paragraph_text: Hogarth Painting the Comic Muse (originally known as The Artist Painting the Comic Muse) is a painting in the National Portrait Gallery, London by the British artist William Hogarth. It was painted in approximately 1757 and published as a print in etching and engraving in 1758, with its final and sixth state in 1764. Hogarth used this particular self-portrait as the frontispiece of his collected engravings, published in 1764.

paragraph_text: London Labour and the London Poor is a work of Victorian journalism by Henry Mayhew. In the 1840s he observed, documented, and described the state of working people in London for a series of articles in a newspaper, the "Morning Chronicle", that were later compiled into book form.

paragraph_text: The Three Hostages is the fourth of five Richard Hannay novels by Scottish author John Buchan, first published in 1924 by Hodder & Stoughton, London.

paragraph_text: Roman Blood is a historical novel by American author Steven Saylor, first published by Minotaur Books in 1991. It is the first book in his Roma Sub Rosa series of mystery novels set in the final decades of the Roman Republic. The main character is the Roman sleuth Gordianus the Finder.

paragraph_text: The Wizard of Lemuria is a fantasy novel by American writer Lin Carter, the first book of his "Thongor series" set on the fictional ancient lost continent of Lemuria. The author's first published novel, it was initially issued in paperback by Ace Books in 1965. The author afterwards revised and expanded the text, in which form it was reissued as Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria, first published in paperback by Berkley Books in 1969. This retitled and revised edition became the standard edition for later reprintings. The novel was also adapted into comic form, appearing in eight issues of Marvel's "Creatures on the Loose".

paragraph_text: "The Beach of Falesá" is a short story by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. It was first published in the "Illustrated London News" in 1892, and later published in book form in the short-story collection "Island Nights' Entertainments" (1893). It was written after Stevenson moved to the South Seas island of Samoa just a few years before he died there.

paragraph_text: London has been the setting for many works of literature. The literary centres of London have traditionally been hilly Hampstead and (since the early 20th century) Bloomsbury. Writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London, and Virginia Woolf, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the 20th century.

paragraph_text: The People of the Mist is a classic lost race fantasy novel written by H. Rider Haggard. It was first published serially in the weekly magazine "Tit-Bits", between December 1893 and August 1894; the first edition in book form was published in London by Longmans in October, 1894. It was reprinted in December, 1973 by Ballantine Books as the sixty-third paperback volume of the "Ballantine Adult Fantasy series".

paragraph_text: The September Society, by Charles Finch, is the mystery set in Oxford and London, England in autumn 1866, during the Victorian era. It is the second novel in a series featuring gentleman and amateur detective Charles Lenox, and the first of two books Finch has written about Oxford, along with The Last Enchantments.

paragraph_text: Ned Ward (1667 – 20 June 1731), also known as Edward Ward, was a satirical writer and publican in the late 17th and early 18th century, based in London. His most famous work is "The London Spy". Published in 18 monthly instalments starting in November 1698, it was described by its author as a "complete survey" of the London scene. It was first published in book form in 1703.

paragraph_text: The Autobiography of a Flea is an anonymous erotic novel first published in 1887 in London by Edward Avery. Later research has revealed that the author was a London lawyer of the time named Stanislas de Rhodes.

paragraph_text: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (Known as ``The Pickwick Papers '') (Monthly serial, April 1836 to November 1837)

paragraph_text: The Bishop's Heir is a fantasy novel by American-born author Katherine Kurtz. It was first published by Del Rey Books in 1984. It was the seventh of Kurtz' Deryni novels to be published, and the first book in her third Deryni trilogy, The Histories of King Kelson. Although The Legends of Camber of Culdi trilogy was published immediately prior to the Histories trilogy, "The Bishop's Heir" is a direct sequel to Kurtz' first Deryni series, The Chronicles of the Deryni.

paragraph_text: The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls is an autobiographical/psychological thriller novel by Emilie Autumn. It was published in 2009 as a companion to her 2009–2010 North American, European, and Australian tour, the Asylum Tour. The fully illustrated book chronicles Autumn's experiences in a mental ward and a young girl (Emily with a "y") in Victorian England who is admitted into an insane asylum. The second edition was published in 2010 but is now out of print, pending replacement with an updated print edition. An audio book version, narrated by the author, was released in 2016.

paragraph_text: Casino Royale is the first novel by the British author Ian Fleming. Published in 1953, it is the first James Bond book, and it paved the way for a further eleven novels and two short story collections by Fleming, followed by numerous continuation Bond novels by other authors.

paragraph_text: There But For The is a 2011 novel by Scottish author Ali Smith, first published in the UK by Hamish Hamilton and in the US by Pantheon, and set in 2009 and 2010 in Greenwich, London. It was cited by both "The Guardian" book review and the "Publishers Weekly" as one of the best books of the year. and was also longlisted for the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction.

paragraph_text: Keep the Aspidistra Flying, first published in 1936, is a socially critical novel by George Orwell. It is set in 1930s London. The main theme is Gordon Comstock's romantic ambition to defy worship of the money-god and status, and the dismal life that results.

paragraph_text: The White Family is a novel by English author Maggie Gee, published in 2002 in London by Saqi Books. It was shortlisted for both the 2003 Orange Prize and the 2004 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

paragraph_text: Funny Boy is a coming-of-age novel by Canadian author Shyam Selvadurai. First published by McClelland and Stewart in September 1994, the novel won the Lambda Literary Award for gay male fiction and the Books in Canada First Novel Award.

paragraph_text: Là-Bas, translated as Down There or The Damned, is a novel by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans, first published in 1891. It is Huysmans' most famous work after "À rebours". "Là-Bas" deals with the subject of Satanism in contemporary France, and the novel stirred a certain amount of controversy on its first appearance. It is the first of Huysmans' books to feature the character Durtal, a thinly disguised portrait of the author himself, who would go on to be the protagonist of all of Huysmans' subsequent novels: "En route", "La cathédrale" and "L'oblat".

Question: In what form was the first book published by the writer whose novels painted a dismal portrait of Victorian London?
Answer: Monthly serial