Victorian Publishing

The Economics of Book Production for a Mass Market 1836-1916

Alexis Weedon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351875868
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Comparative Literature
• Index: Literature

Drawing on research into the book-production records of twelve publishers-including George Bell & Son, Richard Bentley, William Blackwood, Chatto & Windus, Oliver & Boyd, Macmillan, and the book printers William Clowes and T&A Constable - taken at ten-year intervals from 1836 to 1916, this book interprets broad trends in the growth and diversity of book publishing in Victorian Britain. Chapters explore the significance of the export trade to the colonies and the rising importance of towns outside London as centres of publishing; the influence of technological change in increasing the variety and quantity of books; and how the business practice of literary publishing developed to expand the market for British and American authors. The book takes examples from the purchase and sale of popular fiction by Ouida, Mrs. Wood, Mrs. Ewing, and canonical authors such as George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, and Mark Twain. Consideration of the unique demands of the educational market complements the focus on fiction, as readers, arithmetic books, music, geography, science textbooks, and Greek and Latin classics became a staple for an increasing number of publishing houses wishing to spread the risk of novel publication.

CHAPTER ONE

Archives and Information Sources

Researchers may be put off looking at the economics of literary production because the skills of interpreting what are essentially business documents, and extracting from them data which can produce sound statistical analysis are not common among literary critics. The uniqueness of each surviving archive and the need to learn how the systems of the firm worked mean that generalizations are inadequate and only intimate knowledge based on time and patient exploration of the archive can help the researcher decipher the precise path of the book in production. Having said that, each system has a similar function, and each firm needs to know and record for future reference certain facts and figures, from the profit and loss of the business to legal agreements and correspondence with authors. Once that is fully understood it is easier to define a search strategy. In this chapter I will first look at what quantitative information is available on the book trade, how to find publishers’ archives, and what information they contain; then at the problems and pitfalls of data collection and handling. This will lead on to an explanation of some basic statistical measures which have been used in this book.

Contemporary Sources of Information on the Book Trade

As archival evidence is often patchy and hard to interpret, it is useful to be aware of what contemporary Victorian accounts of the publishing industry are available. These range from the anecdotal, such as publishers’ memoirs, to handbooks for printers and statistics on the tonnage of paper produced. Such sources are useful in the interpretation of business archives and the extracted data. Unlike today, however, there were no regular surveys of economic growth and production during the period, so what there is has to be pieced together. Therefore, as Simon Eliot (1994) points out, coincidental patterns derived from a range of sources rather than definitive indexes of economic growth are the best route to understanding the overall picture of the publishing industry.

Government reports, the Blue Books, are a very useful source of statistical data on trade, including, for instance, the growth of the paper industry, book and stationery exports and duties payable on printed material in both Britain and the Empire. Complementary tables were also drawn up in the dominions. In India, duty on books and stationery imported was recorded by customs and the government produced an annual statement of trade along similar lines to the British one. At home the first comprehensive national survey of industrial production was carried out in 1907: the Census of Production (1912–13) was followed by further censuses in 1924, 1930 and 1935. These quantified output and employment in the printing and paper trades. For the earlier period there are statistics on tax paid on advertising, paper, on import and export duty paid at customs, and on copyright dues. Additionally, the reports of the Royal Commissions on the conditions of factories, schools, houses, transport and so on, are to be found in the Blue Books. These contain a wealth of evidence as commissioners drew attention to such social and educational problems as the poor conditions of schools, the exploitation of child workers in the paper and print industries, the growing pollution of the waterways and the dissemination of blasphemous and defamatory material. Some pointed to the positive benefits to the Empire of a strong industry at home and to the role of publishing in educating and informing the citizenry. These reports were hotly debated in Parliament and opened up public discussion in the periodical press. Hansard is a good source for the parliamentary debates; businessmen and observers also recorded the opinions and innovations of the manufacturers (for example, Spicer, 1907). All these investigations and debates reflected, directly or indirectly, on the conditions of the book trade.

Bibliographical information can be obtained from the trade publications. Contemporaries attempted to register the growth in publications by producing lists such as The English Catalogue and The Reference Catalogue of Current Literature which give the author, title, publisher, price and date of publication. They also updated training manuals and wrote for the increasing number of trade periodicals, all of which provide some insights into the working practices of printing and publishing firms: for example, J. Gould, The Letterpress Printer (1876); J. Southward, Practical Printing (1887); Estimating for Printers, issued by the Costing Committee of the British Federation of Printers in 1916; and trade magazines such as the Publishers’ Circular, The Bookseller, Bent’s Monthly Literary Advertiser and The Printer’s Register. The issues of the day were often recorded by publishers and printers themselves, such as Stanley Unwin’s The Truth about Publishing (1926) which was a controversial justification of the publisher’s role, or by societies or associations representing the point of view of the author, bookseller or publisher such as the Society of Authors’ publications.

These contemporary external sources give us vital quantitative data and so too do modern reference works. Eliot’s (1994) study of the trade magazines, the British Library copyright ledgers, and Spicer’s paper figures, has addressed many of the questions about the number of new titles published each year, the pricing strategies employed and the popularity of different genres. The Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue or NSTC (1984–) Series I and II covering the period 1801–70 are available on CD-ROM. For statistical analysis it remains problematical (see Appendix I); however, as a bibliographical aid to books published in the nineteenth century it is most useful. More general reference works, such as Basil Mitchell’s (1988) collection of historical statistics, also contain relevant data such as wage indices for compositors in addition to the common economic indices for prices, production and exports. Mitchell provides references to original sources which offer more detailed examination of the data (Bowley, 1900; Schofield, 1973), though this valuable work is rather dated now and has been superseded in places by more up-to-date sources offering revised indexes to prices, literacy and wages (Twigger, 1997). Recent work in geographical information systems (GIS) in the book trade suggests that this may well be a fruitful way of drawing together disparate research databases (Black, Bertrum and Black, 1998).

The Use of Publishers’ Archives

External sources are vital but they cannot resolve some difficulties: we can discover the number of titles published, but not the quantity of books produced; we can evaluate the price to the customer but not the cost of production; we can compile a list of an author’s works but we cannot say what his income from them was. Working from within the industry, using publishers’ and printers’ account books we can trace the change in professional practices. From ‘initial typesetting through reprinted editions’ says Alan Dooley the technological changes in nineteenth-century publishing ‘were powerful enough to affect both the writing of Victorian literature and our reading of it’ (Dooley, 1992). New inventions took a while to become standard and there is evidence in printers’ accounts that discounts were offered to encourage the use of cylinder presses, for example. By the end of the century numerous photo-reprographic techniques had been patented, some of which were commercially successful, others were quickly superseded by better processes. Printers’ archives reveal which were being used in a given period, how often and the cost of the procedure.

The advantages of using these in-house sources therefore are very great, but where external sources provide the same or similar information they provide an easier route for the researcher. It is good practice to check the results of an in-house survey with the data from external surveys, but the methods of collection and representation of data require some interpretation before the results can be compared. For example, if we compare the wage of a compositor in 1866 with Mitchell’s (1988) statistics on wages or the rates of pay in Howe and Waite’s The London Society of Compositors (1948) we can see some of the variables immediately. A report to the London Society of Compositors in 1866 showed the variability over the country: at the bottom of the scale were the Plymouth compositors who were paid 20s (or £1) per week whereas their colleagues in Liverpool received 31s per week. The average of 56 towns surveyed was 25s for a week which varied from 54 to 60 hours.¹ Mitchell’s figures are largely derived from Bowley’s (1900) analysis of the Reports of the Scottish Typographical Society. His figures range from 18s 3d in provincial towns in Scotland to, at the top end of the scale, Liverpool compositors earning 28s 3d per week. There are many reasons for the variation in figures; hours of work, terms of employment (piece-work or ’stab hand) and the different rates of pay for newspapermen and bookmen. For piece-workers the setting of small type and tables was paid at a higher rate than long primer or pica fonts. Similarly, compositors who were able to set type in foreign languages were paid more, and the rate also varied according to the urgency of the job. Thus an average wage in a high-class printer’s will differ considerably from the average figures cited by Mitchell or by Howe and Waite. Such differences must be borne in mind when statistics derived from accounts are interpreted.

The use of publishers’ and printers’ accounting records requires the development of new methods of data collection and analysis. Learning and borrowing methods used by economic and business historians, statisticians and accountants broadens the scope and definition of book history. Each must be tailored to the peculiar needs of book trade research.

Locating Publishers’ Archives

Finding the relevant publishers’ archives is rarely straightforward; many archives have been lost, some fragmented or damaged, while others are held privately and access is restricted. Also it is worth remembering that many British publishers’ archives are dispersed, so that correspondence and other material may be found in the archives of another firm, for instance, the firm who took them over, or of their bank or solicitor, or in the personal archive of the manager or family who began the firm. (Similarly, indexes of holdings are sometimes listed by author, for example Bradbury & Evans’ and Chapman & Hall’s accounts with Charles Dickens are listed under Dickens in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s catalogue.) A good place to start is on the Internet where the national location aids below are available, though sometimes in shortened form.² If material has gone abroad then there are various centres which keep updated records of the location of publishers’ archives: the Canadian Publishers’ Archives database is held at Simon Fraser University; The Book Industry Study group in USA have published a listing of twentieth-century book publishers’ archives and Nan Albinski’s list of nineteenth-and twentieth-century American publishers’ archives is published in the Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) yearbook 1993. In Britain, The Book Trade History Group (BTHG) holds such information and has published a Location Register (Weedon and Bott, 1996) which has been updated in subsequent newsletters and a web version is in progress. In addition, the National Register of Archives (NRA) in Quality Court, London, houses reports from record offices, libraries and universities throughout Britain. Its company index is on computer (and Internet), and handlists of catalogued material are available on the shelves. The NRA houses copies of the Business Archive Council’s reports of private collections. Although some contact names and addresses have changed since the BAC’s surveys were carried out in the 1980s, their offices in London will provide updated information. The BAC have also published some useful guides and directories. Such searches will lead you to the repository which may be the firm, record office, library or other source. Even if you draw a blank it is worth contacting the local county record office who inevitably have more up-to-date information about their own holdings, and have business records of the firms in their area. Otherwise the big specialist collections of book trade material are held in Reading University Library, The National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, St Bride Printing Library in London, Glasgow University Library, The John Rylands Library in Manchester, The British Library and the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.

Companies do not always advertise their holdings despite the BAC’s efforts, and are often not aware of what they do have. It can be difficult to get access and conditions may not be ideal – indeed, they will almost certainly be dusty (my own experiences have included sitting on packing cases at the back of a large and busy warehouse and crawling around pallet boxes in a loft above a post room). Sometimes the books have been kept in poor conditions and may have mould, mildew or mouse damage. A few companies employ a friendly archivist and some have handlists of their material. The better-preserved archives such as John Murray’s in Albemarle Street may charge a consultation fee per day (but sit you at a comfortable antique desk in an elegant book-lined room where the material is brought to you). Since the sale of John Murray in 2003 to Hodder Headline, the future of this archive is uncertain.

Handlists provide a guide to the holdings and indicate whether the archive covers part or all of the century; however, they vary in usefulness. A good list will quote the title of the account book, its series (and whether that series is consecutive), the period covered and the book’s contents. The handlist for the William Blackwood accounts at the National Library of Scotland is an excellent example. Cataloguing account books is a low priority for archivists, however, as most scholars work on the letters or drafts of manuscripts, and therefore the handlist may be an inventory dating from the original deposit of the books, or there may not be a list at all. Kindly librarians may allow you into their stacks, which is a real boon as you can make your own list or annotate the existing one. Moreover, seeing all the books at once allows you to check the accounts posting system (that is, the cross-referencing between accounts books) which gives you some idea of what is missing. Once the archive has been located, the first step is to establish what it contains, particularly in terms of financial information.

Understanding Accounting Systems

While the accounts of nineteenth-century publishing firms largely followed the standard procedures of double-entry bookkeeping, accounting systems changed considerably over the period as company legislation was put in place and businesses changed hands. In the last quarter of the century specific standards became commonplace but before that printers’ and publishers’ accounts were idiosyncratic. Writing at the turn of the century, one accountant characterized ‘the easy-going methods of the old-fashioned printer’ who:

in days gone by obta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• The Nineteenth Century Series General Editors’ Preface
• List of Figures
• List of Plates
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Archives and Information Sources
• 2 The Growth of the Mass Market for Books
• 3 Trends in Book Production Costs
• 4 Looking after the Bottom Line
• 5 Educational Publishing
• 6 Publishing Strategies for the Mass Market: A Case Study
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index