Abstract
Several Evelinas discussed and described in the chapters above exemplify the phenomenon that began to develop in the late eighteenth century and became a predominant force in book publishing in the late nineteenth century, namely the literary series. The exponential growth of literacy rates and the resulting need for accessible and quality reading materials, combined with technological innovations in book production, gave publishers recourse to economies of scale achieved through selling large numbers of cheap or reasonably priced books combined into thematic series. The series was a commodity that offered their buyers books and an authoritative guarantee of quality and the type of product they contained. This reassurance was necessary for most Victorian readers anxious about the educational and elevating value in their reading matter. This was particularly the case for newcomers to the book market from the lower middle and working class, who began building home libraries in their households in the mid- to late nineteenth century.
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Notes
- 1.
Altick, “From Aldine to Everyman.”
- 2.
Ezell, “Making a Classic,” 3.
- 3.
Altick, “From Aldine to Everyman.”
- 4.
Anderson and Rose, British Literary Publishing Houses, 1820-1880, 43.
- 5.
Burney, The Journals and Letters, edited by Joyce Hemlow, vol. 12, letters 1474 (quoted) and 1472, n. 1.
- 6.
Harman, Jane’s Fame, 83-84.
- 7.
Spiers, “Introduction,” 10-11.
- 8.
Ibid., 3.
- 9.
Ibid., 4.
- 10.
Ibid., 11-12.
- 11.
Cassell/1888 price source: Low, The English Catalogue of Books Published. Burt/1905 has price per volume indicated in the catalogue bound at the end of the book.
- 12.
See about Cassell: Nowell-Smith. The House of Cassell, 1848-1958.
- 13.
See the following sections about the edition.
- 14.
“John Robert Gregg Collection.”
- 15.
Parisian, Frances Burney’s Cecilia, 44.
- 16.
Altick, The English Common Reader, 286.
- 17.
“Bohn’s Popular Library,” 575.
- 18.
Parisian, Frances Burney’s Cecilia, 48.
- 19.
Chapman. “Achieving Fame and Canonicity,” 74.
- 20.
Spiers, “Introduction,” 11.
- 21.
See about A.R. Ellis and A. Dobson and their contributions to Burney studies in Sabor, “Annie Raine, Austin Dobson, and the Rise of Burney Studies.”
- 22.
Altick, “From Aldine to Everyman”; Seymour, A Guide to Collecting Everyman’s Library; A Printing History of Everyman’s Library 1906-1982; “Great Books by the Millions.”
- 23.
Halsey, “‘Something Light to Take My Mind off the War’,” 84.
- 24.
“The Amenities of Everyman’s Library Collecting”; Anderson, “Collecting Everyman’s Library.”
- 25.
McLean, Victorian Book Design, 230.
- 26.
Ibid.; Lewis, The Twentieth Century Book; Peterson, The Kelmscott Press; Silverman, The New Bibliopolis; Thomson, “Aesthetic Issues in Book Cover Design 1880–1910”; Aesthetic Tracts.
- 27.
Parisian, Frances Burney’s Cecilia, 30.
- 28.
See Leuschner, “‘Utterly, Insurmountably, Unsaleable’,” 25-26.
- 29.
Her portraits are found also in Warner/1896/digest (reprinted twice in 1902 and once more in 1917 and Gregg/1920) published around the same period.
- 30.
Curtis, Visual Words, 143.
- 31.
See Jennifer Green-Lewis, Framing the Victorians.
- 32.
Curtis, Visual Words, 143.
- 33.
Dobson, Fanny Burney; Stephen, Arblay, Frances.
- 34.
Apart from these two, the NPG lists seven more portraits, drawings, silhouettes, and pastels that have been at some point attributed to be the likeness of Burney. However, they specify that these images “frequently reproduced as genuine portraits of her, are dubious if not downright spurious.” (National Portrait Gallery, Regency Portraits Catalogue, Frances d’Arblay (‘Fanny Burney’) (1752–1840), All Known Portraits, accessed 16 August 2021, https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/personextended?linkid=mp00120&tab=portraits&tab=iconography).
Of these seven portraits listed on the NPG website, two are more known to Burney scholars: an undated watercolour miniature on ivory attributed to John Bogle (Davenport, Faithful Handmaid, 191) and a crayon sketch, as a young woman in an informal dress reading a book, attributed to Edward Burney at the Brooklyn Museum (accessed 16 August 2021, https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/36382). The tenth portrait reportedly of Burney, by an unknown artist and kept in a private collection, is not on the NPG list. It was reproduced in Harman, Fanny Burney. The sitter wears a leghorn hat with feathers and a typical chemise à la reine, with narrow long sleeves edged with small ruffles, a larger ruffle around the neckline, and a sash at the waist. Harman attributes “the strange frill” to the “necessity to hide the scars from her mastectomy” (Harman, Fanny Burney, caption to the plate before p. 261). The ruffle is a standard and characteristic detail of this type of dress, but the cut is made higher than it was usual, possibly indeed to conceal the scars.
- 35.
Keymer and Sabor, Pamela in the Marketplace, 176.
- 36.
Davenport, Faithful Handmaid, 191.
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
Campbell, Historical Style, 102-09; Ribeiro, “Some Evidence of the Influence of the Dress.”
- 39.
Looser, “The Blues Gone Grey,” 116.
- 40.
Phillips, “Jane Austen Gets a Makeover,” 82.
- 41.
The original drawing for the cover was sold at Sotheby’s in June 1987 from the archives of J.M. Dent; later, it was in the collection of the scholar and collector Mark Samuels Lasner, to be sold by in 2012 at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair by Kelmscott Bookshop (see the catalogue Artists’ Books, Private Press, Nineteenth Century Literature).
- 42.
Frankel, “Aubrey Beardsley ‘Embroiders’ the Literary Text”; Hodnett, Five Centuries of English Book Illustration.
- 43.
Wakeman, Victorian Book Illustration, 147-50.
- 44.
Jung, The Publishing and Marketing of Illustrated Literature in Scotland, xxxiii.
- 45.
An example is this book: Harriet Martineau, Arthur Rackham, and W. Cubitt Cooke, Feats on the Fiord (London: Dent, 1914) that was sold by David Brass Rare Books.
- 46.
“Langham Sketch Club.”
- 47.
“Johnson, R. Brimley (Reginald Brimley), 1867-1932.”
- 48.
Carson, A Truth Universally Acknowledged, 280.
- 49.
Genette, Paratexts, 212.
- 50.
“George Newnes Limited,” 226.
- 51.
Morris, “Newnes, Sir George.”
- 52.
Vadeboncoeur, “Arthur Rackham.”
- 53.
Cockrell, “Rackham, Arthur”; Hamilton, Arthur Rackham: A Biography; Arthur Rackham: A Life with Illustration; “Rackham, Arthur.”
- 54.
Lewis, The Twentieth Century Book, 47.
- 55.
Moore, “Books for Christmas.”
- 56.
Kooistra, Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing, 242.
- 57.
Ibid., 2.
- 58.
Ibid.
- 59.
Ibid., 5.
- 60.
Muir, Victorian Illustrated Books, 199.
- 61.
Ibid.
- 62.
Wakeman, Victorian Book Illustration, 149-50.
- 63.
Recchio, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, 100.
- 64.
Ibid., 247-50.
- 65.
Balston, “English Book Illustrations, 1880-1900,” 172-90; Fitzpatrick, “Thomson, Hugh (1860–1920)”; Hodnett, Five Centuries of English Book Illustration, 218-20; Spielmann and Jerrold, Hugh Thomson, His Art, His Letters, His Humour and His Charm.
- 66.
Hodnett, Five Centuries of English Book Illustration, 218.
- 67.
Jackson, Peacock, 148-173; Leggio, “The Art of the Peacock”; Merrill, The Peacock Room. Jackson Peacock.
- 68.
Looser, The Making of Jane Austen, 58. See also Harman, Jane’s Fame, 127 and especiallly Austen’s bibliographies by David Gilson.
- 69.
Looser, The Making of Jane Austen, 59 citing Forster, E. M., “Jane, How Shall We Ever Recollect?” New Republic January (1924): 260-1.
- 70.
Looser, The Making of Jane Austen, 148-63; Harman, Jane’s Fame, 123-6.
- 71.
Looser, The Making of Jane Austen, 60.
- 72.
Ibid., 48-61.
- 73.
Ibid., 60.
- 74.
Ibid, 48.
- 75.
Looser, The Making of Jane Austen, 52.
- 76.
Dobson, De Libris, 111–12.
- 77.
Hodnett, Five Centuries of English Book Illustration, 218.
- 78.
Dobson, De Libris, 111.
- 79.
Sadleir, The Evolution of Publishers’ Binding Styles, 53.
- 80.
Hodnett, Five Centuries of English Book Illustration, 219.
- 81.
Ibid.
- 82.
Hammond, “Hugh Thomson 1860-1920,” 133.
- 83.
Cunnington and Cunnington, Handbook of English Costume in the Eighteenth Century, 267.
- 84.
Ibid., 283.
- 85.
Ibid., 270.
- 86.
“Century Company Records.”
- 87.
Feather, A History of British Publishing, 136.
- 88.
James, Macmillan, 176.
- 89.
Dobson, Fanny Burney.
- 90.
Tankard, “The Rambler’s Second Audience,” 251.
- 91.
Sabor, “Annie Raine Ellis, Austin Dobson, and the Rise of Burney Studies,” 34.
- 92.
A verification in the museum’s online catalogue did not confirm the existence of these drawings. “The State Hermitage Museum,” accessed 14 January 2021, https://www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/?lng=en.
- 93.
Looser, The Making of Jane Austen, 59 citing Forster, E. M., “Jane, How Shall We Ever Recollect?,” New Republic January (1924): 260-61. See more about reception of Thomson’s illustrations in the section above.
- 94.
The history of the drawing could be found at the Vauxhall History website: “Dr Johnson and the Vauxhall Gardens Mysteries,” 30 January 2016, https://vauxhallhistory.org/dr-johnson-and-the-vauxhall-gardens-mysteries/. Its original is now kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O17299/vauxhall-gardens-watercolour-rowlandson-thomas/.
- 95.
For the history of the series, see “The Amenities of Everyman’s Library Collecting”; Anderson, “Collecting Everyman’s Library.”
- 96.
See about role of book covers: Lau, “Contextualising Book Covers and Their Changing Roles”; Matthews, “Introduction.”
- 97.
Olivero, “The Paperback Revolution in France, 1850–1950,” 11.
- 98.
McCleery, “The 1969 Edition of Ulysses,” 67.
- 99.
The work on a new and highly anticipated critical edition of Evelina is now in progress under the direction of Peter Sabor.
- 100.
Jose Corti/1991/French, Bantam/1992, Signet/1992, Norton/1998/Critical, Broadview/2000, Random/2001, Oxford/2008/Jones, Asturias d’Epoca/2013/Spanish.
- 101.
Barchas, The Lost Books of Jane Austen, 158.
- 102.
Gilbert, “From Cover to Cover.”
- 103.
Phillips, “Jane Austen Gets a Makeover,” 82.
- 104.
Ibid.; see also Barchas, The Lost Books of Jane Austen, 158-95.
- 105.
Parfait, The Publishing History of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 193.
- 106.
Carroll and Wiltshire, “Jane Austen, Illustrated”; Gilbert, “From Cover to Cover”; Looser, The Making of Jane Austen.
- 107.
Gilbert, “From Cover to Cover.”
- 108.
Gardiner, “‘An Immense Continent’,” 47.
- 109.
Barchas, The Lost Books of Jane Austen, 158.
- 110.
Ibid.
- 111.
Ibid.
- 112.
Barchas, Graphic Design, 22.
- 113.
Genette, Paratexts, 162.
- 114.
Garritzen, “Paratexts and Footnotes in Historical Narrative”; Grafton, The Footnote; Peale, “Authorship and Authority in Sir John Barrow’s Narrative”; Skelton, “The Paratext of Everything.”
- 115.
Blond, The Publishing Game, 58.
- 116.
Havens and Sabor, “Editing Evelina,” para. 9.
- 117.
They were reproduced in Oxford/1970/Bloom but omitted in the subsequent 1982, 1991, and 1998 reprints.
- 118.
Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style, 68.
- 119.
Ibid.
- 120.
Ibid.
- 121.
Genette, Paratexts, 162.
- 122.
These fragments are selected and mixed intentionally from the five books to demonstrate how they use interchangeable clichés when they describe the novel and try to entice the reader and buyers.
- 123.
Genette, Paratexts, 22-23.
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Kochkina, S. (2023). Entering the Literary Canon. In: Frances Burney’s “Evelina”. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17797-2_6
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