The House of Blackwood: Author-Publisher Relations in the Victorian Era (review)

The subtitle of David Finkelstein's The House of Blackwood: Author-Publisher Relations in the Victorian Era is somewhat misleading. Although Finkelstein does discuss a number of Blackwood's authors, including such prominent figures as Margaret Oliphant and Joseph Conrad, the book hopes to move beyond the limiting practice of viewing publishing history through the lens of authorship. It attempts this by alternating chapters on the firm's management and history with "case studies" of authorship intended to situate individual events and negotiations within larger cultural, political, and economic frameworks.

Finkelstein's treatment of Blackwood differs from previous studies in focusing on the firm's later history, and especially in introducing materials heretofore unavailable or (if unflattering to the firm) suppressed. The result is an informative glimpse into the reasons for the firm's decline. Finkelstein notes the aesthetic and sociopolicitical conservatism that led Blackwood to reject writers such as Thomas Hardy, who "did not fit in with the firm's prevailing ideological and literary stance" (13). Blackwood's "stance" is further illuminated through its response to the printers' strike of 1872-73, an event unmentioned in other accounts. Rather than comply with demands for a shorter work week, Blackwood hired replacements, pressured its remaining workers not to support the strikers, and ultimately became a nonunion shop. While John Blackwood framed the firm's actions in "paternalist" terms, Finkelstein points to the obvious link between low labor costs and the firm's overall profitability (47).

Finkelstein adeptly uses financial records and the details of business negotiations to situate authors and literary genres within the firm's overall production. He finds that the firm's overdependence upon sales of George Eliot's books backfired when demand for Eliot's work slackened at the end of the century. He also demonstrates that literary texts were not the only or even the main category of profitable texts for Blackwood, which also relied heavily upon religious, educational, reference, and military titles. Most telling, however, is the firm's continued refusal to abandon antiquated attitudes and business practices. Despite a steady drop in sales starting in the 1860s, Blackwood's management insisted that Blackwood's Magazine was a mainstay of the firm, while the refusal to adjust to the advent of literary agents literally cost the firm several important authors who turned to publishers who were willing to pay more.

Finkelstein acknowledges that the Blackwood archives are "so vast it would take a lifetime to excavate fully" (vii); given that, one wishes Finkelstein had produced a more detailed study of the material he has unearthed thus far. Yet the trouble with this book is not so much its brevity, but its tendency to promise more than it delivers. For example, in his initial mention of the directorship of David Meldrum, Finkelstein hints at scandal—"sums were calculated and worth assigned in order to establish how much to pay off the silent member of a secret partnership that had run the firm between 1903 and 1910"—and promises to tell the story of "how Meldrum became such a privileged insider" later in the book (4). But we learn only that Meldrum, a Blackwood author whose comments on literary contemporaries caught the attention of William Blackwood, was hired as the London office manager in 1896, and was valued for bringing new writers, including Conrad, to the firm. No details of the "secret partnership" emerge. Similarly, Finkelstein nods to book historians and theorists such as Robert Darnton and Pierre Bourdieu, but readers who expect a substantial engagement with theory will be disappointed.

Still, there are many things that Finkelstein does well. The "case study" approach, and especially the chapter on John Speke's 1863 Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, can be deft and provocative. A rich set of archival sources allows Finkelstein to document Blackwood's transformation of Speke's text, ostensibly a scientific treatise, into a saleable...