Abstract
abstract: On March 27, 1844, the New York Herald published the "Memoir of Zulma Marache," a first-person account of seduction and abortion. The Herald compared it to Eugene Sue's popular serial novel, the Mysteries of Paris . Although the "Memoir" was unique, its story of gender and socioeconomic injustices enabled by systemic inequity played out repeatedly in the Herald's columns as well as in Sue's novel. The Herald's framing of the "Memoir of Zulma Marache" via allusions to Mysteries of Paris asked readers to refresh and reframe their understandings of figures represented in the press. In collapsing fact and fiction, the Herald showed that what was called "sensational" was actually, tragically, perversely mundane—serial problems that had not then, and have not yet, been solved.