This wide-ranging and innovative collection of essays addresses important issues in cultural studies and the history of the book. Multidisciplinary in approach, the essays consider different aspects of the production, circulation, and consumption of printed texts throughout the nineteenth century. Topics studied include market trends, modes of publication, the use of pseudonyms by women writers, readerships and reading ideologies, and copyright law; and the book examines a wide range of printed materials, from valentines, advertisements, illustrations, and fashionable annuals, to the more traditional literary genres of poetry, fiction and periodical essays. The authors under discussion include Dickens, the Brontes, George Eliot, Meredith, and Walter Pater. Contributors draw on speech-act, reader-response, and gender theory in addition to various historical, narratological, materialist, and bibliographical perspectives.

This collection of essays examines cultural and literary issues in nineteenth-century book production and circulation.
Reviews
"Anyone interested in the British book trade, the kinds of audiences who read the books, and the effects of reading will find this a very useful collection." Studies in English Literature
"Literature in the Marketplace is a valuable addition to our growing knowledge of strategies for understanding the interplay of the effects of format on author, production, and audience in the Victorian marketplace." Barbara Quinn Schmidt, Victorian Periodicals Review
"John O. Jordan's and Robert L. Patten's engaging collection of essays, Literature in the Marketplace, focuses predominantly upon the role of periodicals and serial publications in Victorian culture, with a notable concentration upon the demands of bibliosgraphic criticism itself in the editors' `Introduction' and in Simon Eliot's chapter, `Some Trends in British Book Production, 1800-1919'. The volume includes significant chapters on Victorian periodical literature...." John Kandl, The Wordsworth Circle
"...anyone who is interested in nineteenth-century English literature, its publication, dissemination and readership, will find much to reward its perusal." Clive Hurst, Dickens Quarterly
"...some excellent work. ...open some new ground, and ...illustrate the great and still growing diversity of this field of study." John Feather, SHARP News



Book Information
ISBN 9780521452472
Author John O. Jordan
Format Hardback
Page Count 356
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 660g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 157mm * 23mm