A WORLD OF WORDSRomantic Fiction and the

Literary Marketplace

Anthony Mandal (Cardiff University)

Literature may be an artefact, a product of social consciousness, a world vision; but it is also an industry. Books are not just structures of meaning, they are commodities produced by publishers and sold on the market at a profit […] Writers are not just transposers of individual mental structures, they are workers hired by publishing houses to produce commodities that will sell. ‘A writer,’ Marx comments, ‘is a worker not in so far as he produces ideas, but insofar as he enriches a publisher, insofar as he is working for a wage’. It is a salutary reminder.

• Terry Eagleton, Marxism and literary criticism (1976)

Overview

1. Contexts: economic, legal, technological

2. The production of fiction

3. Authorship: patterns and commercial aspects

[Slides and paper will be downloadable next week from cardiffbookhistory.wordpress.com or via @CardiffBookHist]

I cannot help observing, that the sale of books in general has increased prodigiously within the last twenty years. According to the best estimation I have been able to make, I suppose that more than four times the number of books are sold now than were sold twenty years since. The poorer sort of farmers, and even the poor country people in general, who before that period spent their winter evenings in relating stories of witches, ghosts, hobgoblins, &c. now shorten their winter nights by hearing their sons and daughters read tales, romances, &c. and on entering their houses, you may see Tom Jones, Roderick Random, and other entertaining books stuck up on their bacon racks, &c. … all ranks and degrees now READ.

• James Lackington, Memoirs of the first forty-five years (1791)

Socioeconomic contexts

Rise of circulating libraries in c18• Books were made to be borrowed• High cost of book production / purchase• Notable successes: Nobles, Minerva Library, Henry Colburn

Growth of provincial & Scots book trades• Challenge to London-based structures• But also expansion of print networks

Emergence of periodical culture• Early periodical culture emerges in earnest at start of c18• Consolidated with monthly periodicals in last third of c18• Early c19: quarterlies and appearance of Blackwood’s and Literary Gazette

Copyright

1710 Statute of Anne• Consolidated position of publishing ‘oligopoly’• Copyright of existing works 21 years; new copyrights 14 + 14 years• Confirmation of ‘perpetual’ copyright

1774 Donaldson v. Beckett• Conflict between English & Scots law• Appeal to House of Lords > copyright limited to maximum of 28 years

1814 Copyright Act• Copyright vested in author• 28 years or lifetime of author (whichever was longer)

[The 1774 ruling] threw the London trade into a confusion which it had not known since the lapse of the Printing Act [of 1662, which had introduced government regulation of the trade], the last formal breach in the protectionist walls. … The London booksellers … had been comprehensively and successfully challenged by Scottish entrepreneurs. It was their response to that challenge which saw the emergence of the publisher as the dominant figure in the trade in printed books in Britain.

• John Feather, A history of British publishing, 2nd edn (2006)

Copyright

1710 Statute of Anne• Consolidated position of publishing ‘oligopoly’• Copyright of existing works 21 years; new copyrights 14 + 14 years• Confirmation of ‘perpetual’ copyright

1774 Donaldson v. Beckett• Conflict between English & Scots law• Appeal to House of Lords > copyright limited to maximum of 28 years

1814 Copyright Act• Copyright vested in author• 28 years or lifetime of author (whichever was longer)

Technological determinants

Paper• Problem of quantity + quality• Handmade paper v Fourdrinier machines (1807)

Typesetting• Hand composed v stereotyping (1784, 1828-9)

Printing• Wooden press (1500-1800)• Stanhope iron press (1800) and Albion press

(1820)• Steam printing (1814)

Stereotype plate

Growth in demand

Search for technological

innovation

Cheaper costs in book production

2. The Production of Fiction

Sources: The English novel, 1770–1829 (2000); The English novel, 1830–1836 (2003); British Fiction, 1800–1830: a database of production, circulation & reception (2004)

New novels, 1780–1836

17801782

17841786

17881790

17921794

17961798

18001802

18041806

18081810

18121814

18161818

18201822

18241826

18281830

18321834

18360

20

40

60

80

100

120

I own I do not like calling [Camilla] a Novel: it gives so simply the notion of a mere love story, that I recoil a little from it. I mean it to be sketches of Characters & morals, put in action, not a Romance.

• Frances Burney (1795)

I have received a very civil note from Mrs Martin requesting my name as a Subscriber to her Library … As an inducement to subscribe Mrs Martin tells us that her Collection is not to consist only of Novels, but of every kind of Literature &c &c—She might have spared this pretension to our family, who are great Novel readers & not ashamed of being so.

• Jane Austen (1798)

I thought there were already good books enough in the world for good people; but there was a large class of readers whose wants had not been attended to;—the subscribers to the circulating library. A little to raise the tone of that mart of mischief, and to counteract its corruptions, I thought was an object worth attempting.

• Hannah More (1809)

Why should an epic or a tragedy be supposed to hold such an exalted place in composition, while a novel is almost a nickname for a book? Does not a novel admit of as noble sentiments—as lively description—as natural character—as perfect unity of action—and a moral as irresistible as either of them?

• Mary Brunton (1814)

What matters is not so much that the 1814 reviews did not form quite the ‘guard of honor’ claimed … as that within six years the Waverley Novels had achieved such authority and prestige that the moment of their entrance into the literary field was already legendary.

• Ina Ferris, The achievement of literary authority (1991)

3. AuthorshipPatterns and commercial aspects

Sources: The English novel, 1770–1829 (2000); The English novel, 1830–1836 (2003); British Fiction, 1800–1830: a database of production, circulation & reception (2004)

Authorship of fiction, 1780–1836

17801782

17841786

17881790

17921794

17961798

18001802

18041806

18081810

18121814

18161818

18201822

18241826

18281830

18321834

18360%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Unknown

Female

Male

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair.—He has Fame & Profit enough as a Poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people’s mouths.—I do not like him, & do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it—but fear I must.

• Jane Austen (1814)

Female Male

1780-89 (405)

38.8%(157)

27.2%(110)

1790-99 (701)

41.5%(291)

32.1%(225)

1800-09 (778)

47%(366)

38.3%(298)

1810-19(667)

51.7%(345)

29.4%(196)

1820-29(827)

34.9%(289)

51.5%(426)

1830-36 (560)

30.4%(170)

57.3%(321)

Sources: The English novel, 1770–1829 (2000); The English novel, 1830–1836 (2003); British Fiction, 1800–1830: a database of production, circulation & reception (2004)

No. of titles by individual authors 1790s 1810s

Total authors / titles 288 authors495 titles

320 authors534 titles

1 63.5%(183)

70.3%(225)

2 19.8%(57)

15.3%(49)

3 8.7%(25)

6.9%(22)

4 3.5%(10)

1.9%(6)

5+ 4.5%(13)

5.6%(18)

Note: The table lists works by identifiable individual authors, which is why total works given here do not match total output for each decade.

Author payment methods

• Subscription

• Sale of copyright

• Commission

• Half-profits

Source: The Times, 27 Jan 1854.

Authorship of fiction, 1780–1836

Further reading

• Eisenstein, E. (1979) The printing press as an agent of change. • Eliot, S. (1994) Some patterns and trends in British publishing, 1800–1919. • Eliot, S. & J. Rose (2007) A companion to the history of the book. • Finkelstein, D. & A. McCleery (2005) An introduction to book history. • Garside, P. et al. (2000) The English novel, 1770–1829: a bibliographical survey of prose

fiction published in the British Isles.• Garside, P. et al. (2003) The English novel, 1800–1836 a bibliographical survey of prose fiction

published in Britain and Ireland [online].• Garside, P. et al. (2004) British fiction, 1800–1830: a database of production, circulation &

reception [online].• Feather, J. (2006) A history of British publishing. 2nd edn.• Mandal, A. (2007) Jane Austen and the production of fiction: the determined author.• Moretti, F. (2005) Graphs, maps, trees: abstract models for a literary history.