Abstract
The fiction industry began to benefit from the growth of periodicals in the 1860s and 1870s, not only through fresh outlets for serial fiction, but also from advertising direct and indirect. Paid advertising, which consisted of sheets of a publisher’s new books with selected comments enthusiastically greeting each and every novel, probably did far less than word of mouth to send a reader scurrying to Mudie’s for the latest romance; indirect advertising, however, in the form of reviews, has fascinating bearing on my subject. It is a by-product of the industry which gave a start to new writers, additional income to established authors like Mrs Oliphant or Amelia Edwards, and an impetus to taste and judgement out of which a critique of fiction would eventually grow.
I venture to think, in spite of some voices to the contrary, that criticism is much more honest than it used to be: certainly less influenced by political feeling, and by the interests of publishing houses.
James Payn, Nineteenth Century (June 1879)
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Notes
Studies on the art of the novel include: J. C. Jeaffreson, Novels and Novelists from Elizabeth to Victoria (London, 1858);
Masson, British Novelists and their Styles (1859);
G. L. Craik, A Compendious History of English Literature, 2 vols (London, 1861);
James Hannay, A Course of English Literature (London, 1866); and
Hippolyte Taine, A History of English Literature, 3 vols (New York, 1877). Such works, of course, ignored minor fiction.
Sensation fiction is the cause of acrimony. The earliest reference to ‘sensation novelists’ has been noted by B. F. Fisher in the London Review (16 Feb 1861), in respect of American writers, although in a general way ‘sensation’ had been applied to Wilkie Collins in 1855 reviews of Antonina and Basil; see Nineteenth Century Literary Perspectives: Essays in Honour of Lionel Stevenson, ed. C. de L. Ryals (Durham, NC, 1974).
Thomas Arnold, ‘Recent Novel Writing’, Macmillan’s Magazine, XIII (Jan 1866) 202.
See Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism, 1st ser. (London, 1865), and Culture and Anarchy (London, 1869).
F. T. Palgrave, ‘On Readers in 1760 and 1860’, Macmillan’s Magazine, I (Apr 1860) 488.
Robert W. Buchanan, ‘Society’s Looking-Glass’, Temple Bar, VI (Aug 1862) 130–2.
W. R. Greg, Literary and Social Judgements, 4th edn (London, 1877) p. 190.
Mrs Oliphant, ‘Novels’, Blackwood’s Magazine, XCIV (Aug 1863) 170.
Juliet Pollock, ‘Novels and their Times’, Macmillan’s Magazine, XXVI (Aug 1872) 358.
Mrs Oliphant, ‘Novels’, Blackwood’s Magazine, CII (Sep 1867) 257–80.
Alfred Austin, ‘The Vice of Reading’, Temple Bar, XLII (Sep 1874) 251–7.
Mrs Craik, ‘To Novelists and a Novelist’, Macmillan’s Magazine, XIII (Apr 1861) 441–7.
Mrs Oliphant, ‘Novels’, Blackwood’s Magazine, XCIV (Aug 1863) 170.
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© 1983 R. C. Terry
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Terry, R.C. (1983). Looking-glass or Magical Mirror: Reviews of Popular Novels. In: Victorian Popular Fiction, 1860–80. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04460-3_3
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