The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Three-Volume Novel

Utilizing recent developments in book history and digital humanities, this book offers a cultural, economic, and literary history of the Victorian three-volume novel, the prestige format for the British novel during much of the nineteenth century. With the publication of Walter Scott’s popular novels in the 1820s, the three-volume novel became the standard format for new fiction aimed at middle-class audiences through the support of circulating libraries. Following a quantitative analysis examining who wrote and published these novels, the book investigates the success of publisher Richard Bentley in producing three-volume novels, the experiences of the W. H. Smith circulating library in distributing them, the difficulties of authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson and George Moore in writing them, and the resistance of new publishers such as Arrowsmith and Unwin to publishing them. Rather than faltering, the three-volume novel stubbornly endured until its abandonment in the 1890s.

• British Novel
• Publishing History
• Book Trade
• Book History
• Print Culture
• W. H. Smith
• Robert Louis Stevenson

“Troy J. Bassett’s book reconsiders a staple of nineteenth-century fiction, the three-volume novel, as a literary and economic product. … the book points indirectly to the bearing of nineteenth-century material culture on current concerns with genre, gatekeeping, and meaning-making in a digital world.” (David Buchanan, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, Vol. 59 (1), 2022)

“Rise and Fall of the Victorian Three-Volume Novel pioneers a new methodology to answer long-standing questions about the place of the triple decker in Victorian literature and culture. … Bassett’s resulting study is a broad overview of multivolume fiction that will provide invaluable context to scholars moving forward.” (Karen Bourrier, Victorian Periodicals Review, Vol. 54 (1), 2021)

• Purdue University Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, USA

  Troy J. Bassett

Troy J. Bassett is Professor of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne, USA. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on Victorian book history and literature and is the creator of the digital humanities project At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901.