Victorian Fiction: Writers, Publishers, Readers

by John Sutherland

Richly informative on the Victorian literary and cultural scene, this new reissue of John Sutherland's important 1995 study is essential reading for all those interested in the evolution of the Victorian novel, and includes a new Preface situating the book in current research being carried out on the history of the book and print culture. Drawing on extensive research, Sutherland draws a fascinating picture of the cultural, social and commercial factors influencing the content and production of Victorian fiction, discussing major writers such as Collins, Dickens, Eliot, Thackeray and Trollope alongside writers also very popular with the reading public--Reade, Lytton and Mrs. Humphry Ward--but whose fame has not endured.

Genres: Nonfiction

223 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

John Andrew Sutherland is an English academic, newspaper columnist and author. He is Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London.

Reviews

[Zandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Sutherland is a readable, interesting expert on Victorian Fiction. I think he tends to make sensational conclusions based on flimsy evidence, but I like this: it gives me something to disagree with. I did gain some useful perspectives from this book:
1. Mainly I was impressed by the amount of money that could be made in writing and publishing: it was highly lucrative to be a successful writer.
2. Writers such as Dickens who published their novels gradually, in 'numbers', appealed to a much larger, wider cross-section of society, thus earning more money for themselves and empowering the lower classes in a new way.
3. The generally accepted historical starting point for sensational fiction is 1859 and the serial publication of Collin's The Woman in White. There is an analogy of The W in W's narrative to the processes of the law, as it is ritualistically played out in the English criminal court. The novels technique is forensic, not historical. (To mobilise detective intelligence against criminal cunning was a main motive in the Police Act of 1856. Underlying this was a profound scepticism that crime would invariably uncover itself, that it never paid and that murders would out. These proverbial truths - truths very dear to the traditional novel with its canons of poetic justice - no longer held.)
4. The closing years of the 1850s and the beginning of the 1860s saw an explosive growth in magazines largely devoted to the serialisation of fiction.
5. The mode of serialization (20 monthly parts) Dickens pioneered in April 1836 with his first novel was still being practised by him in the month of his death, 1870. A majority (nine) of his novels came out this way.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sutherland is always worth reading. This is an early book from someone finding his way. Not sure he would have bothered with it later in his career but I'm glad he did. An important slant on Victorian literature and what drove it. Important to recognise the role of the publishers in any period.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always find Sutherland very readable and enjoyed this on the whole, but was a bit disappointed that some of the pieces in this book are really just like more of his puzzles. As I remember, one particular piece, about Dickens, Bulwer Lytton and mentally ill wives, struck me as being full of wild speculation!