Origins, Problems and Philosophy of the Bestseller

Abstract

In the mid-nineteenth century it caused surprise and slight consternation, like being caught doing something a little embarrassing. So it was when a visitor to one of London’s political clubs saw the Prime Minister, W. E. Gladstone, sitting quietly in a corner engrossed, not in some work of political or philosophical importance but in a romantic novel, Red as a Rose is She. By the early twentieth century the whole business of fiction was almost respectable, its authors the latest in celebrities: interviewed, photographed and fêted by critics and readers alike. The Strand Magazine in search of amusing anecdotes for its August edition of 1906 could not resist a paragraph or two on the relative stature of some of the great lights in fiction-writing over the previous quarter of a century. There, as expected, were Dickens and Thackeray, not quite as popular as in previous years but still pre-eminent. Behind them, however, was Thomas Hall Caine, a writer whose popularity between the 1890s and 1920 made him fabulously rich and gained him a knighthood. Looking back over their friendship Bram Stoker, himself the author of Dracula (1897), recalled of Caine

‘Why then,’ said the Tinker, ‘it’s true I mends kettles, sharpens scissors and such, but I likewise peddles books an’ nov-els, an’ what’s more I reads ’em - so, if you must put me in your book, you might call me a literary cove.’

(Jeffrey Farnol, The Broad Highway, ch. 1)