Come Buy, Come Buy: Shopping and the Culture of Consumption in Victorian Women's Writing

Three MIDDLEMARCH AND THE EXTRAVAGANT DOMESTIC SPENDER

Three       Managing an Epic Life s George Eliot prepared to publish the first edition of Middlemarch in , she was also poised to take a gamble. Eliot’s ambitions for the novel extended beyond the scope of its composition, with its nuanced understanding of social relations and complex intertwining of multiple plots. She also entertained the possibility of a radically new format of publication in parts.1 Acting on an earlier suggestion from John Blackwood, George Henry Lewes wrote to him on May , , asking if he would consider this publishing experiment: “Mrs. Lewes finds that she will require  volumes for her story, not . . . . [A]s you have more than once spoken of the desirability of inventing some mode of circumventing the Libraries and making the public buy instead of borrowing I have devised the following scheme, . . . namely to publish it in half-volume parts either at intervals of one, or as I think better, two months. The eight parts at /- could yield the £ for the four volumes, and at two month intervals would not be dearer  A You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. than Maga [Blackwood’s Magazine]. Each part would have a certain unity and completeness in itself with separate title.”2 To secure these terms, the matter of who would shoulder the risk had to be determined. Either the publisher could assume it and offer the novelist £ cash or a four-year English copyright , or Eliot could take the chance and accept a  percent royalty on each part. Eliot chose the latter, and this risk earned her the distinction of being known as the first author to turn down a flat fee in favor of a royalty. There were reasons why Blackwood, Lewes, and Eliot had attempted to “circumvent[ ] the Libraries” and the standard three-decker. Blackwood, as David Carroll points out, was still fuming over the lending libraries’ refusal “to buy [Felix Holt in] either [its] three-volume or the s. edition,” a factor in its failure, and wished to bolster himself against a system that had too much of a hand in determining the fate of his business. Lewes, for his part, was keen to find a means of publication that could turn a greater profit.3 With such a share of the market, lending libraries such as Mudie’s andW. H. Smith kept the price of fiction artificially inflated, ensuring that the price of new fiction remained high and preventing a market for cheap literature from taking hold. This obstruction was in the libraries’ interest, for they received a sizable discount by buying directly from publishers; cheap editions would not only lure the lending public away but also dampen sales in the libraries’ second-hand trade, through which they sold off used three-deckers to the public. By offering each of the volumes of Middlemarch at a lower price than usual, Lewes hoped to extend readership beyond the subscription system and induce readers “to buy rather than borrow.”4 If these were the motivations of her publisher and of her companion-cumliterary agent, what were Eliot’s reasons for this scheme?Tiring of hearing that single copies of her novel were passed from one reader to the next until they became threadbare, Eliot evidently wished to put more copies of her novels into more readers’ hands.5 But her investment in shaping the terms of Middlemarch as a commodity to be purchased was arguably most directed toward her continued efforts to accrue status as an preeminent author, one who would not be constrained by the terms of received publishing formats.Turning down an invitation in  to contribute to the EnglishWoman’s Journal, Eliot wrote that she had “given up writing ‘articles’” for others and was eager instead to build her “own house” by writing books.6 Eliot’s concern was “to have freedom to write out one’s own varying unfolding self, and not be a machine always grinding out Managing an Epic Life  You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. the same material or spinning the same sort...