Abstracts
Abstract
Following the work of Raymond Williams, this article examines the 81 fiction authors published in 1838. First, we examined the social origins of the authors as judged by their fathers’ occupations. Whereas the majority of adults living in the British Isles during this period were working class, the majority of the Class of 1838 originated in the upper classes. Second, we traced their careers by finding their ages at first published novel, their total novels, and the span of their careers. Though no significant differences were found between the careers of men and women authors, there was a general lack of persistence to write a second novel. And last, we inspected the title pages of the 87 published works of fiction in 1838 to investigate the ways in which authors presented themselves to readers. Contrary to expectations, men authors were more likely than women authors to conceal their identities.
Keywords:
- Authors,
- British Isles,
- class,
- novel,
- Victorian Period
Résumé
S’inspirant des travaux de Raymond Williams, le présent article porte sur les 81 écrivains publiés en 1838. Nous examinons d’abord l’origine sociale de ceux-ci, établie en fonction de l’activité du père. Alors que la majorité des adultes des îles Britanniques appartenaient à l’époque à la classe ouvrière, la plupart des écrivains de la cohorte de 1838 émanaient des classes supérieures. Nous dressons ensuite un portrait de leur carrière à partir des données suivantes : âge auquel ils ont publié leur premier roman, nombre de romans publiés et nombre d’années sur lequel leur carrière s’est échelonnée. Aucune différence significative ne se dégage entre la carrière des hommes et celle des femmes. Cependant, on remarque l’absence d’un second roman chez nombre des membres de la cohorte. Enfin, nous nous attardons à la manière dont les écrivains se présentent au lectorat sur la page titre des 87 oeuvres de fiction publiées en 1838. Contrairement à ce à quoi on pourrait s’attendre, les hommes dissimulent leur identité dans une plus large proportion que les femmes.
Mots-clés :
- Auteurs,
- îles britanniques,
- classe sociale,
- roman,
- époque victorienne
Appendices
Bibliography
- Bassett, Troy J. At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837-1901. 31 December 2019. Victorian Research Web. http://www.victorianresearch.org/atcl.
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
- Smith, George, Leslie Stephen, and Sidney Lee. The Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
- Altick, Richard D. “The Sociology of Authorship: The Social Origins, Education, and Occupations of 1,100 British Writers, 1800–1935.” Bulletin of the New YorkPublic Library 66 (1962): 389–404.
- Bassett, Troy J. “Sister Acts: The Prevalence of Literary Families in the Victorian Period.” In Studies in Victorian and Modern Literature: A Tribute to John Sutherland, edited by William Baker, 103–15. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickenson University Press, 2015.
- Bode, Katherine. Reading by Numbers: Recalibrating the Literary Field. New York: Anthem Press, 2012.
- Cross, Nigel. The Common Writer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
- Eliot, Simon. Some Patterns and Trends in British Publishing, 1800–1919. London: Bibliographical Society, 1994.
- Judd, Catherine A. “Male Pseudonyms and Female Authority in Victorian England.” In Literature in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century British Publishing and Reading Practices, edited by John O. Jordan and Robert L. Patten, 250–68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
- Laurenson, D. F. “A Sociological Study of Authorship.” The British Journalof Sociology 20, no. 3 (1969): 311–25. DOI: 10.2307/588955.
- Long, Jason. “Rural-Urban Migration and Socioeconomic Mobility in Victorian Britain.” The Journal of Economic History 65, no. 1 (2005): 1–35.
- Moretti, Franco. Atlas of the European Novel, 1800–1900. London: Verso, 1998.
- Raven, James. The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English BookTrade, 1450–1850. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.
- Sutherland, John. “Publishing History: A Hole at the Centre of Literary Sociology.” Critical Inquiry 14, no. 3 (1988): 574–89. JSTOR: 1343705.
- Sutherland, John. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989.
- Sutherland, John. “The Victorian Novelists: Who Were They?” In Victorian Fiction: Writers, Publishers, Readers, 151–64. New York: Springer, 1995.
- Tuchman, Gaye. Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers, and SocialChange. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.
- Van Remoortel, Marianne. Women, Work and the Victorian Periodical. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
- Williams, Raymond. The Long Revolution. London: Chatto & Windus, 1961.
- Wolff, Robert Lee. Nineteenth-Century Fiction: A Bibliographical CatalogueBased on the Collection Formed by Robert Lee Wolff. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, Volume 331. New York: Garland Publishing, 1981.
- Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. 1921. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2001.