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In The English Common Reader (Chicago, 1957; currently available in the Midway Reprint series) I printed, as Appendixes B and C, lists of bestselling books and of the sales of certain mass-circulation periodicals in nineteenth-century England. A further list appeared in SB, 22 (1969), 197-206. The present one represents the gleanings of fifteen more years, with data supplementing the entries in the original compilation marked by asterisks. As before, prospective users of these figures should be warned that they come from sources of greatly varying reliability and are presented here for whatever they may be worth to students of nineteenth-century English literary, publishing, and social history.
Prefacing the second list were several paragraphs arguing that an unelaborated statement of the number of editions a book went through, unsupported by specific numbers of copies sold, is of little value in determining the popularity of such an item, particularly in comparison with similar items for which figures are to be found. Two additional pieces of contemporary evidence support the point. One is from Samuel Warren's novel Ten Thousand a Year (1839-41), describing the writing and subsequent publication and puffing of a work by "Mr. Bladdery Pip, a fashionable novelist": "He had seven hundred copies printed off; and, allowing a hundred for a first edition, he varied the title-pages of the remaining six hundred by the words—'Second Edition'—'Third Edition'—'Fourth Edition'—'Fifth Edition'—'Sixth Edition'—and 'Seventh Edition.' By the time that the fourth edition had been announced, there existed a real rage for the book."[1] Allowing for satirical exaggeration, this is probably a credible report of publishing practice insofar
The claims of puffery apart, there was a practical reason for this flexibility. The number of copies an "edition" might actually have was determined solely by the routine of the publishing house, and therefore might be large or small, depending on the circumstances. As the court's decision in the case of Reade v. Bentley (1858) put it:
For the sake of putting the figures in this and the preceding lists in perspective, several recently noted statistics from the Victorian Bible trade may be mentioned. In 1875 "an exceedingly small Oxford Bible on exceedingly thin paper" sold a quarter of a million copies within a few weeks. In the 1870s and 1880s, while the Revised Version was being prepared, "Production of a million copies of the Authorized Version was taken for granted, a routine operation perfected over the years." And when the Revised Version of the New Testament was published in 1881, one million copies were sold in a single day.[3] Impressive though some of the figures in the following list may have been to contemporaries, they were almost minuscule when compared with the demand for Bibles.
- (Political squibs and other propaganda; sermons)
- Attention should be called to the sales figures for radical publications in the Reform Bill era gathered in Patricia Hollis' The Pauper Press: A Study in Working-Class Radicalism of the 1830s (1970), pp. 116-124.
- 1820-23 * John Wade's Black Book ("a storehouse of factual ammunition for the use of radical agitators"): 14,000 by 1831. The earlier numbers, rewritten as The Extraordinary Black Book, published in 1831 and reissued in 1832 and 1835, "altogether sold 50,000 copies."[4]
- 1825 Henry Brougham's Practical Observations upon the Education of the People: 50,000 in a few weeks.[5]
- 1830-31 William Carpenter's weekly Political Letter: 63,000.[6]
- 1832-34 Harriet Martineau's Illustrations of Political Economy: monthly sale about 10,000.[7]
- 1840 Robert Owen's New Moral World: issue of 15 February, containing Owen's reply to a virulent attack by the Bishop of Exeter: 50,000.[8]
- 1841 Tracts for the Times, XC (Newman): 10,000 copies, 27 February-25 May. (In the period 1838-39, when Tract LXXXV was issued, "the Tracts were selling at a sixty-thousand-a-year pace.")[9]
- 1848 Samuel Sidney's Australian Hand-book: seven editions of 1,000 copies each sold in five months. His The Three Colonies of Australia (1852): 5,000 in first year.[10]
- 1850 Nicholas Wiseman's "An Appeal to the Reason and Good Feeling of the English People on the Subject of the Catholic Hierarchy": 30,000 in three days (November).[11]
- 1855 Dr. Frederick Lees's An Argument, Legal and Historical for the Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic: 50,000 in an unspecified period.[12]
- 1868 Eliza Lynn Linton's The Girl of the Period (a pamphlet collecting articles on women's rights in the Saturday Review, 1866): 40,000 in an unspecified period.[13]
- 1878 Frederic W. Farrar's sermon "Between the Living and the Dead": 15,000 within a year.[14]
- 1897 Walter Walsh's The Secret History of the Oxford Movement: four editions totaling 22,000 copies by the following year.[15]
Nonce Literature
- [1836-70 * All available sales figures for Dickens are collected in Robert L. Patten, Charles Dickens and His Publishers (Oxford, 1978), especially Appendix A.]
- 1837 W. H. Ainsworth's Crichton: first edition of 1,250 copies sold the first day.[16]
- 1843 * Ainsworth's Windsor Castle: 18,000 by 1850.[17]
- 1855 James Grant's The Yellow Frigate: 12,000 copies the first year.[18]
- [1861 * Sales figures for thirty-one of Mrs. Henry Wood's novels down to the end of the century are given in the British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books: Photolithographic Edition to 1955, CCLX, cols. 474-82.]
- 1880 Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Barbara: pre-publication order, 19,100; reprint order, 10,000.[19]
- 1882 Margaret Oliphant's A Little Pilgrim in the Unseen: 20,000 in an unspecified period.[20]
- 1892 Mrs. Humphry Ward's The History of David Grieve: 80,000 within the first two years.[21]
- 1895 Hardy's Jude the Obscure: 20,000 in three months.[22]
- 1896 Marie Corelli's The Murder of Delicia: 43,000 copies the first year. "New and cheaper edition" (1899): 52,000.[23]
- 1896 Frederic W. Farrar's The Three Homes (the signed edition of a novel published pseudonymously in 1873): 29,000.[24]
Fiction
- 1806 James Montgomery's The Wanderer in Switzerland: 12,000 in twenty years.[25]
- 1836 Supplement to Isaac Watts's Psalms and Hymns, ed. Josiah Conder: 40,000 by 1839.[26]
- 1845 "Bon Gaultier's" Book of Ballads (Aytoun and Martin): sale from fifth edition (1857) to 1909, 32,000.[27]
- 1849 William E. Aytoun's Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers: 60,000 "in the Victorian period alone."[28]
- 1870 * Tennyson's The Holy Grail: first print order, 40,000 copies. Additional figures for Tennyson: Harold (1876), 15,000 in two months; Collected Works (shilling edition, 1878), 30,323 in first year; Collected Works (crown edition, 1878), 54,974 in first six months, 100,000 through 1883; Tiresias and Other Poems (1885), 15,771 in first year; Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), 14,293 in first year.[29]
Poetry
- 1829-30 Allan Cunningham's Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters: vols. 1 and 2 sold 14,000 before the publication of vol. 3 in 1830. Of the latter, 12,000 copies were printed.[30]
- 1832 Robert Chambers' Life of Walter Scott: 180,000 to 1871.[31]
- 1849 Austen Henry Layard's Nineveh and Its Remains: 8,000 in first year. Abridged edition (1851): 14,000 in first year.[32]
- 1853? Female Life Among the Mormons (yellowback): 34,000 by 1855.[33]
- 1856 Catherine Marsh's Memorials of Captain Hedley Vicars (an evangelical life of a "serious" soldier): 70,000 in year.[34]
- 1883 Sir John Seeley's The Expansion of England: 80,000 within two years.[35]
Travel, History, Biography
- 1837 * Favell Lee Bevan's Line Upon Line; or, A Second Series of the Earliest Religious Instruction the Infant Mind is Capable of: 294,000 by 1893. (Figures for seven other Bevan titles are given in the British Library Catalogue of Printed Books to 1975, XXVIII, 75-76.)
- 1869 Florence Montgomery's Misunderstood: 12,000 in four years.[36]
- 1869 Rev. T. P. Wilson's Frank Oldfield, prizewinner in a temperance magazine's competition for children's books which were not "thinly disguised tracts": 23,000 in three years.[37]
- 1878? Kate Greenaway's Under the Window: 70,000 for the English market in unspecified period.[38]
- 1880 Kate Greenaway's Birthday Book: 128,000 in unspecified period.[39]
Juvenile Literature
- 1814-15 Sales in one year of popular textbooks published by Sir Richard Phillips: Goldsmith's Grammar of Geography, 30,000; Blair's Class Book, 10,000; Mavor's English Spelling Book, 75,000.[40]
- 1825-32 William Hone's Table Book, Every-day Book, and Year Book, republished by Tegg: 80,000 to 1838.[41]
- 1841 Mrs. John Claudius Loudon's The Ladies' Companion to the Flower Garden: 20,000 in unspecified period.[42]
- 1849 * Alexis Soyer's The Modern Housewife, or Ménagère: second edition of 6,000 called for within fortnight of publication; 21,000 to 1851, 30,000 to 1853.[43]
- 1861 * Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, first published in parts in 1859: one-volume edition (1861), over 2,000,000 by 1870. Her Englishwoman's Cookery Book, Being a Collection of Economical Recipes Taken from Her "Book of Household Management" (1863): 155,000 by 1870.[44]
- 1864 Mrs. Eliza Warren's How I Managed My House on Two Hundred Pounds a Year: 36,000 in first year. Her How I Managed My Children from Infancy to Marriage (1865): 20,000 in first year.[45]
- 1888 Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery: 145,000 to 1899.[46]
Textbooks, Reference Works, etc.
- 1828 George Combe's The Constitution of Man (phrenology): 11,000 to 1836; Chambers's "People's Edition" (1835-38): 59,000 in unspecified period.[47]
- 1841 Charles Mackay's Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds: 5,000 in three days.[48]
- 1854 George Drysdale's Elements of Social Science (including birth control information): 80,000 to end of century.[49]
- 1858 William Buckland's Bridgewater treatise, Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (1836), revised edition by his son: 5,000 in first three days.[50]
- 1881 Charles Darwin's The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms: 8,500 in first three years.[51]
- 1883 Henry Drummond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World: 70,000 in five years.[52]
Scientific and Miscellaneous Works
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