The Class of 1838: A Social History of the First Victorian Novelists

To what extent does an individual’s background, specifically their age, gender, and socio-economic background predict their becoming a novelist? Questions of this genre have been with us as long as the novel has been an object of study. Using new data, biographical details of every writer who published a novel in 1838 in the British Isles, we revisit the question of the relationship between social background and novel writing. Novelists in this cohort tend to emerge disproportionately from advantaged socio-economic backgrounds—83% of novelists come from non-working-class backgrounds. We also find that that men novelists are significantly more likely than women novelists to write under a name other than their legal name. The comprehensive data on the “Class of 1838” made available here supports systematic study of the social history of novel writing, offering a replacement for existing opportunistic convenience samples of questionable reliability.