VICTORIAN BOOK-PRODUCTION
St,—While thoroughly enjoying Mr. Nicolson's second raid on collector- land from his guerrilla-fastness in the mountains of port and politics, I must insist that he has attacked the wrong province by mistake. The primary purpose of the Victorian Fiction Exhibition is to demonstrate changing methods of book-production and book-marketing during the nineteenth century. The exhibits are, in fact, contributions to our understanding of publishing-history, and may therefore claim (though " historical " in a specialised sense) the sympathy of those who, like Mr. Nicolson, regard " collectors " as queer, but " history " as the cat's whiskers.
That Mr Nicolson assumed the show to be one of forgotten first editions was a mistaken preconception to which, toward the end of his article, he confesses. Admittedly we presented a classified and repre- sentative summary of Victorian diversion-reading, lest the technical aspect of the show prove too grim for the general public. But this was done in order to indicate that what went before had direct relevance to actual novels whose titles everyone would recognise. Unfortunately, phases of publishing-history could not have been visually displayed without con- siderable and persistent collecting-activity. One has not been able, at any time during the last twenty-five years, to walk into a bookshop and pick out a range of specimens of the various cheap fiction-series or of typical one-volume reprints, in sufficiently fine condition, either to teach oneself true historical sequence, or to show onlookers what the books were like when first published. The material required hunting out, and, when located, recognising for what it was.
The same is true of most of the novels displayed for their titles' sake. A few of the most famous, just because they are famous, would be treasured by the trade, and their availability soon known in interested quarters ; but stories widely popular in their day and since forgotten are only discoverable in decent state after patient search. The reason why is yet more history ; and would involve us in a discussion of Victorian printing-numbers, of circulating-library methods, of firms who sold fiction in sheets for immediate library binding, and other phenomena of "distribution."
With respect to yellow-backs, I assure Mr. Nicolson that I take genuine delight in the early elegant specimens, and regard the genre as a whole (beautiful and ugly alike) as providing the most convincing evidence in existence of the decline of good taste in book-design, under mass produc- tion, between 1855 and 1870. More " history " in fact. (That the evidence could not be set forth at 7 Albemarle Street was due to difficulties of transport and weather conditions, with which I need not trouble your readers.) If, at the back of the whole affair, lurk the sinister crooners who " collected " all these books, they beg Mr. Nicolson to believe that they are not trophy-hunters and lay no claim to " instinct " ; merely
that they like certain books as books, and owe their accumulation of volumes to assiduity, good fortune and a perverted sense of fun.—
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