Publishing in the Nineteenth Century
Many nineteenth-century authors established themselves through writing serialised fiction. That is, the issuing of instalments in newspapers, like the Illustrated London News, and popular magazines, like The Strand, or, as 'part serials' i.e. discreet monthly parts. Serialisation impacted upon the novel form: the more an author wrote the more handsomely they were paid but there was also a need to engage readers with every instalment and authors would adapt plots according to reader responses. Illustrations were another important feature. Serialisation made book-buying affordable for the middle-class because it spread the cost of purchasing a novel over an average of eighteen to twenty months, with each instalment selling at an average of 1 shilling - a little over £2.00 in today's spending worth. Typically, when the final instalment had been acquired, the parts were stripped of their paper wrappers and advertisements, trimmed and bound in leather or fine cloth. Thus it is rare to find novels as part serials today but we are lucky enough, in Special Collections, to have examples by Charles Dickens, George Eliot and William Makepeace Thackeray.
Walter Besant's writing career also gathered momentum through serialised fiction. Initially collaborating with James Rice, their first serialised novel, Ready-Money Mortiboy (1872) sold steadily. It was first published in Once a Week from January to June, 1872 and was published in three volumes later that year. Subsequent collaborative serialised novels, such as The Chaplain of the Fleet (published in The Graphic December 1880 – June 1881 and in three volumes in 1881) and By Celia's Arbour (published in The Graphic between September 1877 and March 1878; published in three volumes in 1878), were also very popular. Rice's periodical, Once a Week, was a useful vehicle for publishing the work but after his death, Besant continued to issue solo work in serialised form: All Sorts and Conditions of Men was serialised in Belgravia from January to December 1882; The Orange Girl was published in the Lady's Pictorial from January to June, 1899; and The world went very well then appeared in the Illustrated London News from July to December 1886.35
Another form of publishing in the Nineteenth Century was the three-volume novel, aimed at a borrowing, rather than a purchasing readership. The three-volume novel was ideally suited for circulating libraries since the first part whetted readers' appetites for the subsequent two volumes and helped to cover the printing costs thereof. The average price was half a guinea, or ten shillings and 6d – approximately £24 in today's spending worth. Besant's novels, like The Golden Butterfly (1876), were often published as three-volume novels after they had been serialised.
Publishers met the growing demand for cheap literature by often reprinting three-volume novels in cheaper one-volume editions. The Golden Butterfly and other works by Besant appeared in serialised, then three-volume, and finally cheap one-volume formats. Special Collections holds a few of Besant's works in yellowback format. Yellowbacks take their names from the colour of their covers - often a lurid yellow paper with melodramatic cover illustrations. Yellowbacks were sold for around two shillings (not much more than £4.50 in today's spending worth) and competed with 'penny dreadfuls' and 'shilling shockers'.
