this Novel

The Wit of Mount Street; or, Her Heart in Numbers is written in full collaboration with Claude, the AI models made by Anthropic. Claude drafts each chapter and works throughout as the novel’s literary editor and copy editor. Michael Cummins conceived the novel’s design (its two rival serials, its two miles of London, the garden between them) and edits every Number before it appears.

The plan of London was generated with Google’s Gemini, then corrected and lettered by Claude after Horwood’s survey of 1792–99.

Edited by Michael Cummins.

Essays & Reviews – For The Intellectually Curious