Finding Meaning in the Shadows

Matthew Hale Smith. Sunshine and Shadow in New York. Hartford: J. B. Burr and Company, 1868.

The frontispiece of Smith’s Sunshine and Shadow typifies the contrast between the “upper ten thousand,” shown in their fashionable dress strolling by a mansion on Fifth Avenue, and the lower sorts who cavort near the Old Brewery (a squalid apartment building) in the city’s Five Points neighborhood. The book’s chapters cover the diversity of the city, profiling such figures as pickpockets and ministers, and such places as gambling dens and Central Park. Extremely popular, the book sold some 25,000 copies in its first month alone.