 | |  |
Notes
In a book now nearing completion I am attempting to present a picture of the English mass reading public during the nineteenth century, viewing it primarily as a social phenomenon, its size, composition, and tastes being the resultant of many complex influences in the history of the times.
Wilkie Collins, "The Unknown Public," Household Words, XVIII (1858), 217-224. The essay was reprinted in Collins' My Miscellanies (1863), I, 169-191. In the same year, the subject was treated in an article in Blackwood's Magazine (LXXXIV [1858], 200-216), and in the next year, in the British Quarterly Review (XXIX [1859], 313-345).
Official returns in Census of Great Britain, 1851: Population Tables, II (Part I) (1854), p.cliv.
Registrar-General's returns for England and Wales only; Graham Balfour, The Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland (1898), p. 305. A recent article by Robert K. Webb, "Working Class Readers in Early Victorian England," English Historical Review, LXV (1950), 333-351, critically surveys the evidence on the literacy rate among the masses in the thirties and forties.
Charles Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson (New York, 1949), p. 248. Sir Charles's actual phrase, "a few months," must not be interpreted too strictly. There were five editions of the poem between June, 1850 and November, 1851; the first and fifth were of 5,000 copies each, and probably the others were of about the same size or slightly larger (Edgar F. Shannon, Jr., Tennyson and the Reviewers [1952], pp. 146, 156). But even if, as is likely, the figure of 60,000 represents sales over a period of several years rather than months, it is still a remarkable short-term total for a book of poetry. One must remember that the records achieved by other Victorian best-sellers in this class of literature were built up over a generation or more. Robert Pollok's The Course of Time, for example, sold 78,000 between 1827 and 1869 (Publishers' Circular, January 16, 1869, p. 3); John Keble's The Christian Year sold 379,000 during the whole life of the copyright, 1827-1873 (John Collins Francis, John Francis, Publisher of "The Athenaeum" [1888], II, 193 n.); and the most famous of them all, Martin Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy, passed the 200,000 mark in 1866, twenty-eight years after the first series appeared (Derek Hudson, Martin Tupper: His Rise and Fall [1949], p. 40).
Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph (1952), II, 752, 756, 759. Bleak House, according to Dickens, had a circulation "half as large again as Copperfield," which sold about 25,000 a number (ibid., II, 670).
F. A. Mumby, The House of Routledge, 1834-1934 (1934), p. 86. This figure may appear high, but Mumby says elsewhere (p. 77) that Theodore Wood's Common Objects of the Country (1858) sold out an edition of 100,000 in a week.
Curwen, p. 428. Curwen also says that Mudie took 2,500 of Enoch Arden and 3,000 of Disraeli's Lothair. The latter, however, proved an unfortunate speculation.
"The Circulation of Modern Literature," Living Age, LXXVI (1863), 314; a rich source, incidentally, for contemporary sales figures.
This figure was given by Charles Knight in the preface to the first bound volume of the magazine (1832). He repeats it in his Passages from a Working Life (1864-65), II, 184. However, in 1855, replying to an inquiry addressed to him on behalf of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Knight wrote: "In the first year (1832) it sold about 100,000; in the second, 160,000. The largest sale was in the third and fourth years" (Alice A. Clowes, Charles Knight: a Sketch [1892], pp. 225-226). Since the paper was unstamped, government returns are of no help in establishing the precise facts. It is at least certain that the circulation of 200,000 was not long sustained, and by 1845 it had fallen to 40,000 (ibid.).
The 1849 figure is from William Lovett's testimony printed in [House of Commons], Select Committee on Public Libraries (1849), Q. 2787. In 1851, a witness before another committee of Parliament gave the Family Herald's circulation as 147,000, while another witness put it at "over 200,000" ([House of Commons], Report from the Select Committee on Newspaper Stamps [1851], Qq. 973, 2498). The figure for 1855, given in the text, is from Charles Knight (Clowes, cited in note 14, p. 226). To confuse matters still further, it may be noted that in the same year, 1855, a speaker in Parliament placed the Family Herald's circulation at 240,000 (Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., CXXXVII [1855], col. 783). This is merely one example, out of many which could be cited, of the contradictory evidence facing one who wishes to obtain a fairly accurate picture of the audience for mass-circulation periodicals in the nineteenth century. Since the papers were unstamped for the most part, the government returns are useless, and in any event, the stamp duty was removed in 1855. There was no Victorian equivalent of the Audit Bureau of Circulation, and so a periodical publisher's sales figures could be a matter strictly between himself and God. His public boasts are of little value, for as the Bookseller remarked (April 1, 1869, p. 298), "many of our contemporaries . . . publish particulars respecting their circulation which must somewhat astonish their printers." Lacking the actual account-books of the various publishers, the researcher must be content with such figures as were hazarded at the time, on good authority or bad, and try not to become too exercised over the frequent disagreement among witnesses.
Knight's figures again, as of 1855 (Clowes, p. 226). But in the same year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer told Commons that the London Journal sold 510,000 (Hansard, 3rd ser., CXXXVII [1855], col. 783).
Hansard as cited in note 16, cols. 781-782; H. R. Fox Bourne, English Newspapers (1887), II, 124, 226-227.
On this whole subject, see, in addition to Sadleir's bibliography, John Carter and Michael Sadleir, Victorian Fiction (1947), pp. 2-14.
The free traders' side was presented by Chapman in an article, "The Commerce of Literature," Westminster Review, new ser., I (1852), 511-554; reprinted as Cheap Books and How to Get Them (1852). See also the Athenaeum, May 22, 1852, pp. 575-577.
The publishing trade's indignation over the "underselling" practice may be studied in extenso in the columns of the Publishers' Circular for the whole period.
There is a vast contemporary literature on the subject, a sampling of which will prove that the vivid account given in Chapter XI of J. L. and Barbara Hammond, The Age of the Chartists (1930) is not exaggerated.
Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into . . . Certain Colleges and Schools . . . (4v., 1864). See, for example, the testimony on Rugby (IV, 294-295) and Eton (III, 123; IV, 249).
See John Minto, A History of the Public Library Movement in Great Britain and Ireland (1932), and Sidney Ditzion, "The Anglo-American Library Scene," Library Quarterly, XVI (1946), 281-301.
The best recent study of the W. H. Smith railway library enterprise is Robert A. Colby, "That He Who Runs May Read," Wilson Library Bulletin, XXVII (1952), 300-306. A brief bibliography is appended to this account.
Maurice J. Quinlan, Victorian Prelude: A History of English Manners, 1700-1830 (1941), gives in Chapters VIII and X an excellent summary of the effect of Evangelicalism upon the reading public down to 1830—an effect which persisted long after that date. Francis E. Mineka, The Dissidence of Dissent (1944), Chapter II, collects evidence of the Evangelicals' distrust of imaginative reading-matter.
Charles Knight, in his Popular History of England (n.d.), VIII, 486, decided, after an analysis of the Classified Index to the London Catalogue of Books, 1816-1851, that of 45,510 books listed in that catalogue, 10,300 were "works of divinity"—as against 3,500 works of fiction, 3,400 of drama and poetry, and 2,500 of science.
Not even Dickens, despite the statement so often encountered that he appealed to every class, high and low. It is true that there was great demand for cheap imitations and parodies of his earlier work, and unauthorized adaptations from the novels were popular in the cheap theatres; but that is not the same thing as acquaintance with the genuine article. Dickens' was essentially a middle-class audience.—Perhaps this is the place to add a word concerning the innumerable anecdotes one finds in the biographies of most of the celebrated nineteenth-century authors, from Scott on down, telling how a crossing-sweeper or poor mechanic or reformed prostitute plucked the great one's sleeve and offered humble testimony to the edifying effect of his writings. While they are picturesque enough (and some are doubtless true), such stories cannot be regarded as very substantial evidence of a widespread audience for distinguished contemporary writers among the lower classes of the population.
The Times, February 8, 1854; reprinted in Living Age, XLIII (1854), 122. The whole article (pp. 118-122) is a blunt attack on the "unsoundness of the position held by the great publishing houses."
In 1852 the "cheap" edition of Dickens, at 3s.6d. to 5s. a volume, was only getting under way; a title was not included in this series until six to ten years after original publication. Thackeray's Henry Esmond was available only at the standard three-decker price of 31s.6d., Pendennis was 26s., and Vanity Fair, 21s. Only after a similar lapse of time would these titles be reissued at six or seven shillings. Among the principal works of Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship was 9s. in 1852, Chartism (a short work) 5s., Latter-Day Pamphlets 9s., Past and Present 10s. 6d., and Sartor Resartus 10s. 6d. Macaulay's Essays was 21s.
Johnson, Dickens, II, 946. It may be instructive to compare this figure with that of the Athenaeum, which had "the largest circulation of any literary periodical," appealing to a more intellectual audience and selling at double the price. Although a recent student has estimated the Athenaeum's sale in 1853 at between 18,000 and 24,000 (Leslie A. Marchand, The Athenaeum: A Mirror of Victorian Culture [1941], p. 81), in 1855 Commons was told, on the authority of the periodical's proprietor, that its total press-run, stamped and unstamped, was but 7,200 a week (Hansard, 3rd ser., CXXXVII [1855], col. 781).
[Leonard Huxley], The House of Smith Elder (London, privately printed, 1923), pp. 98-100; Publishers' Circular, May 1, 1862, p. 199.
One of the almost countless desiderata in this field is a full-length study of the Cassell firm, both before its founder's death (1865) and during the rest of the Victorian era. G. Holden Pike, John Cassell (1894) is brief, uncritical, and reticent. Henry Vizetelly, Glances Back Through Seventy Years (1893), II, 52-53, and Curwen, History of Booksellers, pp. 267-274, provide some contemporary information, mingled, in the case of the former book, with scandal. Newman Flower, Just As It Happened (1950), pp. 50-59, adds a few further notes.
The best-known of the cheap series of standard classics during the fifties, other than Bohn's, was Bell's Annotated Series of English Poets, published (1854-1857) in twenty-nine volumes at 2s.6d. Competing series included a reissue of the famous Aldine Poets (1857-1858) at 3s.6d. or 5s., Griffin's Standard Library (3s.6d.), and Routledge's British Poets (3s.6d. or 5s.). Making allowance for the difference in wage-levels and purchasing power between the 1850's and, say, the early part of the present century, these prices were substantially higher than those of Everyman or the World's Classics.
The titles ranged from Ten Nights in a Bar-room and Queechy to Watts's Logic and Dryden's translation of Virgil. Lists can be found in, among other places, the Reference Catalogue of English Literature for 1874. I do not know when the Cottage Library began, but it was flourishing as early as 1856 (Publishers' Circular, December 1, 1856, pp. 520-521).
| | |