Obtaining French novels
Obtaining French novels
French novels were associated throughout the nineteenth century with the infamous Holywell Street. However, they were far more widely obtainable, and readily consumed, than this suggests. Libraries such as the fairly exclusive London Library, Mudie’spopular Select Library, and working-class institutions, did their part to make them available; surviving archives paint a vivid picture of the public appetite for novels by writers such as Dumas and Paul de Kock. Booksellers such as Jeffs and Rolandi were important in supplying readers with contemporary trends, but they also took on additional roles as editors and members of Anglo-French networks. Periodicals, meanwhile, made French literature available to readers who had not necessarily been searching for it. Long serializations of the 1840s aimed predominantly at a less wealthy audience, and translations geared towards a growing middle-class (and often female) market in the 1860s, further demonstrate the omnipresence of French literature in Victorian culture.
Keywords: libraries, booksellers, periodicals, translations, readers, serializations
British Academy Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.