Gissing, Grub Street, and the Transformation of British Publishing

The late Victorian period saw rapid change in the publishing industry, especially between 1870 and 1900. In Gissing, Grub Street, and the Transformation of British Publishing, Frederick Nesta argues that Victorian novelist George Gissing's career exemplifies the changes that transformed the British publishing industry in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and can be used as a case study to demonstrate the impact that these changes had on authors like Gissing. Though not a best-selling novelist, Gissing was nevertheless well regarded, and his most popular novel focused on publishing, New Grub Street, lends additional insights into the industry. Gissing's writing career encompasses a period (from 1870 to his death in 1903) when Britain saw increasing rates of literacy due to the passage of the Education Act in 1870, which mandated elementary education for all children. The increase in the reading public led to increased demand and publication of fiction. Eleven companies produced Gissing's work, providing a broad scope of an author's relationships with their publishers.The monograph is the result of research Nesta conducted into Gissing's personal papers and the records of his publishers, housed at various institutions, including the New York Public Library, the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, Indiana University's Lilly Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Manuscripts Room of the British Library, and the libraries of Aberystwyth University. Nesta combines this research with excerpts from publishing guides of the time to analyze the economics of publishing during the late Victorian period. His use of archival sources help Nesta demonstrate the financial impact that changes in publishing had during this time by providing the exact amounts contracted and paid to Gissing and his contemporaries by publishers.Gissing, Grub Street reads at times like a biography of Gissing, interweaving details of his personal life with research into the financial aspects of his publishing career through analysis of his papers and the records of his publishers. The introduction and initial chapter offer details about Gissing's personal life and career, providing the context for the denser research to come in later chapters. Subsequent chapters discuss some of the primary changes in the publishing industry during Gissing's career, namely, the business and function of publishers, the increasing use of literary agents during the period, the evolution of contracts from gentleman's agreements to legally binding documents, and the impact that the popularity of serial and periodical publications had on novelists like Gissing.Nesta provides a brief overview of previous scholarship on Gissing, notably Pierre Coustillas's edited volumes of George Gissing's personal papers. As Nesta discusses in his introduction, earlier work on the economics of publishing focused on the period prior to 1880 and on best-selling novelists. By contrast, Gissing was a respected but not especially popular novelist of the time, and Nesta's work therefore offers something new to the field of research on Victorian writers and publishing. Nesta also notes in his conclusion that other scholars have previously commented on many of the distinct changes in publishing during the period, including the increase in numbers of readers after 1870, the increasing reliance on literary agents, changes to copyright, the expansion of the market to British colonies and the United States, the evolution of circulating libraries, and the impact of late Victorian censorship. Although Nesta acknowledges the previous work done on Gissing and related aspects of publishing during the period, a firmer grounding in this context would have benefited readers less familiar with this topic.As Nesta points out, much has been written about the various aspects of Victorian publishing that he addresses in Gissing, Grub Street. Alexis Weedon's Victorian Publishing (2017) spans a similar period and covers some of the same issues, such as the expansion of the publishing market to British colonies and the United States. Troy Bassett's The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Three-Volume Novel (2020) analyzes the history of the three-volume novel, which Nesta notes influenced both the economics of publishing, as well as the way an author wrote for publication. Marissa Joseph's Victorian Literary Businesses (2020) discusses the evolution of copyright laws and literary contracts, two factors that Nesta explores in his volume. Nesta sets his work apart by pulling these various threads together using Gissing and his career to analyze such large-scale changes. The use of a specific author's career to analyze Victorian publishing is not necessarily new: Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund did something similar in Victorian Publishing and Mrs. Gaskell's Work (1999), as did Jim Cheshire in Tennyson and Mid-Victorian Publishing (2017). However, those studies focused on very popular authors. Nesta does something new with Gissing by focusing on an author who was never particularly popular.Through his analysis of archival sources, Nesta successfully defends his argument that Gissing's career provides a case study exemplifying the evolution of the publishing industry during the late Victorian period. Nesta's writing, clearly aimed at an academic audience, provides detailed research about the economics of Gissing's publishing career, down to the pounds, shillings, and pence. Although this level of detail enhances Nesta's analysis, readers unfamiliar with old British currency may struggle to keep up with the volume of figures presented. However, the inclusion of details of Gissing's personal life provides a more accessible entry into the research of later chapters. Gissing, Grub Street, and the Transformation of British Publishing offers those interested in Victorian publishing with in-depth research and analysis into many of the changes of the publishing landscape during this period. While the book does not explicitly focus on libraries, it does discuss the significant economic, social, and cultural impact of subscription libraries like Mudie's Select Library, and the impact that the eventual decline of such libraries had on the publishing industry—topics that may be of interest to library historians.