Copyright by Jacob Charles Ptacek 2015 The Dissertation Committee for Jacob Charles Ptacek Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Unknown Publics: Victorian Novelists and Working-Class Readers, 1836-1870. Committee: Carol Mackay, Co-Supervisor Coleman Hutchison, Co-Supervisor Wayne Lesser Allen Macduffie Michael Winship Unknown Publics: Victorian Novelists and Working-Class Readers, 1836-1870. by Jacob Charles Ptacek, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2015 Dedication To My Mother, I‘m pretty sure I promised this one to you… Acknowledgements Every work of scholarship labors under pretty significant debts, and this one— which has been in the works for a long time—has more than its fair share. Foremost among my academic debts are to my committee members. Coleman Hutchison not only graciously agreed to work with a relative stranger, but gave unstinting advice and support both in person and via email. Despite a schedule that would crush lesser humans, he found time to give me detailed comments and drafts. His skillful editing and advice not only made the content of this dissertation better, but improved the very words on the page. I have learned more than I can say from his example. Carol MacKay has been so essential to this project, and to my time in graduate school, that she deserves a paragraph of her own. Many of the ideas in this dissertation were first inspired by her courses on the Victorian novel, and Carol has overseen many, many iterations of the content over many years. Additionally, Carol arranged teaching opportunities in her classes that gave me a chance to discuss some of these texts with perspicacious undergraduates and fired my thinking at the right time. No one at the University of Texas has helped me to develop more, both professionally and intellectually, than Carol. While Cole and Carol have done heroic labors as co-chairs, the remainder of my committee have offered immense help, as well. Allen MacDuffie offered advice, insight, and encouragement throughout the planning and writing of this dissertation—going so far as to read an 80 page chapter without complaint. Michael Winship provided not only a model of rigorous scholarship, but my first exposure to many of the theoretical models upon which this text is built. My thinking about books as objects owes a great deal to his v teaching. Wayne Lesser stepped in when the project needed him without hesitation, for which I‘m deeply grateful.This dissertation would be much impoverished without their help. Four friends, in particular, went above and beyond the duties of friendship during the writing of this dissertation. Dr. Jessica Shafer Goodfellowread every word of this at least twice, and offered hours of insight and consultation. I can‘t express my debt to her except to say: I could not have written it without her support and critical eye. Melissa Smith did her level best to correct my constant ―which / that‖ confusion while asking great questions about chapters 3 and 4. Dr. Megan Eatman (and her husband, Charles Spinoso) provided food and literary theory in equal measures. Finally, Chris Ortiz y Prentice was there with me at every step of the way—his enthusiasm for the project and his critical intelligence never flagged over years of dinner and drinks. I have learned a lot from him. These acknowledgements could go on forever, but I‘ll limit myself to a few more. Special thanks need to go to Dr. Philippa Levine, who provided insightful comments on Chapter 4 and many resources for the entire project. Her influence can be felt throughout this work. Dr. Heather Houser offered comments on a slightly different version of Chapter 2 with exemplary thoroughness. The Department of English offered me a year of fellowship support, which allowed for much of the research and writing of this dissertation. My family provided material and emotional support. This couldn‘t have been written without them, even if they do still call it my ―homework.‖ Dr. Jessica Werneke saw the beginning of this project in hours of conversations with her, asking hard questions and offering lightning insights. She has been a great role model in her commitment to research and scholarship. Stephanie Willis has given me, and this dissertation, more love and support than imaginable. Her contributions deserve a book of vi their own—hopefully someday they will get one. Until then, this dissertation will have to do. vii Unknown Publics: Victorian Novelists and Working-Class Readers, 1836-1870. Jacob Charles Ptacek, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2015 Supervisor: Carol Mackay and Coleman Hutchison It is well known that readerships exploded during the Victorian era, as transformations of social structures, education, and print technology created a mass readership hungry for literature. Unknown Publics examines how Victorian novelists responded to the pressures these new mass readerships generated in the cultural sphere, a problem that seemed especially pressing in the moment between the First and Second Reform Acts. Using the work of public sphere theorists Jürgen Habermas and Michael Warner, my dissertation argues that the Victorian novel became a contested arena for the representation of that public. Beginning with the staggering success of Charles Dickens‟s Pickwick Papers (1836-7), Victorian novelists entered into an ongoing, dialogic debate about the novel‟s relationship with the mass reader. As authors writing directly for working-class publishers sought to expand the novel tradition by incorporating non- representational elements of parody, fantasy, and folktale, mainstream middle-class authors consolidated the novel‟s form by emphasizing realism. Unknown Publics traces the development of the novel in the Victorian era by examining key moments in this debate between 1836 and 1870. Beginning with the critical response to Pickwick Papers¸ viii I examine how both G. W. M. Reynolds‟s Pickwick Abroad (1837-8) and Dickens‘s own Martin Chuzzlewit(1843-4) respond to the questions of working-class agency, urban identity, and literary form that Pickwick articulated. I next read William Harrison Ainsworth‘s Jack Sheppard (1839-40) alongside William Makepeace Thackeray‘s Catherine (1839-40) in order to discuss how the production of realism is predicated on a fantasy of working-class depravity. In my final chapters, I examine how the discourse of sensationalism interacted with the realist novel. I read Mary Elizabeth Braddon‘sRupert Godwin (1864) and The Doctor’s Wife (1864) to track how the divide between ―realist‖ and ―idealist‖ fiction was deployed for mass and middle-class readers. In my final chapter, I discuss Wilkie Collins‘s The Moonstone (1868) in terms of the reading practices encouraged for mass readers by the architects of the Second Reform Bill, revealing how Collins‘s mystery story is predicated on the political project of reform. Reading the presence (or absence) of realism as a crucial feature of the Victorian novel, Unknown Publics calls for a new understanding of the cultural and social work of realism accomplishes, and of how it came to be. ix Table of Contents List of Illustrations ............................................................................................... xi Introductory..............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Pickwick at Home and Abroad: Dickens, Reynolds, and the Pickwick Moment .........................................................................................................20 Tracking Pickwick‘s Reception, 1836-1860: ................................................28 Republican Pickwick: Reynolds, Appropriation, and Politics in Pickwick Abroad..................................................................................................45 Swindlers Abroad and at Home: Pickwick Abroad and Martin Chuzzlewit .65 Chapter 2: Ainsworth‘s Raptures, Thackeray‘s Poisons:Jack Sheppard and the Making of English Realism in 1840 .............................................................83 Representing Realism: ..................................................................................88 Jack Sheppard’s Strange Pleasures: Reading and Its Dangers .....................91 A Catherine Cathartic: The Conservative Critique ....................................103 Chapter 3: ―I am always divided:‖ Mary Elizabeth Braddon and the Politics of Publishing in 1864 ......................................................................................114 Specters of Finance: Rupert Godwin and Working-Class Morality ...........121 ―Between Two Worlds‖: The Doctor’s Wife¸ Flaubert, and the Idealist Novel ............................................................................................................139 Chapter 4: Suspicious Characters: The Moonstone and Victorian Liberalism. ...163 Writing Character: Character at work in Collins and Mill .........................172 Reading Character: Victorian Publics and the Disease of Reading ............195 Producing Character: The Moonstone and the Liberal Subject ..................215 Coda: ....................................................................................................................222 Bibliography .......................................................................................................229