Elizabeth Gaskell needed a favour. In October 1849 she visited Samuel Bamford, a former hand-loom weaver and the elderly author of Life of a Radical, only to discover that he could not afford a copy of Tennysonâs 1842 Poems. She described the situation in a letter to John Forster:
âNoâ he [Bamford] said, rather mournfully; â âhe had been looking out for a second hand copy, â but somehow they had not got into the old book-shops, and 14s (or 18. Which are they?) was too much for a poor man like him to giveâ.1
She asked Forster if he could persuade the poet to give Bamford a copy, Tennyson complied, dedicated the book to him and forwarded it to Gaskell:
I have been half-opening the pretty golden leaves, and peeping here and there at old favourites ever since it came. But I have shut it up close again, that it may all properly stick together like a newly-bound book, before I take it to Bamford.2
On presenting Bamford with the book, Gaskell had to distract him from the poetry in order to point out that Tennyson had written an inscription. She left him reading in the street:
Then he dipped down into his book, and began reading aloud the Sleeping Beauty, and in the middle stopped to look at the writing again, and we left him in a sort of sleep walking state, & only trust that he will not be run over.3
Gaskellâs narrative of bourgeois cultural philanthropy offers a revealing glimpse of who could afford to buy Tennysonâs poetry. To Gaskell, whether the book was 14s or 18s was not particularly significant but Bamford was eagerly awaiting the bookâs appearance in Manchesterâs second-hand bookshops, where it had failed to materialise. Tennysonâs Poems had been published in 1842 and by the end of 1849 had sold about 8,000 copies. Tennysonâs seminal collection had shown steady sales from the mid-1840s but was selling fast by 1849, at a rate of over 150 copies a month, a sign that Tennysonâs poetry was reaching an audience beyond Londonâs literary elite. Bamford was one of these new readers, and a fervent admirer:
Bamford is the most hearty (and itâs saying a good deal) admirer of Tennyson I know. I dislike recitation exceedingly, but he repeats some of Tennysonâs poems in so rapt, and yet so simple a manner, utterly forgetting that anyone is bye, in the delight of the music and the exquisite thoughts, that one canât help liking to hear him.4
Gaskellâs estimate of 14s or 18s was in fact too high: the 1842 Poems had been published in two volumes at 12s but, about a year before Gaskellâs letter, the fifth edition had been published in one volume at 9s: this was the single-volume edition that Tennyson gifted to Bamford. This price cut facilitated a surge in sales, although this was not for the benefit of poor readers: Edward Moxon never published cheap editions of Tennysonâs poetry as he believed that wealthy people would benefit rather than readers like Bamford.5
The price of books directly affected access to literature. Gaskell claimed that Bamford obtained familiarity with Tennysonâs poems through other peopleâs copies: âwhenever he got into a house where there were Tennysonâs poems he learnt as many as he could off by heart; & he thought he knew better than twelveâ.6 Bamford had acquaintances who could afford Tennysonâs 1842 Poems but twelve shillings (or even nine) was a substantive sum and more than three times the price of a âcheap editionâ, which Moxon typically sold for 2s 6d.
New books were exciting objects. Even a published author such as Gaskell was attracted by the âgolden pagesâ and was keen that the volume âstick together like a newly-bound bookâ so that its novelty was not spoilt for Bamford. Since 1846, Tennysonâs 1842 Poems had been issued in what became Moxonâs house style: green cloth boards stamped with discrete patterns and gold lettering on the spine, an example of the industrial-scale decoration that was becoming widely available due to the presence of new specialised factories. This was the fourth format of the 1842 Poems and one that was maintained until the Moxon firm parted company with Tennyson in 1869. When Bamford received the book, its feel and appearance would have been new to many readers.
By 1849 there were about 3,500 copies of Tennysonâs 1842 Poems circulating among American readers, who would have paid $1.50, roughly 6s or two thirds of the price of Bamfordâs copy. Their volume would have contained The Princess as well: Tennysonâs American publisher, Ticknor and Fields, had bundled Tennysonâs poems together into a Poetical Works edition without raising the price. Both poems together would have cost an English reader 14s âmore than twice as much as the American edition.7 Tennyson was on his way to reaching a mass audience: his popularity would keep growing for another 15 years, by which time he was seen as a publishing phenomenon. This book is about the role that publishing played in Tennysonâs unprecedented success and what this tells us about mid-Victorian culture.
âNobody Wants Poetry Nowâ â Publishing After the Romantics
Historians and literary critics have found it difficult to characterise early Victorian poetry. The 1830s has been described by Richard Cronin as âa shadowy stretch of time sandwiched between two far more colourful periodsâ and Isobel Armstongâs influential study acknowledges the problem of understanding Victorian poetry as the transition between the Romantic and Modern periods. 8 Part of the problem resides in the lack of quantitative information about publishing in this period. For example, where is the evidence to back up Croninâs own assertion: âFrom the death of Byron until the Publication of In MemoriamâŠFelicia Hemans was the most successful poet in Britainâ?9 Figures cited by William St Clair, although incomplete, suggest Hemans sold less than 12,000 copies of her poetic books between 1816 and 1834 and then sold tens of thousands of cheap reprint copies from the 1870s onwards: however, this gives us little idea of what happened in the 1840s.10 While Cronin was consciously attempting to reinsert Hemans into literary history, it is unclear (and arguably unlikely) whether she was more successful than Tennyson in the 1840s: combined figures for the 1842 Poems and The Princess show that by 1849, 11,300 copies of the poems had been published in Britain and 7,000 copies in America. While most attempts to understand Victorian poetry rely on literary criticism, this book asks a different question: to what extent might new ways of manufacturing, advertising and selling poetic books explain the specificity of Victorian poetry? New ways of printing and decorating books coincided closely with the start of the Victorian period and the decline of the poetic gift book (c. 1870) coincides neatly with the âaestheticâ poets of the later Victorian period. This book will not propose any simple casual link between poetry and the commodities through which it was sold but it will demonstrate that the relationship between literature and its commerical apparatus is important.
The scale of Tennysonâs success means that he will always dominate accounts of early and mid-Victorian poetry but to date we have been content with a superficial and dated analysis of his career. The absence of any recent research about Edward Moxon during this period is just as surprising: if poetry in the 1830s and 1840s is so difficult to categorise, then surely Moxonâs career is the obvious place to look?
The idea that demand for poetry had disappeared by the early Victorian period has proved strangely pervasive, a story contested by the career of the poet central to this study. Conventional accounts of poetry after the Romantic period frequently present a boom and bust cycle: the poetry boom of the Romantic period was followed by a steep decline and then another boom in the 1860s, often explicitly associated with Tennysonâs Enoch Arden. The evidence frequently cited is that several powerful publishers moved away from poetry in the 1830s and 1840s, which is true but wholly inadequate to justify the idea that demand for poetry had disappeared. A more measured approach is suggested by Behrendt:
Although the [publishing] market hit a high point in 1823â5, the following year witnessed widespread economic difficulties that seriously affected publishers. London firms like Hurst, Robinson and Co., and others, fearful of a domino effect turned cautious, electing to publish less in literature and more in history, science, moral and vocational instruction, and the domestic arts, for all of which there was now a ready market of bourgeoise consumers.11
The idea of new caution among major publishers and poetry as risky is a plausible explanation of this change in literary publishing. Along with others, John Samuel Murray (1778â1843) became genuinely disillusioned with verse and fiction but the change within this firm is also attributable to the increasing influence of his son. The Dictionary of National Biography suggests that John Murray (1808â1892) âhad met Byron, Scott, and Goethe, but cared little for novels (other than Scottâs) or poetryâ, which implies that the firmâs movement away from literature was at least partly due to the interests of the individual that ran the firm from 1843.12 Longmanâs move away from poetry is equally problematic as a symptom of a wider cultural shift. The source often used to justify this is an anecdote relating how Eliza Action offered a âsheaf of poetryâ to Thomas Longman IV in the âearly forties of the last centuryâ and was met with the response: âMy dear Madam, it is no good bringing me poetry; nobody wants poetry now. Bring me a cookery book and we might come to terms.â13 Acton apparently returned with her now famous Modern Cookery. The credibility of this story can be questioned from a number of perspectives. Firstly, the source, Frank Mumbyâs The Romance of Bookselling (1910), is hardly the work of a serious scholar. Mumby was a journalist who wrote mainly about Tudor and Elizabethan history and arguably included the anecdote for its comedy value â âA good story, now printed for the first time, is told at Longmansâ â but this hardly inspires confidence in its historical accuracy.14 Actonâs biographer suggests the date of the visit in question was âaround 1835â and that Acton probably worked on Modern Cookery for about 10 years before publication.15 Therefore, the amusing idea that she suddenly gave up poetry for cookery in the early 1840s seems very unlikely. Despite the dubious nature of this source, it has proved popular with recent scholars, who have used it as evidence for suggesting that Longmanâs commercial advice was correct.16 Even...