The Market Place is a frightening yet fascinating novel. Contemporary with the Horatio Alger story it transforms the American myth into a study of the drive toward success by illuminating its moral simplicity. The protagonist was a towering and menacing figure who rises out of the ruins of the aristocratic system that was then collapsing, or had collapsed.

Harold Frederic’s last novel, published posthumously in 1899, it’s about Joel Thorpe, an unscrupulous English businessman, who wishes to acquire all the wealth and position he can, only to end up growing bored with it all after obtaining it.

Harold Frederic (August 19, 1856-October 19, 1898) was an American journalist and novelist. Frederic wrote several early stories, but it was not until he published Illumination (1896), better known by its American title, The Damnation of Theron Ware; followed by Gloria Mundi (1898), that his gifts as a novelist were fully realized. Critic Jonathan Yardley called Damnation “a minor classic of realism”.