The British Publishing Industry in the Nineteenth Century

This volume documents how the nineteenth-century British publishing industry responded to and helped shape changes in readership and reading markets in the period. Focusing on broad social, economic and cultural changes, it traces the impact of improvements in transport and communication networks, which dramatically affected the production, distribution and retail of books and periodicals, and the implementation of the Education Acts of 1870 and 1871 which forced publishers to direct their attention to new markets and adopt cheaper publishing formats. The growth of circulating libraries, the revolution in serial and part publication, and the spread of railway bookstalls are among the many topics addressed in this volume which concludes with a section that documents the new pressures of censorship that arose as educational reforms provoked anxieties over the spread of cheap 'pernicious' literature.

Professor David Finkelstein (BA, PhD, FEA, FRHistS, FRSA) is a cultural historian who has published over 90 books, essays and refereed journal articles in areas related to nineteenth-century cultural history, print culture and media history, several of which have won awards. His most recent work includes Movable Types: Roving Creative Printers of the Victorian World (Oxford University Press, 2018), and the 850 page edited Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, volume 2: Expansion and Evolution, 1800-1900 (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). Current projects include a co-edited volume on the colonial periodical press, as well as work on print workplaces in Edwardian visual culture. Dr Andrew Nash (MA, MSc, PhD) is Reader in Book History and Deputy Director of the Institute of English Studies in the University of London's School of Advanced Study where he directs the MA in the History of the Book and the London Rare Books School. In addition to monographs on Victorian literature and Scottish literature, he has edited or co-edited many works in the field of book and publishing history including The Culture of Collected Editions (2003), Literary Cultures and the Material Book (2007), New Directions in the History of the Novel (2014) and, most recently, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 7: the Twentieth Century and Beyond (2019). He is part of a new Leverhulme-funded research project on the early history of the Society of Authors (2020-24).

Volume 4: Publishers, Markets, Readers Volume 4 Introduction Bibliography Part 1. THE PRICE OF BOOKS - Charles Knight, The Old Printer and the Modern Press (London: John Murray, 1854), pp. 238-58. - 'Literature for the People', Times (9 Feb 1854), p. 10. - 'Cheap Books and their Readers: An Interview with Mr Routledge', Pall Mall Gazette (19 Nov 1885), pp. 1-2. - 'Shilling Literature', Time (July 1885), 115-7. - 'The New Departure in Publishing: A Six-shilling Novel for Sixpence', Publishers' Circular (13 May 1899), pp. 519-20. - A.D. Innes, 'The Production and Purchase of Books'. Paper delivered to the Third International Congress of Publishers, London 7-10 June 1899 (London : Printed for the Organising Committee by Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1899). - 'The Booksellers on the Question of Cheaper Books', Academy (21 May 1898), 558-9. - Wm Laird Clowes, 'The Cheapening of Useful Books', Fortnightly Review (July 1901), 88-98. - W. T. Stead, 'The World's Classics; or Bound Books for the Million', Review of Reviews (November 1901), 544-6. Part 2. THE CIRCULATION OF BOOKS - James Grant, extract from The Great Metropolis, second series (London: Saunders and Otley, 1837), I, pp. 121-40. - Charles Knight, extract from The Old Printer and the Modern Press (London: John Murray, 1854), pp. 260-9. - 'The Circulation of Modern Literature', Spectator (3 Jan 1863), pp. 16-18. - 'The Publications of a Year', Leisure Hour (21 March 1863), 190-2. - Walter Montagu Gattie, 'What English People Read', Fortnightly Review (September 1889), 307-21. - Joseph Ackland, 'Elementary Education and the Decay of Literature', Nineteenth Century (March 1894), pp. 412-23. - 'Do English People Buy Books?' The Author, 1 (16 March 1891), pp. 288-91. Part 3. POPULAR PUBLISHING AND READING - Thomas Frost, 'Popular Literature Forty Years Ago', in Forty Years Recollections (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1880), pp. 77-95. - Charles Manby Smith, 'The Press of the Seven Dials', Chambers's Journal (28 June 1856), pp. 401-5. - Report of the Select Committee on Newspaper Stamps (1851), pp. 371-80. - 'Literature of the People-Past and Present', Athenaeum (1 January 1870), pp. 11-14. - William Alexander, 'Literature of the People - Past and Present', Good Words (Dec 1876), pp. 92-6. - [Francis Hitchman], 'Penny Fiction', Quarterly Review (July 1890), pp. 150-71. Part 4. RAILWAY BOOKSTALLS - ['The New Business in Bookselling'], Athenaeum (27 January 1849), p. 95. - Literature of the Rail: Re-published, by permission, from "The Times" of Saturday 9th August 1851, with a preface (London: John Murray, 1851). - 'Railroad Bookselling', Saturday Review (31 January 1857), pp. 100-2. - 'Our Modern Mercury', Once a Week (2 February 1861), pp. 160-3. - 'W.H. Smith & Son's', Ludgate Monthly (January 1892), pp. 161-9. - 'The Harmsworth Magazine: Some Interviews', Academy (16 July 1898), pp. 67-8 - 'The Bookstall Monopoly', Graphic (23 July 1898), p. 58. Part 5. PERIODICAL MARKETS - 'The Edinburgh Review (1802-1902)', Edinburgh Review, CCCCII (October 1902), pp. 275-80; 284-86, 287-91, 295-96. - 'Publishing and Puffing', Metropolitan Magazine (Oct 1833), 171-8. - [Christian Isobel Johnstone], 'Johnstone's Edinburgh Magazine', Tait's Edinburgh Magazine (January 1834), pp. 490-500. - 'Chambers's Edinburgh Journal', Chambers's Edinburgh Journal (1 February 1834), pp. 1-2. - George M. Smith, 'Our Birth and Parentage', Cornhill Magazine (January 1901), pp. 4-17. - William Westall, 'Newspaper Fiction', Lippincott's Monthly Magazine (June 1890), pp. 77-88. - 'Popular Magazines, Circulating Libraries, and the Sale of Books', Bookman (June 1898), pp. 67-70. Part 6. CIRCULATING LIBRARIES AND THE FICTION MARKET - Charles Knight, extract from The Old Printer and the Modern Press (London: John Murray, 1854), pp. 229-34. - Catherine Gore, 'The Monster Misery of Literature', Blackwood's Magazine (May 1844), pp. 556-60. - 'New and Cheap Forms of Popular Literature', Eclectic Review (July 1845), pp. 74-84. - 'Mudie's Library', Leisure Hour (March 1886), pp. 187-9. - William C. Preston, 'Mudie's Library', Good Words (December 1894), pp. 668-76 - 'Mr Mudie's Monopoly', Literary Gazette (29 September 1860), article and selected subsequent correspondence. [Original article, 29 September; letter from Mudie to the Athenaeum, 6 October; letter from 'Z', 6 October; letter from Fair Play, 20 October; letter from 'Senex', 27 October; 'Mudie's Library', Saturday Review, 3 November; letters from Saunders, Otley and A Second-Rate Author, 17 November; letter from Charles J. Skeet, 24 November]. - 'A Novel - One Guinea and a Half', Saturday Review (11 November 1871), pp. 615-16. - Samuel Tinsley, 'Three-Volume Novels', letter to the Times (4 December 1871). - 'On the Forms of Publishing Fiction', Tinsley's Magazine (May 1872), pp. 411-14. - Alexander Innes Shand, 'The Novelists and their Patrons', Fortnightly Review (July 1886), pp. 23-35. - 'The Circulating Libraries and Three-Volume Novels', Publishers' Circular (7 July 1894), pp. 5, 7-8 - 'The Three-Volume Novel', The Author 5:3 (1 August 1894), pp. 63-5. Part 7. OBSCENITY LAW AND THE BOOK TRADE - Extract from 'Second Reading in the House of Lords of the Sale of Obscene Books Prevention Bill', Hansard, HL vol. 146 (25 June 1857), cols 329-337. - The Case of 'The Confessional Unmasked'. Being a Report of the Proceedings at Wolverhampton, and in the Court of Queen's Bench, in the Matter of the Appeal 'Scott v. Justices of Wolverhampton' (London: A. Gadsby, 1868), pp. 36-48. - Extract from The National Vigilance Association, Pernicious Literature. Debate in the House of Commons. Trial and conviction for sale of Zola's novels. With opinions of the press (London: National Vigilance Association, [1889]), pp. 5-19. Index