| Edition |
First edition. |
| Description |
xvi, 282 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [252]-265) and index. |
| Form |
Also issued online. |
| Summary |
In his bestselling What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, Daniel Pool brilliantly unlocked the mysteries of the English novel. Now, in his long-awaited Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters, Pool turns his keen eye to England's great Victorian novelists themselves, to reveal the surprisingly human private side of their public genius. Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters explores the outrageous publicity stunts, bitter rivalries, rows, and general mayhem perpetrated by this group of supposedly prudish - yet remarkably passionate and eccentric - authors and publishers. Against a vividly painted backdrop of London as the small world it once was, the book brings on the players in the ever-changing, brave new world of big publishing - a world that gave birth to author tours, big advances, "trashy" fiction, flashy bookstalls in train stations (for Victorian "airport fiction"), celebrity libel suits, bogus blurbs, even paper recycling (as unsold volumes reappeared as trunk linings, fish wrappings, and fertilizer). |
| Contents |
Pt. 1. "A Low, Cheap Form of Publication": Charles Dickens, the Coming of Pickwick, and Murder by the Book -- Pt. 2. "It Would Never Suit the Circulating Libraries": Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair, and the Three-Volume Straitjacket -- Pt. 3. "What Shall I Be Without My Father?": Women Novelists in the London of Dickens and Thackeray, the Coming of Real Money, and the Novel Becomes Respectable -- Pt. 4. "Do Let Me Abuse Mr Newby": Literary Executors, Gossip Columnists, and the Emergence of the Novelist as Celebrity -- Pt. 5. "Terror to the End": The Sensation Novel, Dickens "Dreadfully Shattered," and Anthony Trollope Gets a Traveling Bag and an Audience -- Pt. 6. "We Are a Novel-Reading Country": Middlemarch and Mr. Mudie's Library, the Novel Apparently Triumphant, but Henry James Fails, Ominously, to Write a Happy Ending. |
| Subject |
English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
|
|
Literature publishing -- England -- History -- 19th century.
|
|
Authors and publishers -- England -- History -- 19th century.
|
|
Authors and readers -- England -- History -- 19th century.
|
|
Literature and society -- England -- History -- 19th century.
|
|
Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Social conditions.
|
|
Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Economic conditions.
|
|
Authorship -- Economic aspects -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.
|
|
England -- Intellectual life -- 19th century.
|
|
Books and reading -- England -- History -- 19th century.
|
| ISBN |
0060183659 |
|
9780060183653 |
|
006098435X paperback |
|
9780060984359 paperback |
|
