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• The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Three-Volume Novel by Troy Bassett
• Karen Bourrier (bio)

Troy Bassett's Rise and Fall of the Victorian Three-Volume Novel pioneers a new methodology to answer long-standing questions about the place of the triple decker in Victorian literature and culture. Following Sarah Allison's Reductive Reading (2018), this is one of the first monographs in Victorian studies for which the author has collected his own extensive dataset, beginning in 2007, and used the resulting database, At the Circulating Library, as the basis for the study. At the Circulating Library is ground-breaking in its comprehensive nature, containing about 16,374 titles, 3,538 authors, 508 publishers, as well as additional information about novel serialization in periodicals and newspapers. It is a complete reference for all two-, three-, and four-volume novels published between 1837 and 1898. This database allows Victorianists, for the first time, to answer basic questions about the three-volume novel, including how many were produced (7,272), who published them (mainly Bentley and Hurst and Blackett), and who wrote them (mainly women by the end of the century). Bassett's resulting study is a broad overview of multivolume fiction that will provide invaluable context to scholars moving forward.

Previous work on multivolume fiction has necessarily proceeded by anecdote and case study. Before the digitization of library catalogues, periodicals, [End Page 152] newspapers, and genealogical records, it would have been nigh impossible to collect this kind of data on such a large scale. Using this data, the second chapter answers the question of what exactly the three-volume novel was. Surprisingly, Bassett's data shows that far from being obsolete at the end of the century, the triple decker continued to be as robust a publishing format on the eve of its demise in 1898 as it had been ten or twenty years earlier. Indeed, multivolume works reached their peak in raw numbers of titles published as well as market share in the 1870s and 1880s. As for who wrote the novels, Bassett tells the story of a divided century, with men writing the majority of titles before the 1850s. At that point, women writers began to catch up and then outpace male authors starting in the 1870s. Some publishers favored men over women or vice versa: Macmillan and Blackwood favored men, but the biggest players in the market, Hurst and Blackett and Bentley, favored women. More male than female authors were serialized until 1870, especially in prestigious half-crown monthlies like Blackwood's; in the 1870s women authored more serials than men, in part due to the rise of the woman editor.

Chapter three looks at the business of publishing multivolume fiction by sampling Richard Bentley's records for more than one hundred triple deckers from 1865 to 1890. In general, Bentley paid a little under 200 pounds to produce a 500- or 550-copy edition. He needed to sell only three hundred copies to break even, which regular orders from the circulating libraries took care of. Bassett finds that the three-volume novel was a reliable though not foolproof product and that small editions of less than one thousand copies could make modest profits. Of course, some bestsellers made more than modest profits. Bentley's top-selling authors were women, and he did not underpay them: his most lucrative contracts went to Ellen Wood, Annie Edwards, and Rhoda Broughton. Scholars will find Bassett's analysis of the average contract especially useful in understanding those of individual authors; hitherto the best option has been to compare the contracts of an author to one or two canonical authors for whom this information is available.

The fourth chapter looks at the records of W. H. Smith to better understand the role of the circulating library in promoting the triple decker. Bassett's analysis of their financial records reveals that the circulating library was a consistently profitable if modest part of their business. It turns out that a rapid...

审核人：

• 特洛伊·巴塞特 (Troy Bassett)维多利亚时代三卷小说的兴衰
• 凯伦·伯里尔（生物）

特洛伊·巴塞特 (Troy Bassett) 的《维多利亚时代三卷小说的兴衰》开创了一种新方法来回答关于三层楼在维多利亚时代文学和文化中的地位的长期问题。跟随莎拉艾莉森的还原阅读（2018 年），这是作者在 2007 年开始收集自己的大量数据集的维多利亚研究的首批专着之一，并使用由此产生的数据库 At the Circulating Library 作为研究的基础。At the Circulating Library 在其综合性方面具有开创性，其中包含约 16,374 种图书、3,538 位作者、508 家出版商，以及有关期刊和报纸上小说连载的其他信息。它是 1837 年至 1898 年间出版的所有两卷、三卷和四卷小说的完整参考。该数据库首次允许维多利亚时代的人回答有关三卷小说的基本问题，包括制作了多少部(7,272)，谁出版了它们（主要是 Bentley 和 Hurst 和 Blackett），谁写了它们（主要是本世纪末的女性）。巴塞特'

以前关于多卷小说的工作必然是通过轶事和案例研究进行的。在图书馆目录、期刊数字化之前，[完第152页]报纸和家谱记录，如此大规模地收集这种数据几乎是不可能的。使用这些数据，第二章回答了三卷本小说究竟是什么的问题。令人惊讶的是，巴塞特的数据显示，在 1898 年它消亡的前夕，三层印刷机并没有在本世纪末过时，它仍然像十年或二十年前一样强大的出版格式。事实上，多卷作品在 1870 年代和 1880 年代在出版的原始标题数量和市场份额方面达到了顶峰。至于是谁写的小说，巴塞特讲述了一个分裂的世纪的故事，在 1850 年代之前，大部分书名都是男性写的。那时，女性作家开始追赶，然后从 1870 年代开始超过男性作家。一些出版商偏爱男性而非女性：Macmillan 和 Blackwood 偏爱男性，但市场上最大的参与者 Hurst、Blackett 和 Bentley 偏爱女性。直到 1870 年，连载的男性作者多于女性作者，尤其是在著名的半皇冠月刊中，例如布莱克伍德的；在 1870 年代，女性创作的连续出版物数量多于男性，部分原因是女性编辑的兴起。

第三章通过对理查德·本特利从 1865 年到 1890 年的 100 多本三层书的记录进行抽样，考察了出版多卷小说的业务。总的来说，本特利支付了略低于 200 英镑来制作 500 或 550 副本的版本。他只需要卖出三百本就可以收支平衡，这由流通图书馆的定期订单负责。巴塞特发现，这本三卷本的小说虽然不是万无一失的，但却是可靠的产品，而且少于 1000 册的小版本可以赚取微薄的利润。当然，一些畅销书的利润并不高。Bentley 最畅销的作家是女性，他并没有少付她们的报酬：他最赚钱的合同是与 Ellen Wood、Annie Edwards 和 Rhoda Broughton 签订的。学者将找到巴塞特 对平均合同的分析对于理解个别作者的合同特别有用；迄今为止，最好的选择是将一位作者的合同与一两个可获得此信息的规范作者的合同进行比较。

第四章查看WH史密斯的记录，以更好地理解流通图书馆在促进三层楼的作用。巴塞特对他们的财务记录的分析表明，流通图书馆是他们业务中持续盈利的一部分。事实证明，一个快速...