Mudie's circulating library and the Victorian novel

by Guinevere L. Griest

First edition. Ink inscription on front free endpaper. xiv, 272 pages. cloth. 8vo..

Genres: History, Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published July 15, 1971

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have any interest at all in the circulating library model and the background in which the authors of the Victorian three-volume novelists worked this is worth pulling from the Internet Archive. Griest does great work with all the letters and bits of letters from novelists and publishers that have inside information about the institution and (equally important) does a good job of explaining how it actually worked as a reader. She also leaves room for a narrative history of Mudie's and a solid explanation of the things Mudie's (and readers) actually wanted in a novel.

That last part is important—rather than presenting Mudie's and the three-volume novel as instruments of censorship that were imposed upon English readers from above, she recognizes that the system's huge popularity is evidence that Mudie's was giving people what they wanted, and works to give a clear account of what that was (and why they wanted it).