Charles Dickens died in 1870, the same year in which universal elementary education was introduced. During the following generation a mass reading public emerged, and with it the term ‘best-seller’ was coined. In new and cheap editions Dickens's stories sold hugely, but these were progressively outstripped in quantity by the likes of Hall Caine and Marie Corelli, Charles Garvice, and Nat Gould. Who has now heard of such writers? Yet Hall Caine, for one, boasted in 1908 of having made more money from his pen than any previous author. This book presents a panoramic view of literary life in Brita ... More

Charles Dickens died in 1870, the same year in which universal elementary education was introduced. During the following generation a mass reading public emerged, and with it the term ‘best-seller’ was coined. In new and cheap editions Dickens's stories sold hugely, but these were progressively outstripped in quantity by the likes of Hall Caine and Marie Corelli, Charles Garvice, and Nat Gould. Who has now heard of such writers? Yet Hall Caine, for one, boasted in 1908 of having made more money from his pen than any previous author. This book presents a panoramic view of literary life in Britain over half a century from 1870 to 1918, analysing authors' relations with the reading public and how reputations were made and unmade. It explores readers' habits, the book trade, popular literary magazines, and the role of reviewers, and examines the construction of a classical canon by critics concerned about a supposed corruption of popular taste. Certain writers became celebrities, and a literary tourism grew around their haunts. They advertised commodities from cigarettes to toothpaste; they also advertised themselves via interviews, profiles, and carefully-posed photographs. They paraded across North America on lecture tours, and everywhere their names were pushed by a new profession, literary agents. Writers' attitudes to religion still mattered in this period. At the same time, however, they exploited their position in the public eye to campaign on all manner of issues, including female suffrage, which saw authors ranged both for and against; and during the Great War many penned propaganda. This substantial book amounts to a collective biography of a generation of writers and their world.