|
THE
TRADE GOTHIC
There
is a clear critical division that exists in the Gothic, between
the Canonical and trade, the first being an indicator of the
genre's critical success and reception, the other dismissed as
not really belonging to the genre by an act of assessment which
assimilates the popular to the literary, and finds it
disreputable. The modern critical view of the Gothic limits it
to a set of high reaching artistic achievements: Horace
Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), Matthew Lewis's The
Monk (1796), Ann Radcliffe's The Italian; or, The
Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein;
or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) and Charles Maturin's Melmoth
the Wanderer (1820) are constantly cited as defining the
genre. But this view largely excludes the question of whether
those novels unashamedly produced as part of a lucrative
business or trade Gothic can be admitted, either as a legitimate
literary category, or even as a contribution to the life of the
genre. Many of the most fashionable and popular Gothic novels
were written by writers who turned out works as part of a
profitable business. Authors such as Sarah Wilkinson, Francis
Lathom, William Ireland, William Child Green and Louisa Stanhope
produced most of the best selling novels, chapbooks and short
tales of terror, often selling more and gaining more critical
acclaim than the 'canonical' writers, but are largely forgotten
today.
Undoubtedly, the most condemned offspring of the Trade Gothic,
chapbooks or bluebook are considered by some to be not only 'low
quality Gothic fiction', but the 'corrupted form' of the
Gothic', the 'disposable rubbish of a subliterate body of
literature' whose 'publication and commercial value stand as an
index of the sensation-craze into which the Gothic vogue
degenerated in its declining years.'
Chapbooks
or bluebooks were a whole series of short tales, 36 to 72 pages
long, distinguished by their flimsy blue covers, and thought to
be redacted, plagiarised, abridged, extracted or imitations of
popular novels and well-known Gothic novels. But, of course, it
would be erroneous to suppose that all chapbooks or bluebooks
were merely diminutive renderings of Gothic novels; in fact,
very few were direct abridgements of Gothic novels and some were
indeed, original. Often illustrated with wood cuts or
engravings, chapbooks were sold for under a Shilling and are now
unmistakably linked to the vulgarisation of the pastiche-ridden
Gothic, the dumbing own of the Gothic's intricate and convoluted
plots, dark motifs and representations of the sublime, into
simple tales of terror.
The
Gothic chapbook trade, largely a secondary market for fiction
specialising not only in original work but redactions, was
separate and distinct from street literature, the cheap ballad
sheets, pamphlets and chapbooks which simultaneously flourished
in the early nineteenth century and the production of Gothic
novels by publishers like William Lane of Minerva Press. The
Gothic chapbook trade was comprised of several large publishing
houses in London including Dean & Munday, J. Roe, Ann
Lemoine, and Thomas Tegg, who were often more book dealers
rather than publishers, producing a wide variety of literature
including cookbooks and religious tracts with Gothic bluebooks
comprising only a small amount. Smaller publishers such as Simon
Fisher, John Arliss, Robert Harrild and Thomas Hughes, whose
primary commodity was the Gothic chapbook, shared the field with
the larger publishers, driving the Gothic chapbook trade between
1800 and 1825. In those twenty-five years they produced around a
thousand chapbooks and bluebooks.
The
popular historical representation of a Gothic chapbook reader is
that of school boy Percy Shelley reading horrid chapbooks from a
'low' circulating library, at Sion House. This figure has in
fact become literary history which in part has aided in
distinguishing between 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate' readers
of the Gothic. Literary historians such as Montague Summers have
confidently argued that since Shelley, as a school boy, read
chapbooks; they were of course read by all school boys,
apprentices, servants (Summers specifically states girls) and
that 'vast population who longed to be in fashion.' (Summers, Gothic
Quest, pp. 84-85) There is, however, no documentation
supports this supposition; undoubtedly, it is the chapbooks'
link to cheap popular fiction and street literature that
predictably aligns them with the working class reader. However,
Shelley's brief appearance in chapbook's literary history does
suggest two, often neglected, fragments of evidence. Initially,
it is clear that Shelley obtained these chapbooks at a 'low'
circulating library which indicates that readers would have to
have access to a circulating library and the money to procure
them. Second, the fact that Shelley was receiving a formal
education while enjoying chapbooks indicates that such readers
(i.e. young and even upper-middle class) were, perhaps, required
to possess some amount of education to detect some of their
distinctive features and textual characteristics.
Almost
certainly, Gothic chapbooks were exclusively available in small
circulating libraries, while chapbooks, the "shorter
versions of the sixpenny and shilling romances [which were]
bought by more prosperous readers", were available from
street vendors. William Booth's Circulating Library in Norwich,
for example, carried 'pamphlets' including Raymond and Agnes,
a Romance, The Spectre of the Forest, or Black Castle, Gothic
Stories and Kilverstone Castle which were available
for 1d. per night. In 1817 William Fish's Circulating Library in
Norwich, displayed Gothic chapbooks and bluebooks prominently
under the heading Novel and Romances; for instance, The
Veiled Picture, or Mysteries of Gorgona, a romance of the 16th
century an adaptation of Mrs. Radcliffe's The Mysteries
of Udolpho was advertised as two volumes. Both novels and
chapbooks were available to non-subscribers for 1d. per
night. Reading a volume of Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of
Udolpho may take several nights, but reading a redacted
version may take only a few hours.
Links:
There
is unfortunately little USEFUL information on the web
regarding this important subcategory of Gothic fiction. The
following are the few links worth exploring, but they are
generally condescending and moreover, they unfortunately
reinforce the established literary history which specifically
links the crude illustrations of chapbooks to their literary
quality, fundamentally judging the book by its cover.
Penny
Dreadfuls and the Penny Bloods: A discussion of Victorian
Penny Dreadfuls which links chapbooks and Dreadfuls to
juvenile literature of the nineteenth century.
Illustrations
from Gothic Chapbooks: from Frederick Frank's
bibliographical site: The Sickly Taper
Gothic
Gold: An article on the Sadleir Black collection at the
University of Virginia by Frederick Frank.
|
