Popular fiction of the eighteenth-century commercial circulating libraries

Abstract

This thesis is an analysis of the fictions which were among the most popular of the eighteenth century. An index of the most popular stories was compiled by comparing all the extant commercial library catalogues from 1739-1801. The catalogues were used in the absence of comprehensive edition figures for the period; the libraries are the best measure of the popularity of the fictions, standing at the centre of the trade in popular fiction: commissioning, producing, and supplying books to the literate elite.

A selection of 127 fictions were read, and the plot elements were anlaysed by a computer programme which exposed the similarities between the stories and suggested that some elements in the fictions were stock characters such as veteran soldiers, banditti or mystery relations. There were stock scenes-too, such as deathbed scenes, macabre scenes, and adventure scenes.

Certain attitudes seem to be held in common by all the fictions of the survey. Although some of them portrayed realistic city scenes, not one treated the countryside in a realistic fashion: not one described the new farming methods and practices which were transforming the face of the landscape. Not one showed any rural worker, except as a contented peasant or cottager. Not one showed any rural middle-class entrepreneurs or experimental landlords. This surprising absence from the fictions could be an indication of the sense of guilt felt by the literate elite at the deterioration of the lifestyle of their working-class rural dependents.

Another interesting attitude results from the sexual double-standard prevalent in the fictions. The sexual exploitation of working-class women produces titillating scenes when the upper-class heroine is forced into wage work and automatically becomes legitimate sexual prey to upper-class men. All the working heroines in this survey are either sexually assaulted or seduced.

The thesis analyses briefly the inter-connections between the fictions and suggests that of 127 stories, 34 are closely related as sequels, piracies, satires or borrowed characters and scenes. In the light of these inter-connections, and the common attitudes and subjects, the thesis suggests that the popular fiction can be read as an index to the consciousness of the literate elite of the eighteenth-century.