The Victorian Four-Volume Novel

Throughout the Victorian period, publishing novels in multiple volumes was a common format for new fiction. Overwhelmingly, fiction appeared in one-, two-, or three-volume editions but nineteen novels were published in the relatively rarer four-volume edition. Publishers used the four-volume format over the century primarily for long historical novels and novels written by well-established authors, including a brief resurgence in the 1870s instigated by George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch (1872). The article examines the use of the format by authors and publishers and gives a list of the four-volume novels published during the Victorian period.