I’ve been reading Victorian novels of late: Trollope, Dickens, James, Thackeray (and these thoughts were awakened by a passage in Victoria Glendenning’s biography of Trollope, which I’ve also been reading). I’ve known for a long time that the books of that era – novels, histories, accounts of travel and exploration – were almost always long, and published in multiple volumes. Victorian biographies, in fact, came to be known as “three-deckers” as they invariably appeared as three volumes.
Why so long? Why multi-volume? The first question is easy: mass literacy, inexpensive large-edition printing and no serious competition in that era for the audience’s attention. Novels were respectable, and respectability was all. I had always assumed that multi-volume books were simply a manifestation of cheap printing and abundant reading time amongst the middle classes. Turns out there was another, more incentively determined reason.
I’ve been reading Victorian novels of late: Trollope, Dickens, James, Thackeray (and these thoughts were awakened by a passage in Victoria Glendenning’s biography of Trollope, which I’ve also been reading). I’ve known for a long time that the books of that era – novels, histories, accounts of travel and exploration – were almost always long, and published in multiple volumes. Victorian biographies, in fact, came to be known as “three-deckers” as they invariably appeared as three volumes.
Why so long? Why multi-volume? The first question is easy: mass literacy, inexpensive large-edition printing and no serious competition in that era for the audience’s attention. Novels were respectable, and respectability was all. I had always assumed that multi-volume books were simply a manifestation of cheap printing and abundant reading time amongst the middle classes. Turns out there was another, more incentively determined reason.
While literacy was widespread and novels were very popular, books were an expensive indulgence. Large personal libraries were found largely in the homes of the aristocracy and upper ranks. Public libraries were in their infancy and were not, at that time, state-financed amenities for the free use of the public. Commercial lending libraries were, as a result, hugely popular, especially in the major cities.
The leading “subscription library” was that of Charles Mudie. He rented out books not by the title, but by the volume. He did so much business with publishers and placed such large advance orders, that when he said he wanted multi-volume works, they delivered, and Mudie garnered correspondingly greater rental income.
“The cost of novels in the Victorian era was such that most middle-class English people could not afford to purchase novels privately, so lending libraries like “Mudie’s” had a strong influence over publishers and authors.His demands that fiction novels be suited to the middle class family controlled the morality, subject and scope of the novel for fifty years. The rise of the three-volume novel can be directly attributed to this influence, and Mudie’s refusal to stock “immoral” books, such as, George Moore’s A Modern Lover (1883), A Mummers Wife (1885) and A Drama in Muslin (1886), also had an effect on the direction of Victorian literature.” (Wikipedia)
So, there you go: the course of our literary heritage was determined in part by rental rates. Another supply, demand and incentive story comes from Mudie: he stocked hundreds of thousands of books, including 500 copies of the first edition of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. Its rapid dissemination among the reading public may have been due as much to the book’s distribution by Mudie as its controversial nature.
Somebody could write a thesis about this stuff.