Lecture S: the system of the Victorian novel ! massive production of novels with peculiar market features ! ! one of the first: 1749 in 4 vols, 18 books, 350,000 words! epistolary novel Leah Price on abridgments and anthologies ! ! Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloïse, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1761) an epistolary novel— 70 editions by 1800 see Darnton, “Readers respond to Rousseau” in The Great Cat Massacre farewell—platonic love first kiss novel as long and highly successful! 19th century novel— massive phenomenon! ! 42,000 novels by 3500 authors in England alone (+France, Russia etc) ! + novels are typically very long Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), poet then novelist Abbotsford House in Scottish baronial style, 1824 24 “Waverley novels” 1814-31 ! tales of chivalry ! e.g. Ivanhoe (1819) the rescue of Ivanhoe Jane Austen not very well known in her lifetime Scott sets the pattern for the 19th English novel as 3-volume and expensive illustrated, hard-back, sturdy ! ! who are the buyers of these 42,000 novels? ! the buyers are … circulating libraries most famously Mudie’s 1840-1930s (but much reduced after 1895) London then branches all over the country 1 guinea (=21 shillings) for year-long subscription =1 volume at a time The Victorian three-decker novel: costs 1 1/2 guinea (31s) 150-200,000 words in 900 pp ! 12 “major writers” and 3500 other novelists (not including 1-novel authors!); average of 17 novels per novelist, for a total of 42,000 novels (2000-8000 annually) pub’d 1837-1901; women novelists averaged 21 titles to men’s 16 but often used pseudonyms; most of the men held other employment but not only 10% of the women novelists did. ! ! from Sutherland Victorian Novelists and Publishers Trollope concentrated entirely on his literary career. While continuing to produce novels rapidly, he also edited the St Paul's Magazine, which published several of his novels in serial form George Gissing, 1857-1903 author of 23 novels including New Grub Street, 1891 RUDYARD KIPLING (1865-1936): The Three-Decker (1894) The three-volume novel is extinct. Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail. It took a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail; But, spite all modern notions, I've found her first and best - The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest. …. ! But novelist Israel Zangwill (1864-1926) had another take on the genre: “One idea makes one paragraph Two paragraphs make one page Twenty pages make one chapter Twelve chapters make one volume Three volumes make one tired.” end of the high prices of novels in 1890s. ! competition: cheap reprints from US and Ireland yellow backs, railway books ! Mudie’s insisting on lower prices from the publisher to enhance profits… ! ! Boston W.H. Smith railway store gradual demise of the circulating libraries and rise of the single-use novel ! Net book agreement, 1899-1990s ! Any bookseller who sold a book at less than the agreed price would no longer be supplied by the publisher in question. ! Peculiarity #1 the novel as a multi-use, library-owned commodity, high price, low print run, guaranteed sales short-term value=trendy ! Peculiarity #2 serialization What do ! War and Peace David Copperfield Middlemarch ! have in common? What do ! War and Peace David Copperfield Middlemarch ! have in common? ! first appeared in instalments =reaching multiple kinds of readers from low to high Le docteur Festus, created 1831, pub’d 1846 a kindly bumbling doctor spreads disaster in his path. Not intended for publication at first (Goethe’s encouragement); T used autography--drawing on special paper transferred to lithography A Töpffer comic in English tr’n as “Obadiah Oldbuck” (1842) Brother Jonathan. A weekly compend of belles lettres and the fine arts, standard literature and general intelligence, edited by John Neal New York: Edward Stephens Charles Dickens 1812-70 Dickens, Sketches by Boz: repub’n in 1839 of instalments pub’d 1833-37 e.g. in Monthly magazine each instalment had two black and white scenes, these by George Cruikshank The Pickwick Papers succeeded the “sketches by Boz” pub’d in monthly instalments costing 1s (=12d) each; 56 chapters with 3 chapters/instalment from March 1836-Oct 1837; illustrator Seymour ! unprecedented success: sold in40,000 copies Mrs Bardwell faints in Mr Pickwick’s arms Staplehurst rail crash, 1865 during pub’n of Our Mutual Friend, May 1864-Nov 1865 I have often noticed that the tales one reads in parts are those that remain the longest in one's memory; they mellow there, as it were. During the interval one seems to live with the characters .... We wonder how they are getting on, what will be the next news of them, and so on; almost as if they were real acquaintances at a distance. And it is often a pleasant and not unprofitable subject of conversation to discuss the incidents of a serial story between times with others who are following the gradual unfolding of its plan, much in the same way that one of the good results of reading aloud is the common interest it brings into family or friendly life" (Mrs. Molesworth "On the Use and Abuse of Fiction." Girl's Own Paper 13 (16 April 1892 1892): 452-54.) Tolstoy, War and Peace: early version serialized in the Russian Messenger 1865-67; pub’d in full in 1869 ! Tolstoy, Anna Karenina serialized in the Russian Messenger 1873-77 pub’d in full in 1878 ! Dostoyevsky, Brothers Karamazov serialized in the Russian Messenger 1879-80 important literary magazine 1856-87 ! Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky .