A Return to the Common Reader : Print Culture and the Novel, 1850–1900 (Paperback)

Contents: Foreword; Preface; Introduction, Beth Palmer and Adelene Buckland; Part 1 Publishers, Authors, Critics, Readers: The advantage of fiction: the novel and the 'success' of the Victorian periodical, Laurel Brake; Dorothy's literature class: late-Victorian women autodidacts and penny fiction weeklies, Kate MacDonald; Ouida; how conceptions of the popular reader contributed to the making of a popular novelist, Jane Jordan; 'Those who idle over novels': Victorian critics and post-romantic readers, Debra Gettelman; 'Gossip' and 'twaddle': 19th-century common readers make sense of Jane Austen, Katie Halsey. Part 2 Scenes of Reading: Reading in gaol, Jenny Hartley; Attempts to (re)shape common reading habits: Bible reading on the 19th-century convict ship, Rosalind Crone; 'Quite incapable of appreciating books written for educated readers': the mid-19th-century British soldier, Sharon Murphy; 'A journey round the bookshelves': reading in the Royal Colonial Institute, Beth Palmer; Fiction and the Australian reading public, 1888-1914, Tim Dolin; Selected works cited; Index.