Wives and Daughters Read Free Page B

time to read, privacy in which to do it, literacy to enable it, and enough money to purchase or borrow books. The literary critic Ian Watt, in his well-known book The Rise of the Novel, articulated the emergence of the novel, specifically his concept of “formal realism,” within the historical context of the early eighteenth century and as arising from the following conditions: the rise of the middle class, the growth of commercial capitalism, the eclipse of strict feudal and aristocratic relationships, and (more broadly and theoretically) the emergence of “individualism” as a value stemming from the Protestant Reformation. We know that the audience for novels grew considerably in the Victorian period. This was due to a number of factors, including cheaper production costs. (That the novels became cheaper to possess is related to the consumption of them as works of art, for just as reading a novel is scaled to one person, the capability of infinite reproduction of that artwork through cheap editions makes any one copy worthless.) Other factors contributed to the growth of the audience for novels, including the increase in literacy, although the extent of literacy in the Victorian period is hard to quantify with certitude. The growth of cities with their more concentrated markets, the expanded markets in the colonies, and the proliferation of circulating libraries were also significant factors. The circulating library, which lent books for an annual membership fee, was a common means by which Victorian readers obtained novels, for it was not until the 1890s that free public libraries became common and the institution of the circulating library collapsed. Cheap versions of fictional works were not as readily available as has been popularly imagined; reproductions of classics, abridgments, and penny popular fiction were available, but more serious fiction (including Dickens, Thackeray, Gaskell, Eliot, and Trollope) was not reprinted in cheap form for some time after the first printing—from one to three or even five years.
    Novels, however, did not necessarily first appear as volumes, but were often first printed as serials. That is, installments of the novels—known as “numbers”—would come out in a magazine or journal. Wives and Daughters first appeared this way in the Cornhill Magazine, a respected monthly aimed at the educated middle and upper-middle classes. Charles Dickens, a publisher as well as an author, first brought out many of his novels—including Great Expectations (1861) and A Tale of Two Cities (1859)—in monthly installments in his magazines Household Words and All the Year Round. Dickens in fact published Elizabeth Gaskell. A great number of magazines other than the two Dickens edited brought out fiction in “part” form, and while the practice lasted (it had died out by the 1880s), it was often a lucrative device for authors and publishers alike. However, publishing in serial form, as might be surmised, did put certain constraints and demands on authors. Gaskell, whose professional relationship with Dickens lasted some thirteen years, is said to have chafed at some of the demands put on her by Dickens as editor. Gaskell, as the volume you are holding might suggest, is not known for being economical with words, and indeed this was a source of contention between Dickens and Gaskell; money did not enter into their disagreements, as Dickens was generous with his authors. As an editor Dickens sometimes asked Gaskell to alter conclusions and strongly encouraged her to end installments on important moments in the flow of the story, or even on cliffhangers—requests to which she would only occasionally comply. Gaskell would go on to publish in other journals, including Fraser’s Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and the Cornhill. She was a popular author in the United States as well; she published her novels in American periodicals such as Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly