Troy J. Bassett - The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Three-Volume Novel

As a vital field of scholarship, book history has now reached a stage of maturity where its early work can be reassessed and built upon. That is the goal of New Directions in Book History. This series will publish monographs in English that employ advanced methods and open up new frontiers in research, written by younger, mid-career, and senior scholars. Its scope is global, extending to the Western and non-Western worlds and to all historical periods from antiquity to the twenty-first century, including studies of script, print, and post-print cultures. New Directions in Book History, then, will be broadly inclusive but always in the vanguard. It will experiment with inventive methodologies, explore unexplored archives, debate overlooked issues, challenge prevailing theories, study neglected subjects, and demonstrate the relevance of book history to other academic fields. Every title in this series will address the evolution of the historiography of the book, and every one will point to new directions in book scholarship. New Directions in Book History will be published in three formats: single-author monographs; edited collections of essays in single or multiple volumes; and shorter works produced through Palgraves e-book (EPUB2) Pivot stream. Book proposals should emphasize the innovative aspects of the work, and should be sent to either of the two series editors.

Editorial Board

Marcia Abreu, University of Campinas, Brazil

Cynthia Brokaw, Brown University, USA

Matt Cohen, University of Texas at Austin, USA

Archie Dick, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Martyn Lyons, University of New South Wales, Australia

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14749

Cover credit: A Visit to Mudies, London Society, vol. 16, November 1869, p. 448

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Isaac Newton once wrote, If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. After over fifteen years of working on this book, I think I have some idea of what he meant. At every turn of my researchwhether Victorian bibliography, library business practices, book publishing economics, or quantitative book historyI found works by John Sutherland and Simon Eliot had preceded me. For a large part, my work continues and expands their original lines of inquiry. In addition, they both have unfailingly encouraged and supported my work through their generous advice over the years. So, in honor of their example, I dedicate this work to them.

But they were not the only shoulders I stood upon. I have been fortunate to receive the help and support of many generous scholars during my labors for which I am thoroughly grateful, including Stephen Colclough, David Finkelstein, Katherine Harris, Leslie Howsam, Linda K. Hughes, Andrew King, Graham Law, Patrick Leary, Kirsten Macleod, Anthony Mandal, Richard Menke, Robert L. Patten, Linda H. Peterson, Jennifer Phegley, Allen Riddell, Matthew Rubery, and Cheryl A. Wilson. Over the last two decades, I received helpful feedback from presenting my work at several Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Association, Midwest Victorian Studies Association, North American Victorian Studies Association, Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, and Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing conferences. At the University of Kansas, my dissertation director Dorice Williams Elliott along with Peter Casagrande, Richard Hardin, and George Worth well deserve my gratitude for both piquing my interest in Victorian literature and shepherding my dissertation (which formed the basis for Chapter) to completion. At Purdue University Fort Wayne, I have been blessed with supportive department and college colleagues including Hardin Aasand, Carl Drummond, Damian Fleming, Rachel Hile, Deborah Huffman, Andrew Kopec, Lewis Roberts, and Michael Stapleton.

The people at Palgrave Macmillan have been a joy to work with on this projectit is a personal thrill to be published by one of the Victorian publishers discussed in this book. I would like to thank the series editors Jonathan Rose and Shafquat Towheed as well as the manuscript referee Andrew Nash, the managing editors, and production editors.

The digital humanities project underlying this book,At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 18371901, has received generous support from a variety of sources including a Summer Faculty Research Grant and a Faculty Course Release Grant from Purdue University Fort Wayne; the Fredson Bowers Award from The Bibliographical Society; a Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities; a Summer Faculty Research Grant from the Purdue Research Foundation; and a Curran Fellowship from the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals. For their confidences in my research, I thank them.

Two sections of Chapteralso originally appeared as articles: Circulating Morals: George Moores Attack on Late-Victorian Literary Censorship in