Before Tillotsons

Abstract

Sometime in the first half of 1873 an innovative deal was struck between William Frederic Tillotson (1844–89; Plate 3), proprietor of the Bolton Weekly Journal, and John Maxwell (1820–95; Plate 4), then companion, publisher, and literary representative of the popular novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon. For the sum of £450 Maxwell sold to Tillotson’s the serial rights for a limited period to Braddon’s new novel Taken at the Flood. The novel appeared in a dozen provincial newspapers in lock-step in 34 parts from Saturday 30 August 1873 to 18 April 1874, with the minor variations noted in Table 2.1.¹ On the whole, the papers tended to be cheap weekly journals with a Liberal outlook, containing not only a synopsis of the week’s news, local, national and international, but also a miscellany of feature material. The marked exceptions were the Portsmouth Times and Naval Gazette, a staid journal which commenced publication before the repeal of the ‘taxes on knowledge’, and which had no history of publishing fiction or features, plus the Dublin Penny Despatch, which was struggling to establish its new identity as a popular literary miscellany with no news content at all. For Willie Tillotson the transaction represented a major advance in the growth of his business.