Railway Reading and the Late Victorian Literary Series

The Victorian era was a period of important social and technological change within the British Empire. The expansion of the middle class and the rise of rail travel were two such changes that influenced the reading and print culture of the time. In Railway Reading and Late Victorian Literary Series, Paul Raphael Rooney aims to illuminate Victorian reader demographics and literary preferences through an examination of three leading examples of late Victorian series. The monograph is the outcome of research he conducted as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin from 2014 to2016. In it Rooney combines analysis of existing literature on the topic with archival research into publishing houses' private archives to investigate railways as spaces of both print commerce and reading, the expanding middle class as audience and consumer of publishers' series, and the developments in the business of publishing that contributed to the creation and widespread consumption of these series.Rooney firmly situates his discussion within the existing scholarship on this topic, providing the reader with common definitions of the “series” as well as a background in the publishing landscape of the period. This background is both helpful and necessary for readers who may be less familiar with this topic. Much of the existing literature on Victorian publishing and reading has focused on earlier periods of the Victorian era, but Rooney focuses on the late Victorian era beginning in 1870, and what he refers to as the “second generation” of serialized fiction. This period was characterized by an expansion of the lower middle class due to the passage of the Forster Act in 1870, which increased access to education in Britain, thereby increasing the number of literate consumers. This group of literary consumers, sometimes referred to as “new readers,” often held white-collar, salaried jobs, traveled frequently by train, and had a new and modest dispensable income. The railway bookstall thrived in this new social and economic environment, and was characterized by cheaply printed “yellowback books”: serialized paperback editions of popular fiction characterized by their yellow paper jackets and illustrated covers, and their reputations as light reading for pleasure.After situating the reader in the context of the period, Rooney moves into his case studies of three particularly successful publishers' series: Chatto & Windus's Cheap Editions of Popular Novels (1877–99); Routledge's Detective Books series (1887–88); and Arrowsmith's Bristol Library series (1884–1901). Throughout these chapters, he relies mainly on macro analysis of archival collections to illuminate the key aspects of the series that would have shaped readers' experiences, but he strikes a balance by incorporating records of individual railway booksellers' experiences as well as close readings of the cover art of the most popular series editions. Rooney uses publishing houses' archival records and contemporary periodical articles to reverse-engineer a list of the titles that were available in railway bookstalls, and which editions from that list were most frequently purchased, and thus, held the greatest appeal for late Victorian readers. His analysis of railway bookstall workers' memoirs and essays provides a more personal glimpse into the business of late Victorian railway print culture, and Rooney's close reading of the cover art of popular series editions also provides insight into why particular editions would have held more appeal for late Victorian railway readers. The way in which Rooney uses these archival records in concert with each other is one of the major strengths of the book.Much has been written on Victorian readers and their habits, but Rooney is the first to focus specifically on “railway reading” in late Victorian Britain, encompassing both the railway bookstalls as spaces of print commerce and railways as spaces of Victorian reading. Alberto Gabriele's Reading Popular Culture in Victorian Print (2009) focused on Victorian popular culture as represented by a specific magazine and Andrew Blake's Reading Victorian Fiction (2016) similarly discussed the social influences the Victorian era had on reading, with a focus on Victorian fiction. Like Rooney, Alexis Weedon's Victorian Publishing (2017) explored the archival records of publishers, including Chatto & Windus. However, Weedon focused exclusively on publishers, not on readers as consumers as Rooney does. John Spiers's Serious about Series: American Cheap Libraries, Railway Libraries and Some Literary Series (2007) provides the closest counterpart to Rooney's investigation of railway series, though Spiers's broader exploration is of American print and reading culture and does not focus on the late Victorian period. Rooney himself served as an editor (with Anna Gasperini) and a contributor for another recent book on a similar topic, Media and Print Culture Consumption in Nineteenth Century Britain: The Victorian Reading Experience (2016), which includes essays focused on the influences, motivations, and desires of Victorian readers. Rooney's unique focus in Railway Reading serves to build upon the existing work done on Victorian reading and print culture, while simultaneously offering new insights to this field of work.Rooney's book is well researched and well written, but it is worth noting that his writing style is clearly aimed at an academic audience. The amount of information conveyed can be dense at times and would be difficult for a more casual reader to engage with. However, the book's introduction and first chapter provide helpful contextual information for those unfamiliar with the Victorian era or the topic of Victorian print and reading culture. Similarly, Rooney's use of tables to summarize publisher data collected through his archival research provides readers with an aid to understanding the work he describes more fully in the text. For those who are interested in book or publishing history Rooney's Railway Reading offers a solid background in Victorian publishing and reading trends, as well as an engaging discussion of the importance of the series in the Victorian publishing and reading landscape, and railways as spaces of literary marketing and consumption. While Railway Reading does not discuss libraries explicitly, library historians may be interested in considering how the Victorian publishing and reading trends it outlines influenced the types of books available in libraries during this period.