Genre

Abstract

In the first place we must confirm the sheer quantity and variety of Victorian novels serialized in British newspapers after the abolition of the taxes on knowledge. Given both the number of papers where runs appear to have been partially or completely lost, and the volume of surviving material, it is obviously impossible to come up with a total number of British newspapers carrying serial fiction with some regularity during this period. However, in the course of the research for this volume, I have recorded instances: in over 50 provincial journals in the era of the minor/proto-syndicates; after the rise of the major syndicates in around the same number of larger city and regional journals, plus in almost double that number of smaller town and country papers; and in well over half that figure of metropolitan papers in the last 20-odd years of the century. As the searches conducted have been far from comprehensive, these figures must be presumed considerably to underestimate the total. Indeed it seems likely that virtually every community in Britain would have had been served by some form of newspaper consistently featuring fiction material before the end of the century. This was certainly the opinion of William Westall who claimed in 1890 that ‘there is hardly a small town in the kingdom without at least one local sheet, whose chief attraction is a serial romance’ (79).