Delafield - Serialization and the novel in mid-Victorian magazines

SERIALIZATION AND THE NOVEL IN
MID-VICTORIAN MAGAZINES

Examining the Victorian serial as a text in its own right, Catherine Delafield re-reads five novels by Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, Dinah Craik, and Wilkie Collins by situating them in the context of periodical publication. She traces the roles of the author and editor in the creation and dissemination of the texts and considers how first publication affected the consumption and reception of the novel through the periodical medium. Delafield contends that a novel in volume form has been separated from its original context, that is, from the pattern of consumption and reception presented by the serial. The novel's later re-publication still bears the imprint of this serialized original, and this books investigation into nineteenth-century periodicals both generates new readings of the texts and reinstates those which have been lost in the reprinting process. Delafield's case studies provide evidence of the ways in which Household Words, Cornhill Magazine, Good Words, All the Year Round and Cassell's Magazine were designed for new audiences of novel readers. Serialization and the Novel in Mid-Victorian Magazines addresses the material conditions of production, illustrates the collective and collaborative creation of the serialized novel, and contextualizes a range of texts in the nineteenth-century experience of print.

The aim of the series is to reflect, develop and extend the great burgeoning of interest in the nineteenth century that has been an inevitable feature of recent years, as that former epoch has come more sharply into focus as a locus for our understanding not only of the past but of the contours of our modernity. It centres primarily upon major authors and subjects within Romantic and Victorian literature. It also includes studies of other British writers and issues, where these are matters of current debate: for example, biography and autobiography, journalism, periodical literature, travel writing, book production, gender, non-canonical writing. We are dedicated principally to publishing original monographs and symposia; our policy is to embrace a broad scope in chronology, approach and range of concern, and both to recognize and cut innovatively across such parameters as those suggested by the designations Romantic and Victorian. We welcome new ideas and theories, while valuing traditional scholarship. It is hoped that the world which predates yet so forcibly predicts and engages our own will emerge in parts, in the wider sweep, and in the lively streams of disputation and change that are so manifest an aspect of its intellectual, artistic and social landscape.

Vincent Newey
Joanne Shattock
University of Leicester

CATHERINE DELAFIELD

ASHGATE

Catherine Delafield 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Catherine Delafield has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Delafield, Catherine.

Serialization and the novel in mid-Victorian magazines / by Catherine Delafield.

pages cm. (The nineteenth century series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4724-5090-6 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4724-5091-3 (ebook) ISBN 978-1-4724-5092-0 (epub)

1. English fiction19th centuryHistory and criticism. 2. Literature publishingGreat BritainHistory19th century. 3. Serialized fictionGreat BritainHistory and criticism. 4. Authors and publishersGreat BritainHistory19th century. I. Title.

PR878.P78D45 2015

823.809dc23

2014038423

ISBN: 9781472450906 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781472450913 (ebk-PDF)

ISBN: 9781472450920 (ebk-ePUB)

I would like to acknowledge the efforts of staff at the British Library and the University of Leicester Library in locating material, as well as the unseen compilers of Dickens Journals Online who have helped to make this research possible. The illustrations were scanned and restored by Nick Walker. Some parts of the argument relating to Dinah Craiks Mistress and Maid have already appeared in Marketing Celebrity: Norman Macleod, Dinah Mulock Craik, and John Everett Millais in Alexander Strahans Good Words, Victorian Periodicals Review 46 (2013): 25578 which is used with permission.

I am grateful to Janice Allan, Beth Palmer and Shafquat Towheed for their interest in earlier drafts of some sections of the book; also to Alexis Easley for her welcome feedback and suggestions. Both the anonymous Ashgate reader and editor Ann Donahue have provided practical and supportive comments, and I would like to thank Joanne Shattock for her encouragement. Finally, as in everything, thank you to George.