De-monopolizing literary space: Authors, publishers, and the one-volume novel in late-Victorian Britain

I explore the period of transition in Victorian fiction from the three-volume novel mode of literary production to the one-volume novel mode of literary production during the years 1880 to 1895. Taking the relationships between the modes of literary production as they constitute the literary field, I show how these relationships leave their traces in some of the works produced during this period. Specifically, I focus on the one-volume novel in order to follow its change from a subordinate position to a dominant position within the literary mode of production.; The first two chapters deal directly with the positioning of the new one-volume novel system in opposition to the dominant three-volume novel system. Chapter one considers the publication of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883) as it creates a space for “masculine” authors and readers outside of the “feminine” library system. Stevenson's novel—and those of his imitators—create the new genre of the boys' adventure fiction, which works to form male readers and book-buyers and reveals the anxieties of male authors and readers with the three-volume novel. Chapter two continues the analysis of the opposition of the one-volume novel system and the three-volume novel system by examining the publication of George Moore's A Mummer's Wife (1884), which focuses on the censorship practiced by the library system. Moore found in Henry Vizetelly a publisher willing to forsake the library system by publishing inexpensive one-volume editions of new novels. However, the structure of censorship quickly adapted itself to the new literary mode of production by changing from an informal system exercised by the libraries to a formal system policed by the courts.; The last three chapters deal with the changed relationships among authors, publishers, and readers brought about by the one-volume novel mode of production. Chapter three examines James Spedding's pamphlet Publishers and Authors (1867) and Haggard's novel Mr. Meeson's Will (1888) and the fairness of contracts between authors and publishers. Both authors focus on the actual practices of contracting in the literary marketplace and find that unfair contracts arise from the inequitable power relationship between author and publisher. However, both authors offer imaginative solutions that involve publishers' benevolence rather than collective action by authors. Chapter four looks at the Pseudonym Library (1890–96), created by publisher T. Fisher Unwin to market fiction by new authors in a one-volume format. Just as the series name helps to create a uniform product for the publisher, the required pseudonyms also make the authors a product of the publisher. Chapter five examines Marie Corelli's The Sorrows of Satan (1895) and her publisher's use of advertising. In her novel, Corelli upholds the purity of public acclaim over the questionable integrity of reviewers' acclaim, which is seen in the advertising for Corelli's novel, where actual sales figures replace the traditional use of reviewers' quotations.