Fiction for the Working Man

by Louis James

Literature for the masses appeared on an unprecedented scale in the first half of the 19th-century. This was the earliest response to new and voracious demands for cheap books of all kinds. This famous and innovative book enquires as to the nature of this new material, the responses to it, and its audiences amidst the new reading public which it illuminates. The technological advances in printing, and the urbanisation of the population were key influences. So, too, were new entrepreneurial energies amongst author and publishers. Professor James shows what were the realities and the resonances of this new culture. He examines the effects of a new urban culture, its complicated class relations, the difficult history of the radical press, and the relationships between popular fiction and ‘literature'. His is a detailed and engaging, well illustrated study of the growth of literacy and the vivacious and enormously varied popular literature of both entertainment, improvement, and instruction which was published. This included chapbooks and broadsheets, plagiarisms of Dickens in penny serial numbers, gothic tales of terror, ‘blood-and-murder', 'ghost-and-goblin' fiction, exuberant historical novels, domestic stories, romances, and tales of fashionable life. The first edition was welcomed by Raymond Williams, who wrote that ”Dr. James has done so thorough a job that all students of the period will be permanently in his debt….the success of the enquiry, in research terms is a solid contribution to the necessary rewriting of nineteenth-century cultural history.” This expanded edition includes new material on how this important study started with, D. Phil work on the Barry Ono Collection; existing non-academic collectors and enthusiasts (Lawson, Algar, Jay, Medcraft, Summers); theatrical artistes (Barry Ono , Frank Pettingell); research on ‘Old Boys blood and thunder' serials (E.S. Turner), early academic studies of popular fiction and its audience; literary studies (J.M.S. Tompkins, Margaret Dalziel); readership (Richard Altick, Raymond Williams); social issues (Q.D. Leavis, Richard Hoggart). The author has also added a short epilogue on other work in the field by radical historians, including E.P. Thompson, Ian Haywood, and Rohan McWilliam. On working-class readership (by David Vincent); on serial fiction and popular traditions, journalism, melodrama and the visual arts ; and on recent studies of Edward Lloyd, J.M. Rymer, G.W.M. Reynolds; reprinted fiction by Valancourt et al. He has added a guide to relevant websites for ongoing study.

Genres: Nonfiction

261 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 1974

About the author

Louis James has spent some 25 more or less fruitful years in contemplation of Homo austriacus. Despite being in daily contact with the species, he suspects that it is easier to describe the yeti (on which there is no verifiable information), than the Austrian (on which there is far too much, all of it contradictory). Notwithstanding this difficulty he has conducted many hours of diligent field work in cafés, winecellars, etc., refining his impressions for the present study, and was gratified to discover that many Austrian friends and acquaintances were prepared to assist selflessly with this.

Since settling in Vienna he has written regular reports on the Central European enigma, chiefly in the hope that sooner or later he will discover a new key to it (the old one having been thrown into the Danube some time ago). If, as seems likely, his efforts in this regard are crowned with failure, he anticipates that few will notice the fact but he will be considerably more popular with those who do.

Reviews

[Roxana Chirilă · Rating 3 out of 5]

Louis James's "Fiction for the Working Man, 1830-1850: A Study of the Literature Produced for the Working Classes in Early Victorian Urban England" was published in 1963, and you can feel it in the references to then-current TV shows, comics and fears that popular culture is corrupting the young.

But the information is valuable. The author tells us how cheap literature came to be, who the people reading it were, and what changes it went through. From political publishing, to papers about curiosities, to plagiarizing Dickens, to original fiction created to be published in weekly installments (to be continued if the story is successful!), to religious tracts, to historical stories, horror stories and stories about the city and/or town, Louis James takes us all over the two decades, following the literary fads of the time.

What starts as a very exciting description, however, started feeling a bit boring after a while - I'm not sure why, but while the summaries of penny-issue novels described exciting tales, reading them felt less than thrilling. All in all, I started reading this quite enthusiastically, and finished much less so.

Also, I read this book via Questia, where for some reason the possessive "s" vanished when the name of the author was right before the title of the book, leading to situations where James talked of "Morris Barnett The Yankee Pedlar ( 1836)" or "Dickens Oliver Twist". It got annoying after a while.

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

indispensable work on 19th century cheap fiction.

[Cee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great bibliographical resource of early 19th-century popular fiction. Stays descriptive, however, and sometimes descends into discussing the author's personal preferences in literature.