Blog 5/5 "From Few and Expensive to Many and Cheap: The British Book Market 1800-1890"

Summary

1)    Books were expensive. In order to reach a poorer audience books were divided into volumes, chapbooks, or monthly parts (such as Valpy, though his prices were expensive at the time). Libraries were formed which allowed readers to rent a book for a certain amount of rent at a modest price, while some libraries passed along no-longer-circulating books to smaller and smaller libraries until the book was eventually sold off to an individual or ended up in open-air book barrows.

2)    In addition to material and labor, text prices were also affected by taxes. The “taxes on knowledge” were a series of taxes on paper, newspapers, advertisements, etc. It was mostly to control the level of information that reached the lower classes during the French Revolution.

3)    Copyright was starting to take off. Writers, as long as they had at least one physical copy, could own their work, but that’s all it did. No money was made unless a writer sold the copyright to a publisher, but the text then belonged to the publisher and the writer had no further dealings or monetary gain from it. Royalties were later introduced in which a writer no profited a bit if their work sold, which led some to try to perfect authorship and caused the foundations of several organizations such as the Society of Authors, the Associated Booksellers of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Publisher’ Association.

Comment

I appreciated Eliot’s choice to include Victorian pornography and how it was kept under wraps. It was just a slight reminder that these were indeed living humans and not just flat words I am reading on a page. Usually people tend to shy away from taboo subjects, but, though small, this section was more in tune with current life (actors, musicians, spokespersons, etc.).

Question

Bookstores today, such as Barnes and Noble and Books-a-million, don’t just sell books. They might sell trinkets, bookmarks, or even have a café, similar to how bookstores once sold patent medicines and fancy goods. Is the idea behind selling items other than books the same today as it once was (to make money, to attract people, etc.)? Has the vibe of a bookstore changed throughout time?