Primary Sources on Victorian Reading

• William Hazlitt, "The Periodical Press," Edinburgh Review, May 1823
• William Newmarch, [Unnamed article about novel reading], Westminster Review, June 1844
• Angus B. Reach, "The Coffee Houses of London," New Parley Library, 1844
• Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Young Ladies' Reader; Or, Extracts from Modern Authors, adapted for Educational or Family Use, 1845
• Fanny Mayne, "The Literature of the Working Classes," Englishwoman's Magazine, and Christian Mother's Miscellany, October 1850
• Samuel Phillips, "The Literature of the Rail," The Times, 9 August 1851
• "What is the Harm of Novel-Reading?", Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine, October 1855
• Wilkie Collins, "The Unknown Public," Household Words, 21 August 1858
• Margaret Oliphant, "The Byways of Literature: Reading for the Million," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, August 1858
• Henry Mansel, "Sensation Novels," Quarterly Review, April 1863
• Geraldine Jewsbury, Review of The Moonstone, The Athenaeum, 25 July 1868
• Thomas Cooper, The Life of Thomas Cooper, Written by Himself, 1872
  • working-class autodidact autobiography
• George Moore, "A New Censorship of Literature," Pall Mall Gazette, December 1884
• Charlotte Yonge, What Books to Lend and What to Give, 1884
• Henry James, "London," 1888
• Charles J. Billson, "English Novels," Westminster Review, December 1892
• Collet Dobson Collet, History of the Taxes on Knowledge, 1899
• Thomas Arnold, sermon about serial fiction in Nov. 1839 (Christian Life, Its Course, Its Hindrances, and Its Helps: Sermons, Preached Mostly in the Chapel of Rugby School. London: B. Fellowes, 1845)
• Alexander Innes Shand, “Contemporary Literature,” Blackwood’s Magazine, Dec 1878-Oct 1879 — cf Brake 2001
• George Saintsbury, A History of C19 Literature, 1896 - periodical literature as the most distinctive development — cf Brake 2001
• Arthur Waugh, One Man's Road (Chapman & Hall, 1930) (same as One Hundred Years of Publishing?)
• Library Records:

A sense for Victorian reading habits can be gleaned from the annual reports of free libraries between 1875 and 1900, as well as from the pages of "Transactions and Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Library Association of the UK"; "Monthly Notes of the Library Association of the UK"; "Proceedings of the Library Association of the UK"; "The Library"; and the "Library Chronicle". Library notes in the various professional journals contain many nuggets concerning fiction's share of the total holdings of many libraries, librarians' and library boards struggles with maintaining what was thought to be an appropriate percentage of fiction in the totals, and even items like policies for checking out and returning triple-decker novels. Conclusion: in almost all of the libraries--free, public, mechanics institute, circulating, subscription and so on--fiction (especially light contemporary fiction) was the overwhelming choice of customers of all classes, much to the distress of many upright middle class moralists who saw their tax dollars being wasted. BTW, some of the annual reports break down borrowers by age, occupation, borrowing habits. Richard Fulton (3-29-19)