Provincial Readers in Eighteenth-Century England

PROV INCIAL READERS I N E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U RY E N G L A N D

Detail showing Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, and parts of Leicestershire and Wiltshire, areas served by the Clays and Stevenses, in relation to London, from ‘General Map of the Roads of England and Wales’, in Daniel Paterson, Paterson’s Roads (London: Longman, Rees, et al., 1829); copy owned by author. Solid dark lines represent new railroads. Dark lines parallel to lighter lines between towns mark the older mail coach roads that were in service during the later eighteenth century.

Provincial Readers in Eighteenth-Century England J A N F E RG U S

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Jan Fergus 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–929782–7

978–0–19–929782–5

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In memory of John Fergus Jr. and for Hazel and Geoffrey and all the rest of my chosen family

Preface and Acknowledgements This project on readership derives partly from an early consciousness that the common wisdom about reading practices in eighteenth-century England might be mistaken. In the 1950s I took for granted that my younger brother bought different comic books from mine. I was therefore surprised and delighted to discover in the 1960s that John at 17 had unpacked and read all my Georgette Heyer historical romances, cheaply acquired and sent home from England when I was 19. John’s pleasure was a revelation, and it has made me sceptical ever since towards arguments that depend on binary separation between male and female tastes, in reading and in other entertainments. The scene of reading reproduced on the dust jacket and engraved in The Lady’s Pocket Magazine; or, Elegant & Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex (1795) inscribes such shared tastes: while parents face each other by the fire at the right, each occupied with one of the younger children, the older ones are grouped slightly apart around a table at the left. There the elder boy reads aloud to a younger brother behind him, a sister sewing, and two more sisters also at the table. The younger brother’s engagement with the tale is written on his body. His left hand is raised to his head, which leans slightly left, as he looks over the reader’s shoulder. In the periodical, a poem entitled ‘The Happy Fireside’ by the magazine’s publisher James Harrison faced this engraving: Not in the leafy shade, is found More bliss, when Summer blooms around: Than social Winter can inspire, Around the chearful ev’ning fire. There, as the partial parents eye, Their dear, assembled progeny; With transport ev’ry proof they view, That speaks the mind to virtue true. It’s growing worth, a thousand ways, E’en artless infancy displays; As acts ingenious, gentle, kind, Attract the eye, and charm the mind. Some silent grasp the cherish’d toy, And some pursue a lov’d employ,

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All anxious, still, the tale to hear, That Genius fits for Virtue’s ear. While one, that night the Chief confess’d, Reads, by consent, to all the rest: Nor seek they e’er a higher boast, Than pow’r to please each other most. Attentive to the woe-fraught tale, Each rosy cheek grows instant pale; And soon reveals each melting eye, The soul of sensibility. Then gives a lively story birth, To smiles of inoffensive mirth; And now, in ev’ry chearful face, The roses reassume their place. Blow! blow! ye winds, my cot around, So these delights within be found; Ambition may the world divide, Give me the happy fire-side!

Although the illustrated reader is a boy, in the poem the reader of the ‘woe-fraught tale’ is ungendered, and the tale causes ‘The soul of sensibility’ to be revealed in equally ungendered bodies through ‘each melting eye’ before being succeeded by a ‘lively story’ and ‘smiles’. Harrison’s poetic celebration of the sensibility and mirth evoked by reading fiction that he published in this magazine and elsewhere, along with his refusal to gender such reading, makes solid commercial sense and points to the interconnections among publishers and audiences, readers and writers, that are endemic in the late eighteenth century.¹ My studies of audiences began with an examination of the London publishing archives of John Murray II in an effort to find out more about who were Jane Austen’s contemporary readers. She had herself copied out responses by friends, family, and acquaintances to Mansfield Park and Emma,² published by Murray (the second edition of Mansfield ¹ Harrison’s Lady’s Pocket Magazine (1795– ) is rare; I own volumes 2 ( July– December 1795) and 4 ( July–December, 1796). I have therefore reprinted Harrison’s eight-stanza poem ‘The Happy Fire-Side’ in its entirety. The poem appears in the issue for November 1795, numbered X (2: 329–30); three of the tales printed in this issue are ascribed to boys at Westminster School. ² ‘Opinions of Mansfield Park’ and ‘Opinions of Emma’, repr. in R. W. Chapman (ed.), The Works of Jane Austen, vi. Minor Works, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 431–5, 436–9.

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Park, and first edition of Emma, both dated 1816). But the Murray records for the 1810s are preserved only in summary ledgers, omitting daily transactions: it is impossible from what remains to tell who bought books. The earlier more detailed archives of John Murray I led me, however, to search for other eighteenth-century booksellers’ records, ones that might be informative about who purchased fictions. The unearthing of individual historical readers’ actions and even hints of their reading practices has been sustaining, as were some modern finds: for instance, I learned that my brother’s enjoyment of Heyer’s Regency romances was not as remarkable as I had thought. Apparently, Heyer always had a small but strong male following: one British lawyer even left his collection of her novels to his law library.³ It was much easier to start than to finish studying eighteenth-century provincial readers. Completing this book took far longer than I ever anticipated and would have been impossible without much help and encouragement from many quarters. Initial work on the Clay records was funded in 1980 by a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which also awarded a full year Fellowship for University Teachers in 1989; my gratitude is therefore heartfelt though very tardy. I am thankful too for Lehigh University’s generosity over the years, beginning with initial seed money in 1979 from the Mellon Faculty Development program and extending to several research grants from the Lawrence Henry Gipson Institute for Eighteenth-Century Studies and from Lehigh University’s Faculty Development Fund, in addition to extensive support from the Department of English. And I am very grateful also to the following for permission to reprint those small portions of Chapters 1, 3, and 5 that have appeared earlier: the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, for permission to reprint some parts of ‘Women, Class, and the Growth of Magazine Readership in the Provinces’ (1987); AMS Press, for permission to reprint parts of ‘Provincial Subscribers to the Monthly and Critical Reviews and Their Book Purchasing’, co-authored with Ruth Portner (in O. M. Brack Jr. (ed.), Writers, Books, and Trade: An Eighteenth-Century English Miscellany for William B. Todd, 1994); Cambridge University Press, for permission to reprint revised sections of ‘Women Readers: a Case Study’ (in Vivien Jones (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain, ³ Jane Aiken Hodge, The Private World of Georgette Heyer (London: Bodley Head, 1984), 87: ‘Lord Justice Somervell bequeathed his Georgette Heyer collection to the library of the Inner Temple Bench.’

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1700–1800, 2000), and Routledge for permission to reprint most of ‘Solace in Books: Reading Trifling Adventures at Rugby School’ (in Andrea Immel and Michael Witmore (eds.), Childhood and Children’s Books in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800, 2006). I am additionally grateful to the Northamptonshire Record Office, the Gloucestershire Record Office, and the Warwickshire County Record Office for many courtesies and for permission to quote from numerous documents on deposit with them. Like most scholars, I have reckoned all purchases for tables and other calculations as if they were made in the ‘new style’ of the Gregorian calendar (adopted in Great Britain and the colonies in September 1752) in which the new year begins on the first day in January. And in transcribing eighteenth-century printed and manuscript sources, I have standardized the long s as well as words printed in large and small capitals. Without the hospitality of many friends in England, the grants that I received for this project would never have stretched far enough, but I am especially grateful to Virginia Hjelmaa for many essential stays in London, for stimulating, productive conversations both on the subject of the book and off, and for welcome breaks in front of her television. I was also lucky to find Helen Sullivan, landlady extraordinaire in Northampton, and to have access to Shirley Pick’s flat in Bletchley. Archivists and librarians have supplied more indispensable help than I could possibly acknowledge, but I would like to offer particular thanks to Inga Dupont and others at the Pierpont Morgan Library as well as to the uniformly helpful archivists at the Northamptonshire Record Office, my base, as well as those at Gloucester and Warwick. When I did most of my research in the 1980s, the Northamptonshire Record Office was housed in beautiful Delapr´e Abbey, and P. I. King, the former Chief Archivist, J. A. Minchinton, and C. E. Tongue all produced information and brought documents to my attention that made the Clay customers come alive. I should also mention my 1997 Dell Latitude laptop, whose surprising longevity has meant that I can still access mid-1980s software and the thousands of database files created then. Above all, I owe finishing this project to my friends. I deeply regret the loss to me and to the profession of Janice Farrar Thaddeus—among much else, I miss her sharp eye for lapses in argument and style. Mitzi Myers, also a great loss to eighteenth-century studies, gave important advice on how to proceed with the sections on children’s reading. Many colleagues as well as friends have been extremely generous with

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readings, suggestions, and encouragement, particularly Corinne Abate, Antonia Forster, Mary-Jo Haronian, Andrea Immel, Patricia Clare Ingham, William McCarthy, and at Lehigh, Alexander M. Doty, Scott Paul Gordon, and Elizabeth Dolan—I hope that some of them will recognize their ideas, almost their language, at certain points. Though I wish my brother John had lived to make fun of my poaching in his territory (he was a historian), I have been extraordinarily fortunate in finding chosen family over the decades that this project has taken. My thanks to all of them for readings and advice plus support and help of every other kind are conveyed a little by the dedication, but in fact my debts of this sort and gratitude especially to Virginia Hjelmaa, Hazel and Geoffrey Holt, Ruth Perry, and Ruth and Gerald Portner are beyond expression.

Contents Introduction Fiction and the Archives The ‘Rise’ of the Novel, Women Readers, and the Problem of Evidence London Booksellers and their Archives The Booksellers: The Clays and Stevens and their Communities Clay Day Books, their Nature and Problems Day Book and Ledger Evidence and the Market for Fiction

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1. Audiences for Novels: Gendered Reading The Audiences for Novels and Gender Adult Customers of the Clays and Stevens Men, Reviews, and Book Clubs Provincial Women Readers Case Studies of Women Customers Some Conclusions

41 42 47 52 59 60 70

2. Consuming Practices: Canonicity, Novels, and Plays Canonization, Readers, Anonymity, and Female Novelists Canonizing Drama Reading Practices: Multiple and Repeated Readings Reading Practices: Desultory Reading

75 77 92 104 108

3. Schoolboy Readers: John Newbery’s Goody Two-Shoes and Licensed War Rugby School School Culture: Licensed War Reading Children’s Books The Case of Goody Two-Shoes The Episodes of Goody Two-Shoes Making Sense of Goody Two-Shoes

118 122 127 136 139 145 148

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4. Schoolboy Practices: Novels, Children’s Books, Chapbooks, and Magazines Accounts of Schoolboy Reading Little Books—Abridgements in Chapbooks versus Children’s Books Schoolboys Read Novels: Rugby School Secret Novel Reading at Rugby? More Schoolboys Read Even More Novels: Daventry Dissenting Academy Schoolboy Subscribers to Magazines

155 156 161 179 183 189 193

5. Audiences for Magazines and Serialized Publications Men who Read the Lady’s Magazine Concealed Women Subscribers Magazine Subscribers and the Market Growth and Attrition in Magazine Audiences Audiences for Magazines and Novels Case Study: The Novelist’s Magazine Serialized Publications Summary

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Appendices 1. Clays’ Circulating Library Stocks 2. Novels in English Bought and Borrowed, 1744–1807 3. All Children’s Book and Chapbook Titles Bought by Rugby Boys 4. Magazines taken by Clay customers, 1746–1780 5. Adult consumers of Novels and Magazines, 1746–1780 Bibliography Index to Novels, Bought and Borrowed Index to Customers for Novels General Index

245 250 269 278 282 284 297 301 303

Introduction Many scholars have written about eighteenth-century English novels, but no one really knows who read them. This study historicizes provincial reading publics for various forms of fiction—novels, plays, chapbooks, children’s books, and magazines. Archival records of Midland booksellers based in five market towns and serving over 3,300 customers for printed matter between 1744 and 1807 form the basis for new information about who actually bought and borrowed different kinds of fiction in eighteenth-century provincial England. In order to identify these customers, I have familiarized myself with the extended communities that the booksellers served by examining wills, a few surviving letters, printed sources, and many parish records, from window and poor rate taxes and militia lists to births and burials. This book thus offers the first solid demographic information about actual readership in eighteenth-century provincial England, information not only about the class, profession, age, and sex of readers but also about the market of available fiction from which they made their choices—and some speculation about why they made the choices they did. As such, this study contributes to the new interdisciplinary field of book history, which considers all aspects of print culture, from textual production and consumption to social contexts of print, including interpretive communities as well as the influence of books on the emergence of modern consciousness.¹ Book historians thus examine books and reading from many theoretical and disciplinary perspectives for the cultural meanings they create. But as Robert Darnton wrote some time ago, ‘reading remains the most difficult stage to study in the ¹ James Raven provides a good introduction to the field in his review essay ‘New Reading Histories, Print Culture, and the Identification of Change: The Case of Eighteenth-Century England’, Social History 23 (1998), 268–87. Leah Price’s review essay is also valuable: ‘Reading: The State of the Discipline’, in Ezra Greenspan and Jonathan Rose (eds.), Book History 7 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 303–20.

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circuit that books follow’.² Historical readers have generally remained elusive except when approached singly, anecdotally, or in memoirs. Jonathan Rose’s study of British working-class readers through memoirs as well as social surveys, school records, opinion polls, and so forth offers a particularly impressive example of historical recovery.³ But more commonly, the absence of information has left readers to be inferred and constructed from texts themselves by reader-response critics and others.

F I C T I O N A N D T H E A RC H I V E S Although speculation about readers in eighteenth-century England has been rife, in part because literacy, the English novel, and print all seem to have risen measurably in the period (but see J. Paul Hunter’s contrary arguments in the next section), empirical studies of them have been very few. Paul Kaufman’s articles on libraries’ readerships remain the primary exception. Recently, however, a provocative and challenging work on the English, American, and even colonial literary marketplace has appeared: William St Clair’s The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. As the only other book-length empirical study of English readers that focuses on the second half of the eighteenth century (as well as the nineteenth century), it deserves some consideration here. Despite his title, however, St Clair does not attempt to recover historical readers from archives. Instead, he studies publishers’ archives and other sources to determine what poetry and fiction was actually available to English-language readers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in what numbers (and how many editions) and at what prices. This information allows him to draw conclusions about what he calls ‘reading constituencies’. Accomplished at marshalling economic arguments, he contends that readership was supply-driven: as long as publishers exercised perpetual copyright, however improperly (before 1774), or enjoyed lengthy copyright protection (for new works from 1808, but particularly from 1842), editions were deliberately kept small and expensive, restricting audiences. Whenever copyright protection lapsed, prices fell and editions and sales proliferated; for St Clair, ² Robert Darnton, ‘What is the History of Books’, in David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery (eds.), The Book History Reader (London: Routledge, 2002), 17. ³ Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001).

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therefore, readership can only widen after 1774. The publishing history of Robert Southey’s Wat Tyler (1817), Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Queen Mab (1813), and especially Lord Byron’s Don Juan (1819) offers the most compelling evidence for this thesis. All three works were found to be injurious or subversive by the courts in the early nineteenth century; consequently, no copyright protection was afforded to the publishers; and increasingly cheap editions proliferated, in such numbers that, according to St Clair, ‘Don Juan was read by more people in its first twenty years than any previous work of English literature.’⁴ This last statement is characteristic. St Clair often draws broad inferences from his data that may well be accurate even though his inference in this instance depends on equating the production of a cheap book with its being sold and read, a somewhat problematic equation. Less problematic is his conviction that, in the ‘high monopoly period’ between 1710 and 1774, before so-called perpetual copyright was struck down by the House of Lords, the poorest readers had access only to texts that were as much as two hundred years old—except for newspapers and magazines.⁵ That is, because publishers held copyright on all modern texts, poorer readers could afford to purchase just short chapbook versions of older texts, versions that were bought by a few richer readers as well, as my research shows. Afterward, however, St Clair argues more controversially that a ‘brief copyright window’ opened, permitting inexpensive reprints of pre-1774 poets and novelists (and other writers). These reprints established what he calls an ‘old canon’ of cheaply accessible works that prevailed well into the nineteenth century. For him, canon formation is not then a matter of taste, ideology, gatekeepers, gender, or any other explanations that scholars have offered. It is primarily a matter of inexpensive access in print. Established London publishers, according to St Clair, combined before 1774 to keep prices high and even after 1774 continued to issue new books at costs that kept editions small and audiences limited. Pronouncements so sweeping and significant will take book historians in the scholarly community some time to weigh, establish, qualify, or reject. My sense is that qualification will be needed for a number of them, particularly those that describe operations of the eighteenth-century market in England, though the overall argument may well stand. ⁴ William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 333. ⁵ Ibid. 79.

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Wherever my own expertise intersects with St Clair’s, on Jane Austen or on other late eighteenth-century women writers, for example, I frequently find inaccuracies or omissions—not at all surprising in so ambitious and synoptic a book.⁶ They are important, however, when they forestall more nuanced understandings of readership, publishing, and authorship in the period. One instance: St Clair argues that as a novelist Walter Scott was ‘the dominant author of the romantic period…. Even by about 1850, as [St Clair’s] Table 12.4 shows, no novel by any other recent novelist, including Austen, had achieved cumulative sales of 8,000, a number which several Waverley novels reached in the first week.’⁷ Quite true of Austen, though she is known to have had a relatively small audience until the publication of her nephew’s Memoir of Jane Austen in 1870. St Clair’s table 12.4 includes Frances Burney for Camilla (1796) and The Wanderer (1814), but a more interesting choice for inclusion would have been Maria Edgeworth, one of Scott’s forerunners in regional fiction, whose four-volume novel Patronage (1814) came out six months earlier than the three-volume Waverley (1814; £1. 1s. 0d.) and sold 8,000 copies at £1. 8s. 0d. on the day of publication.⁸ The novel was, however, lukewarmly reviewed, and Edgeworth never enjoyed such a success again—but that is the point: clearly there was a sizeable audience for expensive fiction before Scott began to publish, and the question is, what combination of factors permitted him to appropriate that audience at the expense of writers such as Edgeworth?⁹ St Clair does not pose such questions as a rule because he tends to focus on readers’ access, not their agency. ⁶ For instance, St Clair considers that John Murray’s offer to Jane Austen of £450 for the copyrights of Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Emma was ‘far below their value, as she recognised’ (168 n. 52). Actually, study of Murray’s records shows that ‘Murray’s estimate in 1815 of the market value of her copyrights was if anything exaggerated’: because the second edition of Mansfield Park lost money, those copyrights fetched Austen and her family less than £425 altogether, including the sale of all three in 1832 to the publisher Richard Bentley ( Jan Fergus, Jane Austen: A Literary Life (London: Macmillan, 1991), 159). ⁷ St Clair, Reading Nation, 221. ⁸ Quoted by Marilyn Butler, Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 491. ⁹ Even earlier, a large audience for high-priced novels existed in exceptional circumstances: e.g. the first edition of Henry Fielding’s six-volume Tom Jones, 2,000 copies at 18s. bound, sold before publication; another edition of 1,500 copies was printed immediately, a third of 3,000 copies in four volumes was produced in the next month, March 1749, and by September 1749, a further edition of 3,500 copies appeared. See Martin C. Battestin with Ruthe R. Battestin, Henry Fielding: A Life (Routledge: London, 1989), 451–2.

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Disagreements between my own conclusions and St Clair’s often arise because we are looking at different materials: he is studying supply of books primarily through publishers’ archives and trade catalogues, and I am studying demand for books through booksellers’ archives. For example, St Clair states that William Shakespeare’s works were increasingly unaffordable until 1774: ‘as the high monopoly period advanced, the minimum price of access to Shakespeare’s printed works became ever more expensive and readerships ever more limited’.¹⁰ But as Ch. 2 will show, provincial customers before 1774 were able to buy Shakespeare’s plays singly and in collected editions at much cheaper prices than St Clair’s sources document. At appropriate points throughout this study, I will indicate where my findings corroborate St Clair’s and where they differ. In general, however, we agree that a good deal of what has been said about reading audiences and their behaviour is based on very little evidence, often only the statements of contemporaries, uncritically accepted. As an example, received wisdom both now and in the eighteenth century has asserted that, given the relative expensiveness of books, customers were heavily influenced by reviewers’ judgements in what they bought. But Midland booksellers’ records indicate that individuals did not rely much on review journals in choosing books, even though book clubs increasingly seemed to do so.¹¹ St Clair makes a similar point for the nineteenth century: ‘the influence of the reviews appears to have been greatly exaggerated’ (189). Received wisdom has also maintained that new novels were in general not bought: they were too expensive, at about 2s. 6d. or 3s. a volume through most of the second half of the eighteenth century, rising steeply in price during the 1790s. Terry Lovell offers an uncompromising statement of this position: ‘Novels then, as now, are in the main read only once. Novel-readers in the last quarter of the eighteenth century did not wish to be novel owners. A novel was not considered to be an appropriate addition to the private book collection in the bourgeois home.’¹² Consequently, novels were obtained, the story goes, primarily through circulating libraries. And Lovell implies that the novel appealed primarily to ‘bourgeois’ readers. But this study, building on ¹⁰ St Clair, Reading Nation, 155–6. ¹¹ Jan Fergus and Ruth Portner, ‘Provincial Subscribers to the Monthly and Critical Reviews and Their Book Purchasing’, in O. M. Brack Jr. (ed.), Writers, Books, and Trade: An Eighteenth-Century English Miscellany for William B. Todd (New York: AMS, 1994), 157–76. ¹² Terry Lovell, Consuming Fiction (London: Verso, 1987), 50.

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previous work examining a short-lived circulating library and bookshop in Warwick,¹³ documents rereading of some borrowed novels and argues that provincial audiences seem about as likely to buy novels as to borrow them from the small circulating libraries operated by provincial booksellers—though increasingly they bought them through book clubs. And ‘bourgeois’ readers, or those whom the eighteenth century referred to as the ‘middling sort’, by no means composed the primary Midland audience for novels, unless the meaning of ‘bourgeois’ is extended to include landed gentry, clergymen, and elite schoolboys. Then too, it is important to remember that novels, however interesting to literary historians and cultural critics, constitute only one of the forms of fiction available in the eighteenth century, and in the provincial records I have studied, certainly not the most sought after. Children’s books were bought by schoolboys in much greater quantities, and even adults purchased more Newbery children’s books on credit from the bookshop in Warwick, operated by Samuel Clay, than they did novels.¹⁴ Magazines—many of which incorporated fiction—seemed to reach an even wider provincial audience than did children’s books. Scholars have argued for some time that novels and their readers need to be examined in broader contexts, contexts that embrace other available forms, including fictional ones.¹⁵ In such contexts, the often-proclaimed ‘rise’ of the novel looks unimpressive between 1740 and 1780, at least in the provinces. Ian Watt was correct to assert in 1957 that the novel ‘was not, strictly speaking, a popular literary form’.¹⁶ I therefore use the word ‘popular’ very sparingly in this study, particularly in relation to novels. After all, even the most ‘popular’ novel among the provincial customers that I have studied, Henry Brooke’s The Fool of Quality, was borrowed twenty-nine ¹³ Jan Fergus, ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers in Provincial England: The Customers of Samuel Clay’s Circulating Library and Bookshop in Warwick, 1770–72’, PBSA 78 (1984), 155–213. ¹⁴ In less than two years, adult customers of Samuel Clay in Warwick bought or had lettered eight novels on credit but at least thirty Newbery children’s books; see Fergus, ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers’, 204, 208. ¹⁵ See Lennard J. Davis, Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), J. Paul Hunter, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction (New York: Norton, 1990), James Raven, Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England 1750–1800 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), and Kathryn Shevelow, Women and Print Culture (London: Routledge, 1989), among others. ¹⁶ Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), 42.

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times—often by schoolboys—and purchased five times in records of the Clay family of booksellers in Daventry, Rugby, Lutterworth, and Warwick, and those of Timothy Stevens in Cirencester (descriptions of their records follow in a subsequent section). Both sets of archives underline the relative insignificance of novels in provincial print culture: almanacs, school texts, Bibles, common prayer books, divinity, sermons, history, and belles lettres were all much more popular among the Clays’ and Stevens’s adult customers. Although their records extend over more than sixty years altogether (1744–1807, with gaps), and although these booksellers served well over 3,300 customers for print purchased on credit during this time, the novel most frequently bought, Don Quixote in various translations, achieved just twenty-five sales (see App. 2). What we know of the production of novels from printers’ ledgers and other evidence reflects this limited audience. With important exceptions, novels were printed in small editions (750 or even 500) and seldom reprinted.¹⁷ By contrast, runs of the Monthly Review reached ‘3000 in 1768 and 3500 in 1776’,¹⁸ and John Newbery’s son said of his published children’s books that ‘the call for them was immense, an edition of many thousands being sometimes exhausted during the Christmas holidays’.¹⁹ A far more pervasive assumption about the audience for prose fiction in the eighteenth century is that readers were primarily women. Indeed, from the eighteenth century down to our own time, we can trace persistent cultural investments in the gendering of audiences, with sex and gender usually being conflated, so that male/man equals masculine and female/woman equals feminine. Ideas that what men read and what women read differ in significant ways, that there are masculine and feminine texts, are difficult to challenge successfully. They extend now beyond reading to certainties that different amusements are properly marketed to men and women, from ‘chick flicks’ to the Super Bowl ¹⁷ See James Raven, ‘Historical Introduction: The Novel Comes of Age’, in James Raven and Antonia Forster (eds.), with Rainer Sch¨owerling, The English Novel 1770–1779: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles (London: Oxford University Press, 2000), i. 93. ¹⁸ Antonia Forster, ‘Review Journals and the Reading Public’, in Isabel Rivers (ed.), Books and Their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England: New Essays (London: Leicester University Press, 2001), 178. Forster draws upon Lewis M. Knapp’s ‘Griffiths’s ‘‘Monthly Review’’ as printed by Strahan’, Notes and Queries ns 5 (1958), 216–17; Knapp’s source is BL Add. MSS 48800. ¹⁹ Charles Welsh, A Bookseller of the Last Century (1885), rpt. in part in John Rowe Townsend (ed.), John Newbery and His Books: Trade and Plumb-Cake for Ever, Huzza! (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1994), 50.

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or World Cup. That is, we are very familiar and comfortable with the notion that entertainment is gendered. Perhaps too much so. When reading, men and women may cross culturally defined gender lines more often than we suppose. But whether or not they do, we seem very ready to extend our own strongly gendered notions to earlier periods. When I presented a paper at a scholarly conference analysing Rugby schoolboys’ interest in John Newbery’s children’s book Goody Two-Shoes, whose protagonist is a little girl, some in the audience insisted that the boys were really attracted to the story of Goody’s brother even though he disappears at the start of the story and reappears only for two pages near the end, when the text promises a (never published) separate tale of his adventures. Comparable investments persist even in the important work of critics engaged in dismantling the cultural work that notions of gender perform. For instance, Kate Ferguson Ellis’s and Toni O’Shaughnessy Bowers’s studies of the work of gothic and amatory fiction try to account for what appealed to women readers in these texts despite what often seems to be repressive ideological content. We need answers to such questions and are fortunate that a number of scholars are raising them. But other questions remain to be asked and are elided when revisionist readings of eighteenth-century writing by women assume, as do Ellis and Bowers among many others, that these works centred on women are primarily or almost exclusively read by women. For Ellis, the gothic surprisingly resists the ‘unequal power relations’ of the home despite being ‘a genre of popular fiction written, in the main, by women and for women’,²⁰ and for Bowers, the texts of Aphra Behn, Delariviere Manley, and Eliza Haywood that she studies, though ‘written by and for women’, betray a ‘masculinist orientation’.²¹ Inevitably, assumptions that certain genres are written ‘by and for women’ not only limit the sorts of questions that are asked about such texts but also implicitly endorse simple ideas of readerly pleasures and sympathies: women enjoy female texts, men enjoy male; women identify themselves with female protagonists, men with male. If we drop the phrase ‘by and for women’, if we see reading of fiction in the last half of the eighteenth century as more complicated, more ²⁰ Kate Ferguson Ellis, The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Ideology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), p. xvi. ²¹ Toni O’Shaughnessy Bowers, ‘Sex, Lies, and Invisibility: Amatory Fiction from the Restoration to Mid-Century’, in John Richetti (ed.), The Columbia History of the British Novel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 57.

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fluid, less gender-bound, as the information in Ch. 1 and elsewhere about male readers suggests that we should, then we can pose some more interesting questions about gender and reading. We can ask, what do men learn about ‘unequal power relations’ and other matters by reading texts identified with women, what subject positions can they adopt, and above all, what do they gain in this period by crossing gender boundaries in their reading while remaining (in their own time as well as ours) largely invisible as readers? Margaret Doody has suggested in The True Story of the Novel that the notion of the woman reader became a ‘cultural defense’ for men in the early modern period: moralists found it reassuring to present novels as read by women, thus containing the threats novels posed. For her, the ‘feminization’ of the novel in France and England was strategic: to consider it officially unimportant ‘permitted the Novel to continue and novels to be bought’.²² I have speculated further on the issue of men’s invisibility as readers at the end of Ch. 1. My own earlier work on provincial readers concentrated on the quite small female audience that I could identify as consuming various fictions.²³ In this more comprehensive study, I can place women’s behaviour in context by comparing it to that of the far more numerous male consumers, thus addressing—apart from the larger questions above—simpler ones such as, how extensive was the male provincial audience for fictions of various kinds? Did men and women prefer anonymous fictions or those coded male or female? And what forms of fiction did they prefer?

T H E ‘ R I S E ’ O F T H E N OV E L , WO M E N R E A D E R S , A N D T H E P RO B L E M O F EV I D E N C E The classic story of the ‘rise’ of the novel is Ian Watt’s: for him, the novel’s development from Defoe to Richardson and Fielding reflects social and intellectual change. Watt locates a philosophic and economic individualism in the novel that he associates with the middle class and traces back to Locke; these features dictate what he sees as the novel’s characteristic technique, ‘formal realism’. Watt’s views have set the terms for debate on fiction ever since The Rise of the Novel was issued in 1957. ²² Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 280, 279. ²³ See ‘Women Readers: A Case Study’, in Vivien Jones (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain, 1700–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 155–76.

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Since then, feminist critics have been successful in drawing attention to the works of women novelists, whose contributions to and interventions in the genre are excluded from Watt’s story.²⁴ Cultural critics have further enlarged the field of discussion, pointing out that novels were read against other forms that often were more widely popular, such as chapbooks or periodical essays or journalism.²⁵ Some critics have even reversed Watt’s premiss, arguing—as does John Bender—that the novel’s development does not reflect social change; instead it enables change.²⁶ More recently, Ruth Perry’s compelling Novel Relations opens new ground by contending that the late eighteenth-century novel was compensatory for readers who mourned changing kin relations that particularly diminished women’s power within the family.²⁷ The new book history has led critics, using various theoretical perspectives, to draw upon ‘contextual (not purely literary) evidence’ as Robert D. Hume has enjoined,²⁸ in order to investigate the novel’s history in relation to market pressures. William B. Warner and George Justice explore the emergence of the novel or ‘literature’ as a cultural category in the period. Warner locates the commercially successful amatory fiction of Aphra Behn, Delariviere Manley, and Eliza Haywood on a continuum with the more ‘elevated’ work of Daniel Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, who adapted these women’s plots of seduction and rape to a more conservative and respectable mainstream tradition for the novel.²⁹ For Justice, tensions between the ‘disinterested public ²⁴ Since Jane Spencer’s explicit answer to Watt, The Rise of the Woman Novelist (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), many more feminist arguments have appeared; among the more sophisticated is Catherine Gallagher’s Nobody’s Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670–1820 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). ²⁵ See especially Lennard Davis, Factual Fictions, and J. Paul Hunter, Before Novels. ²⁶ John Bender, Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in Eighteenth-Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Nancy Armstrong argues in Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1987) that eighteenth-century novels and conduct books allowed the development of ‘a modern, gendered form of subjectivity…before it provided the semiotic of ninteenth century [sic] poetry and psychological theory’ (14), or in her most well-remembered formulation, ‘the modern individual was first and foremost a woman’ (8). She adds, ‘the domestic novel antedated—was indeed necessarily antecedent to—the way of life it represented’ (9). ²⁷ Ruth Perry, Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). ²⁸ Robert D. Hume, ‘Texts Within Contexts: Notes Toward a Historical Method’, PQ 71 (1992), 82. ²⁹ William B. Warner, Licensing Entertainment: The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain, 1684–1750 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

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sphere and the literary marketplace’ give rise to ‘Novel culture [which] provides the structure for a lasting and meaningful ‘‘counter public sphere’’ ’.³⁰ Dierdre Lynch traces the complex history of ‘character’ in the eighteenth-century novel, arguing that by the end of the century, the ‘imaginative resources’ offered by so-called ‘round’ characters provided readers with ways to construct an interior self, ‘to make themselves into individuals’: ‘The enterprise of ‘‘appreciating’’ the inner lives’ of characters in novels ‘can be ranged alongside other cognate technologies of the self ’ including response to landscape as well as to shopping.³¹ But because these and other critics continue to challenge Watt, his account circulates still. Paul Hunter documents ways in which newer evidence has qualified Watt’s influential assumptions about class, literacy, and gender among the audience for the novel. This evidence, according to Hunter, undermines the ‘triple rise’ thesis popularized by Watt, whereby the rise of the middle class led to the rise of the reading public, which in turn led to the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century. Pointing out that the real acceleration in literacy occurred ‘early on in the seventeenth century, at least three generations before the novel began in any meaningful sense to emerge’, Hunter concludes that ‘ ‘‘new’’ readers were a necessary but not sufficient condition for the emergence of the English novel’.³² But who were these new readers? The accepted view has been that they belonged to a class known in the eighteenth century as the ‘middling sort’, somewhat below traditional readers, the gentry and professionals.³³ Further, some of these new readers were women; Jacqueline Pearson alludes to arguments ‘that by the end of the eighteenth century the majority of reading audiences were female’.³⁴ Such arguments rely to some extent on studies that show literacy increasing in women (though not as markedly as in men). Hunter summarizes, ‘In the late eighteenth century, female literacy is typically about two thirds of male literacy; in the 1750s, for example, when ³⁰ George Justice, The Manufacturers of Literature: Writing and the Literary Marketplace in Eighteenth-Century England (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002), 19. ³¹ Deirdre Shauna Lynch, The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 126. ³² Hunter, Before Novels, 66, 66–7, 68. ³³ See Margaret R. Hunt’s The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) for a revaluation of what we generally term ‘middle class’ behaviour and values in the period. ³⁴ Jacqueline Pearson, Women’s Reading in Britain, 1750–1835: A Dangerous Recreation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. ix.

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Introduction

male literacy was around 60 per cent, female literacy was about 40 per cent.’³⁵ Although literacy does not necessarily imply reading, still less reading novels, scholars and eighteenth-century critics have persisted in characterizing the audience for fiction as female. Their evidence for this identification is largely anecdotal or circular. Richard D. Altick asserted in 1957 that after the publication of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, ‘as the mounting flood of sentimental novels attests, women played an important part in the history of the English reading audience’.³⁶ Here the evidence for female readership lies simply in the increasing production of sentimental novels. Watt’s account of female reading is more subtle, suggesting that women ‘certainly’ read not merely novels but ‘religious literature’, yet he also echoes the most severe eighteenthcentury critics of women and novels by concluding that ‘the dominance of women readers in the public for the novel is connected with the characteristic kind of weakness and unreality to which the form is liable’. Even recent scholars such as Hunter, assembling nuanced arguments about the novel’s cultural contexts, can assert that ‘None dare call the place women occupy in novels dominant, but women quickly begin to dominate the writing as well as the reading of novels.’³⁷ Bibliographers have now established that women did not dominate the writing of novels in the eighteenth century,³⁸ and again, evidence for the notion that women ‘dominated’ the fiction-reading public is taken primarily from the accusations of eighteenth-century reviewers and moralists whose laments are well documented.³⁹ Several important empirical studies in the 1960s by Paul Kaufman countered assumptions that women were the major readers in circulating libraries and that they typically read fiction. Kaufman used the account books of James Marshall’s circulating library in Bath to show that ‘feminine patrons constituted less than thirty per cent’ and that ‘the ³⁵ Hunter, Before Novels, 72. Comparable figures are offered by Vivien Jones in her ‘Introduction’ to Women and Literature, 3. ³⁶ Richard D. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 45. Although Altick focuses on the nineteenth century, his account of the 1700s in chs. 2 and 3 is still valuable. ³⁷ Watt, Rise, 151, 299; Hunter, Before Novels, 272. ³⁸ Raven and Forster document that women produced about a third of novels published in the late eighteenth century (English Novel); see Ch. 1 in this volume. ³⁹ For classic accounts of these laments, see John Tinnon Taylor, Early Opposition to the English Novel (New York: King’s Crown, 1943) and J. M. S. Tompkins, The Popular Novel in England, 1770–1800 (1932; London: Methuen, 1969); see also F. W. Gallaway, ‘The Conservative Attitude Towards Fiction, 1770–1830’, PMLA 55 (1940), 1041–59.

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large majority of borrowers are male’.⁴⁰ Additionally, Kaufman analysed the holdings of eighteenth-century circulating libraries whose catalogues have survived, concluding that fiction constituted a relatively small proportion of the larger firms’ holdings, though smaller operations did concentrate on novels.⁴¹ Recent studies of catalogues of circulating libraries from the Romantic period, however, reinscribe the centrality of fiction and, to some extent, a largely female audience for it. Focusing on libraries from 1780 to1830, Christopher Skelton-Foord reiterates one aspect of Kaufman’s work, that in the ‘majority’ of ‘small to medium sized libraries…the bookstock held was chiefly fiction’.⁴² And Lee Erickson and Edward Jacobs assume or emphasize a primarily female clientele.⁴³ Again, these conclusions about gendered reading practices lack evidence about actual consumers. Interest in uncovering reading practices—a feature of new book history—has become widespread in studies of print culture in the eighteenth century.⁴⁴ These practices are elusive, certainly. Nonetheless, some studies of eighteenth-century reading habits and discourses, extracted from contemporary documents (including but not limited to novels), offer nuanced accounts of female readers in the eighteenth century. Harriet Guest has subtly analysed bluestocking discourse as ambiguous, allowing both a display and an erasure of gender difference in women’s self-presentations as writers, readers, and participants in sociable commerce.⁴⁵ In Women’s Reading in Britain, 1750–1835, Jacqueline Pearson ⁴⁰ ‘In Defense of Fair Readers’, Review of English Literature 8 (1967), 69, 70. This information appears also in Kaufman’s synoptic ‘The Community Library: A Chapter in English Social History’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society ns 57:7 (1967), 1–65, as well as in his other publications. ⁴¹ Kaufman, ‘The Community Library’, 14–16. Pointing out that stocks reveal nothing about circulation, Kaufman argues that although many libraries’ stocks of fiction were less than 20% of their holdings, they may well have circulated new fiction more vigorously than they did other works. ⁴² Christopher Skelton-Foord, ‘Economics, Expertise, Enterprise and the Literary Scene: The Commercial Management Ethos in British Circulating Libraries, 1780–1830’, in E. J. Clery, Caroline Franklin, and Peter Garside (eds.), Authorship, Commerce and the Public: Scenes of Writing, 1750–1830 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 136. ⁴³ Lee Erickson assumes female readership in ‘The Economy of Novel Reading: Jane Austen and the Circulating Library’, SEL 30 (1990), 578, and Edward Jacobs emphasizes female portraits in illustrations of circulating library customers, ‘Buying into Classes: The Practice of Book Selection in Eighteenth-Century Britain’, ECS 33 (1999), 57–8. ⁴⁴ See Raven, ‘New Reading Histories’, 269. ⁴⁵ Harriet Guest, ‘A Double Lustre: Femininity and Sociable Commerce, 1730–60’, ECS 23 (1990), 479–501.

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Introduction

is ready to imagine women readers who both resist and are indoctrinated by texts and, more unusually, concludes that ‘the evidence suggests that in real life male and female reading practices were less different than some commentators have supposed’.⁴⁶ But the evidence that Pearson adduces tends to be literary, drawn from letters, anecdotes, and novels, and she alternates between implied and actual readers. Most studies of reading in the period are less empirical. They resemble Caroline Gonda’s, which depends on textual analysis of certain novels to infer how women would have been socialized by them. And as the blurb for Gonda’s book notes, such studies assume that ‘heroine-centered novels [are] aimed at a predominantly female readership’.⁴⁷ Among the most desirable empirical sources for attempts to recover actual eighteenth-century reading practices are the borrowing records of commercial circulating libraries, but these eluded even Kaufman, who thoroughly studied borrowings from proprietary, subscription, and cathedral libraries in England and Scotland. In subscription libraries such as the Sheffield Book Society, members jointly owned the book stock.⁴⁸ The books of proprietary libraries such as the Bristol Library belonged to the owners, not the members.⁴⁹ Both subscription and proprietary libraries, however, charged substantial fees to customers—often a guinea a year—in order to buy new books and to fund services. Cathedral libraries charged no fees but restricted access and held works of predominantly ecclesiastical interest. Kaufman concluded, in fact, that ‘no accounts…and no circulation records’ had survived for libraries that might have made books available to poorer readers, by lending books for a few pence a volume.⁵⁰ Nonetheless, as I have indicated, such records do exist among the voluminous bookselling records of the Clays of Daventry, Rugby, Lutterworth, and Warwick, on deposit in the Northamptonshire Record Office as part of the Daventry Collection, and recommended to students of literacy decades ago by R. M. Wiles.⁵¹ ⁴⁶ Pearson, Women’s Reading, 18, 19, 10. ⁴⁷ Caroline Gonda, Reading Daughters’ Fictions 1709–1834: Novels and Society from Manley to Edgeworth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. i. ⁴⁸ Kaufman, ‘The Community Library’, 57–8. ⁴⁹ See Paul Kaufman, Borrowings from the Bristol Library, a Unique Record of Reading Vogues, 1773–1784 (Charlottesville: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1960). ⁵⁰ Kaufman, ‘The Community Library’, 14. ⁵¹ R. M. Wiles mentions the collections and John Clay’s records in Freshest Advices: Early Provincial Newspapers in England (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1965), 127–8, 136, and elsewhere.

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The Clay records can be supplemented by the ledgers of Timothy Stevens of Cirencester, 1780–1807, which also include some information about customers’ borrowing from a somewhat larger circulating library than any operated by the Clays.⁵² These rather small libraries seem to have been unrivalled locally: no large circulating libraries were situated close to Daventry and Cirencester at the appropriate times; local customers were likely to resort to the Clays’ and Stevens’s collections.⁵³ Thus, four Clay ledgers in addition to eighteen day books and four Stevens ledgers preserve unique information about the provincial market for various forms of fiction between 1744 and 1807—information about borrowing as well as sales of novels and plays (and in the Clay records, sales of magazines, children’s books, and chapbooks).⁵⁴ Taken together, the Clay and Stevens records offer no evidence for a largely female reading public for fiction in the provinces; in fact, they demonstrate a primarily male audience.

LO N D O N B O O K S E L L E R S A N D T H E I R A RC H I V E S Admittedly, the Clays and Stevens served customers in the Midlands, not the larger London market. The only other extant English bookselling records before 1800 do represent London-based businesses. They include a ledger of Robert Gosling, 1730–40,⁵⁵ five ledgers of John Murray, ⁵² See lists of Clay and Stevens archives, deposited in the Northamptonshire Record Office (NRO) and the Gloucester Record Office (GRO) in the bibliography. When appropriate, call numbers for these sources will be cited, including date or page number; Stevens’s four ledgers are cited as GRO A–D plus page number. ⁵³ Kaufman, Appendix to ‘The Community Library’, 50–3. ⁵⁴ Although in his study of the Clay shop, John Feather concluded that provincial booksellers such as Clay made their money primarily by sales of stationery, not printed matter, he misread the records. See his book, The Provincial Book Trade in EighteenthCentury England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 81. He draws there on his research for ‘John Clay of Daventry: The Business of an Eighteenth-Century Stationer’, Studies in Bibliography 37 (1984), 198–209. If Feather were right, then the Clays’ records could tell us little of the provincial market for fiction. But Feather misinterpreted the one day book that he sampled and thereby greatly underestimated the Clays’ sales of books and other print. See Jan Fergus and Ruth Portner, ‘Provincial Bookselling in Eighteenth-Century England: The Case of John Clay Reconsidered’, Studies in Bibliography 40 (1987), 147–63. ⁵⁵ Bodleian MS Eng Misc. C296, Gentleman’s Ledger B, 1730–1740 of Robert Gosling, Bookseller (located in Fleet Street).

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Introduction

1771–1806,⁵⁶ and three that belonged to the partnership of Thomas Hookham and James Carpenter, 1791–8.⁵⁷ While important, these ledgers are less informative about customers’ reading practices than the Clay day books or even than Stevens’s four surviving folio ledgers. First, they include no indication of book borrowings.⁵⁸ Second, purchases are not fully recoverable. Often the London booksellers’ ledgers record not specific purchases but a price for ‘Sundries’, lumping together a whole day’s buying for any particular customer. Without surviving day books that indicate all credit transactions, it is impossible to know what items were actually bought. (The Clay and Stevens ledger books seldom resort to ‘Sundries’.) Finally, the Gosling and Murray ledgers do not identify customers well, omitting indications of occupation, parish of residence, or street address. Failing such aids, customers and their purchases become impossible to place in context. For instance, Gosling operated at the ‘Mitre and Crown against St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street’, as noted in the entry for his ledger in the Bodleian catalogue. The location was adjacent to the legal centre of London, and most of his customers were men who ordered law books and reports of various kinds. The exceptions are remarkable—as when a Mrs Fielding in 1733 bought six professional medical books, including ‘Turner’s Surgery’ in two volumes for ten shillings, as well as the Turkish Spy in eight volumes for eighteen shillings. But who was she? The ledgers reveal her to be the only woman among Gosling’s approximately ten female customers who paid for something classifiable as a novel.⁵⁹ But without more information, to distinguish Mrs Fielding as well as most of the other customers securely ⁵⁶ These eighteenth-century ledgers were until the recent sale of the firm housed among the Murray Archives at 50 Albemarle Street—its premises for nearly two centuries. They are now deposited in the National Library of Scotland. ⁵⁷ Ledgers of Hookham and Carpenter’s bookselling business, 1791–8, are deposited in The National Archives, PRO C104/75/1–3; they survive among Chancery documents because a lawsuit followed the partnership’s dissolution in 1798. I am very grateful to Ruthe Battestin, whose advice allowed me to discover these records for a 1987 article on Mary Robinson, co-authored with Janice Thaddeus. ⁵⁸ The Hookham and Carpenter ledgers do note a few borrowings by accident among the Hookham Circulating Library’s purchases: a copy of Ann Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest was bought for the Library but sent directly to Mr Keith Stuart, presumably a subscriber who requested it, on 30 May 1792 (C104/75/F 730). Unfortunately, the Hookham Circulating Library was a separate concern from the Hookham and Carpenter bookshop, and the former’s records do not survive. I have found no evidence in the ledgers that Gosling or Murray circulated books. ⁵⁹ Mrs Fielding: 51v . Among Gosling’s male clients were Legh [sic] Master, Esq., one of his best customers for plays and other fictional works, who bought Daniel Defoe’s

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from the mass of Londoners is impossible. Customers in the later Murray ledgers are even more difficult to identify since the entries for the 1770s include many from Edinburgh and its environs, perhaps even exclusively so, though John Murray the elder was established in London from 1768. Generally, his customers were professional men who ordered legal and medical works—only rarely works of fiction; and like Gosling, Murray was originally located ‘over against St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street’.⁶⁰ The ledgers of Thomas Hookham and James Carpenter, who operated a bookshop on Old and New Bond Street, are more useful for students of reading practices than those of Gosling or Murray despite their tendency to list ‘Sundries’ for some of their recorded transactions. They almost invariably indicate customers’ addresses, and their clientele was drawn from the aristocracy and the gentry located in the fashionable West End of London. Thus, a peerage and baronetage can help to identify many customers, and they did constitute a community of sorts. After all, rather than books, the most frequent purchases from the firm were visiting tickets, signs of mutual recognition that obviated the need for these clients actually to converse with one another: leaving a card substituted for a visit. Nearly a thousand customers for print (and about two hundred suppliers of print, printing services, visiting cards, and the like) are recorded in folio Ledgers F and G. These highly privileged consumers behaved somewhat differently from those of Gosling and Murray in London and the Clays and Stevens in the Midlands. First, they were a good deal more likely to buy novels: more than a quarter did so, compared to negligible Gosling and Murray purchasers, some 5.6 per cent of the Clays’ adult customers for print and some 14 per cent of Stevens’s (see Table 1.1.2 for numbers of provincial purchasers). One reason for increased purchases, apart from wealth, might be convenience: a Hookham and Carpenter publication, for instance, Ann Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest (1791), was often bought. Unlike the ratio of provincial consumers, Hookham and Carpenter’s female customers Moll Flanders for 1s. 6d. in 1737 (possibly abridged; 81v ), and William Bunbury, Esq., who ordered a six-volume ‘Collection of Novels’ (perhaps Samuel Croxall’s, 1720–9) and Madame de Gomez’s La Belle Assembl´ee, translated by Eliza Haywood, along with works of history and Acts in George II (74v ). ⁶⁰ Ian Maxted, The London Book Trades 1775–1800: A Preliminary Checklist of Members (Folkestone: Dawson, 1977), entry for John Murray I.

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outnumber males as purchasers of novels by about three to two (166 women, 109 men).⁶¹ Hookham and Carpenter’s novel buyers were disproportionately aristocratic: although they constituted under 22 per cent of the firm’s at least 984 customers in these ledgers, aristocrats represented 35 per cent of those who bought novels, and they tended to buy mostly new ones rather than classics.⁶² A number of them obtained not just one or two novels, as was typical among provincial consumers, but many, particularly aristocratic women.⁶³ The famously extravagant Duchess of Devonshire, one of twelve female aristocrats to obtain many works of fiction, bought thirty new novels in about four and a half years. Aristocratic men could also be eager buyers, but they were fewer. The Hon. Keppel Craven, who between the ages of 14 and 17 bought twelve new novels, was one of just three—the most voluminous purchaser being the Duke of York.⁶⁴ Only the prosperous clergyman’s wife Catherine Huddesford among provincial customers (see Ch. 1) resembles these aristocrats in ordering many new novels—and it should be remembered that, unlike her, Hookham and Carpenter’s customers would have had other convenient sources of books in London’s many other bookshops and may well have obtained far more print from them. The available novels in Hookham’s circulating library, separate from the bookselling firm (and whose records have not survived), might also have seduced the Hookham and ⁶¹ Hookham and Carpenter often assigned separate ledger pages to their affluent married clients. When a married couple’s buying has been mingled in one account, however, I have classified as female purchasers those women noted as buying one or more novels on their husbands’ accounts. On mingled accounts, only if a novel is specifically assigned to a male purchaser do I count that customer among male buyers of novels; the number of female purchasers may thus be slightly overstated, but at least numbers for men are not inflated. About forty-nine records are so mingled, and in twenty-three of them novels are bought and assigned to female purchasers. ⁶² Total aristocrats in the ledgers come to 214. Male aristocratic buyers of novels, from the Duke of York down, equal 28; gentry and other men, 81. The records include some 68 female aristocratic novel buyers, headed by Queen Charlotte, plus 98 baronets’ and knight’s wives and other women. ⁶³ For an analysis of purchases of novels by Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, and Ann Radcliffe among Hookham’s aristocratic women customers, see Rita J. Kurtz and Jennifer L. Womer, ‘The Novel as Political Marker: Women Writers and their Female Audiences in the Hookham and Carpenter Archives, 1791–1798’, Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text online journal, issue 13 (2004), . ⁶⁴ See PRO C104/75/1/240, 528, 622; C104/75/2/189, 279. Among non-aristocrats, two of eighty-one men and eight of ninety-eight women also bought many new novels, not just two or three—some of which were quite dated.

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Carpenter clientele away from purchasing novels—as could the stock of other London circulating libraries. Nevertheless, Lady Tyrconnel and the Duke of York bought novels frequently from the firm and were also noted as subscribing to Hookham’s circulating library. But despite such major differences in access and affluence between customers of provincial shops and those of Hookham and Carpenter, some commonality exists. Both in the town and in the provinces, women are disproportionately likely to buy novels. A woman who enters a shop in either locale is much more likely to buy a novel than a man is—though in the provinces less likely to enter in the first place. I suspect that this disproportion was frequent enough to lend credibility to the culturally accepted idea that women were the major consumers of fiction—an idea that the behaviour of Hookham and Carpenter customers in the 1790s actually bears out. And to that extent, these ledgers offer evidence for the major clich´e about audiences in the period. But even among this clientele, many men buy novels, sometimes in quantity. And as do the Clay and Stevens records, in which professionals and the gentry are the major consumers of novels, the Hookham and Carpenter ledgers undermine another received idea, that the novel appealed largely to the ‘middle classes’. Again, no evidence from any surviving eighteenth-century bookselling records supports that notion, though as Ch. 5 will demonstrate, the provincial middling sort did acquire much fiction in magazines. All of the London ledgers, then, represent fairly homogeneous clienteles, primarily professional men (Gosling, Murray) and the gentry and aristocracy (Hookham and Carpenter). London was the centre of the book trade in England throughout the eighteenth century and had over 10 per cent of the population in 1801. But historians who study the provinces make clear that, despite the centrality of London in every sense, provincial towns became increasingly important in the economic, social, and cultural life of eighteenth-century England.⁶⁵ The reading habits of those who lived outside London arguably offer a more significant indication of the popularity and dissemination of all printed matter than can a study of reading in the metropolis simply because more people lived and worked in the provinces. And the accidents of ⁶⁵ From Penelope Corfield’s The Impact of English Towns, 1700–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982) to more recent studies by Peter Borsay (The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1770 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989) ) and Carl Estabrook (Urbane and Rustic England: Cultural Ties and Social Spheres in the Provinces, 1660–1780 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998) ), the importance of provincial life and culture have been emphasized.

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document survival mean that only in the provincial Clay records can any marginal groups’ consumption of print be studied. That is, because the Clay records are largely preserved in day books, by their nature much more informative than ledgers, they include occasional orders and even purchases by labourers and servants, thus allowing recovery of a wide spectrum of readers. The Stevens ledgers, though slightly more discursive than those of the London firms, seldom offer glimpses into the lives and interests of customers below the middling sort. For example, a Mr Atkins ‘at Earl Bathurst’—an employee of some kind—had bound ‘several Books for Servants’ for 10s. on 24 February 1792, possibly for distribution to them, but neither the books nor the servants are specified.⁶⁶ Although the Stevens records of provincial readers usefully supplement those of the Clays, particularly on the audience for novels, and although they generally confirm what the Clay records reveal, they are less informative for most purposes in this study. Furthermore, the Clay records uniquely extend to decades of great interest for the development of audiences for fiction in the eighteenth century: from the 1740s through the 1770s, with best coverage of the latter decade. J. A. Downie, looking at sustained spurts in the production of novels from the 1740s and then the 1770s, rejects the notion that the novel took shape early in the century, arguing that ‘Towards the end of the eighteenth century, in other words, the novel was still in the process of being made.’⁶⁷ A number of scholars believe as Downie does that the 1770s in particular—before the hugely expanded production of novels in the 1780s and 1790s—are crucial in accomplishing ‘the cultural construction of the novel, as a recognizable mode of writing’.⁶⁸ The Clays’ main bookshop was located in Daventry between 1742 and 1781, about seventy-two miles from London by roads then extant. At various times during that period, John Clay and, after him, his son Thomas Clay operated shops in Rugby (a little over ten miles from Daventry), and Lutterworth (some eight miles further on). Another son, Samuel Clay, also ran a short-lived bookshop in Warwick. These towns were merely the centres of the Clays’ bookselling activities, however; sales were made to customers who resided as far as ten or fifteen miles away from the nearest shops. As a result, the Clay customers for various kinds ⁶⁶ GRO B/288. ⁶⁷ J. A. Downie, ‘The Making of the English Novel’, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 9 (1997), 264. ⁶⁸ Deirdre Lynch, The Economy of Character, 7.

Introduction

21

of print are drawn from a fairly large area in the Midlands—an ellipse about forty miles long and as much as thirty miles broad, covering parts of the three counties of Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, and Warwickshire. The number of people living in this area while the Clays served it cannot easily be estimated. Daventry itself had a population of 2,582 in the 1801 census, Rugby 1,487, and Lutterworth 1,652.⁶⁹ The population of Cirencester was a good deal larger, 4,130 in 1801, and Stevens, like the Clays, drew customers from a wide area, having a radius of about ten miles.⁷⁰

T H E B O O K S E L L E R S : T H E C L AY S A N D S T EV E N S AND THEIR COMMUNITIES All booksellers’ shops in the latter half of the eighteenth century sold a variety of wares. When he opened his Daventry shop, John Clay thus advertised his stock: Bookseller and Stationer, in Daventry (And every Saturday at his Shop in Rugby) Sells all Manner of Books and Stationary [sic] Ware, (of the best Sort, and at the most reasonable Rates) as Paper-Hangings for Rooms, Pens, Ink, Harbin’s Shining Ink and Powder, Cards, Wax, Wafers, and all Sorts of Writing and other Paper, gilt and plain, with all Sorts of Stamp’d Paper and Parchment, &c. Also Dr. Daffey’s true and genuine Elixir, Dr. Radcliffe’s Elixir; Dr. Bateman’s Pectoral Drops, publish’d by virtue of the King’s Patent; Bateman’s Spirits of Scurvy-Grass, Golden and Plain; Stoughton’s Elixir, Godfrey’s Cordial, Queen of Hungary’s Water, and Smith’s Ague Tincture. Books neatly and expeditiously bound in all manner of Binding, gilt and letter’d, if desired. All Orders will readily and punctually be observ’d and dispatch’d, and gratefully acknowledg’d. (Northampton Mercury, 31 January 1742/3).

Although booksellers did sell many patent medicines, on the whole the Clays’ income and that of Stevens depended on their sales of printed matter.⁷¹ In 1759 John Clay lent what was probably a manuscript ⁶⁹ See Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons, Comparative Account of the Population of Great Britain in the Years 1801, 1811, 1821, and 1831 …Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 19 October 1831 ([London,] 1831). ⁷⁰ William Page (ed.), Victoria History of the County of Gloucestershire (London: A. Constable, 1907– ), ii. 187. ⁷¹ See Fergus and Portner, ‘Provincial Bookselling’, passim. For some more information than offered here about the Clay family, see Fergus, ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers’,

22

Introduction

catalogue of his stock to selected customers.⁷² He and later his son Thomas kept the Daventry shop open six days a week and seem to have sent weekly orders to various dealers in London. They were able to distribute copies of magazines published in London a day after they appeared and seldom had trouble filling their customers’ orders for print; Stevens’s efficiency was comparable. Provincial booksellers like the Clays and Stevens had close ties with the communities that they served. They were members of the established church and held parish and town appointments. John Clay, born in Derby on 14 February 1713, the son of a maltster, was at 16 apprenticed to John Smith, a Daventry bookseller, whose business he assumed after Smith’s death in 1742. Clay was a burgess of Daventry and also a bailiff (equivalent of mayor) and magistrate.⁷³ He and his wife were able to raise and educate the nine children that survived out of thirteen, establishing their four sons in several trades in London and the Midlands by the early 1770s.⁷⁴ John Clay prospered well enough to be able also to lend small and large sums of money to friends and customers as noted in his day books, including £353 to his brother-inlaw Charles Watkins, a successful draper in Daventry.⁷⁵ At John’s death the Northampton Mercury printed, instead of the usual brief line, an echo of the well-known epitaph on John Gay: Last Monday, died, at Daventry, in this County, Mr. John Clay, Bookseller; a man universal[l]y and deservedly regretted by all who knew him: Of whom the Worthy and the Good will say, Striking their pensive Bosoms—Here lies clay! (20 November 1775)

Many entries in the day books show that John Clay employed several of his sons and daughters in the shop as they were growing up. His daughters were educated locally. He noted that ‘Alicia Went to Mrs . Scrivens’, a local schoolmistress and customer, on 14 May 1770, and he even arranged for at least two daughters to have dancing lessons from the local dancing master: ‘Alicia [aged 10] begun to Dance at Mr Treppass’ is recorded on 22 August 1770, and the next day ‘Polly’, aged 15, was added. John Clay’s sons were probably also educated in 159–61, and Fergus and Portner, ‘Provincial Bookselling’, 147–63. For children’s books stocked by Samuel Clay at Warwick, see ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers’, 162–4. ⁷² Fergus and Portner, ‘Provincial Bookselling’, 153. ⁷³ John Feather, ‘John Clay of Daventry’, 199, 200. ⁷⁴ Fergus, ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers’, table I, 161. ⁷⁵ NRO D2930 (16 May 1770).

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Daventry, perhaps under the schoolmaster John Warren, established by 1746, and at least one son appears to have studied some Latin: John Clay made a note to himself sometime in 1770 to ‘Bring home a Gradus for Tommy’, aged 11 or 12, that is, to bring back to Daventry from the Rugby shop (where he stocked it for Rugby School customers) a copy of the Gradus ad Parnassum, an elementary Latin text. In fact, both John Clay and Stevens were able to write out titles in the Greek alphabet.⁷⁶ Timothy Stevens was baptized on 27 October 1741 in Cirencester, where his father Joseph was parish clerk for more than forty years, as noted in the burial records at his death in July 1781. This official post became almost hereditary. Timothy Stevens was elected and served as sexton (with the duties of clerk) from the 1770s, and his third son, another Timothy, succeeded his father as parish clerk in 1816. The 1779 agreement between Stevens and the vicar and churchwardens outlines the emoluments of these offices: six pounds a year salary, use of a house ‘in the Church Porch’, and fees for writing and ingrossing all leases. In return Stevens was to ‘keep clean and decent the Church’, give notice of needed repairs, ‘secure the Books, Pulpit-Clothes and Cushions Buckets Ladders and all other Utensils and Materials…Preserve the Parish Register from all Damage’, entering in it births, marriages, and deaths ‘according to the Canon. To open the Church Doors for the Performance of all Divine offices. To toll or ring for Funerals’ for which customary fees were paid, and toll also ‘Saturdays at eleven of the Clock according to the usual Custom. To wind up and keep the Clock and Chimes in good Order’, to receive and keep accounts, to pay the organist, and ‘to give his Attendance at all parish Meetings, and to do and Perform all other Offices and Services which of Right and Custom do belong to the Sexton Register and Town Clerk’.⁷⁷ Like John Clay, Stevens educated the children of his three marriages locally. He aspired to a classical education at least for his eldest son, William Benger Stevens, whose mother Mary Benger had been the daughter of a yeoman in the parish of Cirencester (and who was an aunt of the poet and novelist Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger). In September 1783, Stevens sent ‘Billy’ aged 14 to the local grammar school run by the Revd Dr John Washbourne. Mary had died in 1774 at about 30; John (1778), Sarah (1779), Timothy (1781), and Mary (1783) were born of a second marriage to Sarah Hiett, and Eliza Hanley Stevens (1787) from ⁷⁶ NRO D2930 dancing; Latin D2925/53v ; Greek D2931/17r , GRO C/182. ⁷⁷ GRO P86 VE 3/5.

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the last union with Eliza Hanley, whom the ledgers record as a customer about six months before the wedding. She bought Hester Chapone’s Letters on the Improvement of the Mind (1773), a two-volume edition of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s The Guardian, and two copies of Female Tuition: Or an Address to Mothers on the Education of Daughters (1784). She was perhaps employed as a governess or schoolmistress. Her own daughter, however, was sent to Miss Darke’s school in Cirencester; a bill for eight guineas for the schooling of ‘Eliza’ was discharged in September 1797, and Miss Darke submitted a further bill of £1. 6s. 3d. for schooling and dancing lessons at Michaelmas in 1798, with yet another coming from her successor Miss Shephard in 1800. Presumably the other children were educated in Cirencester as well, though perhaps less expensively. Timothy junior is noted as having been given the ‘usual gratuity’ of five shillings in 1798 for keeping the Cirencester Book Club’s records, and he helped in the shop also: his handwriting is evident in the last volume of the Stevens ledgers.⁷⁸ Local ties were sustained by the sons of these respected booksellercitizens. Stevens’s son Timothy became a Cirencester solicitor as well as parish clerk, and his voluminous records form part of a collection of town and parish documents deposited in the Gloucestershire Record Office. The Clay day books note less official positions of both Thomas and Samuel Clay, who belonged at various times to the Rugby Book Society, and Kaufman has concluded that Stevens too was a member of the Cirencester Book Club.⁷⁹ Thomas Clay reminded himself in a 1779 day book ‘To Call A Society Meeting this 2d or 3d Tuesday in Octobr & get A Copy of the Rules’ and ‘to fix with Mr James [headmaster at Rugby School] abt . what No of dinners I shall order’.⁸⁰ While Samuel Clay was a banker in Rugby, his trips to Daventry were so frequent that he carried letters between Mary Clarke at her nearby estate, Welton Place, and her sons at Rugby School in 1788. Other Clays had done so earlier: one letter from a lawyer to his client even breaks off, saying he ‘will write more fully next week Mr . [Thomas] Clay being now on Horseback and have but just Time to’ add his name—Charles Simon Oakden, earlier a customer for novels.⁸¹ The world that the ⁷⁸ For Washbourne GRO A/71; Hanley A/173; Darke C/210, Shephard C/323; Club C/175. ⁷⁹ Paul Kaufman, ‘A Bookseller’s Record of Eighteenth-Century Book Clubs’, The Library, 5th Series, 15 (1960), 285. ⁸⁰ NRO D2938/17r , 24r . ⁸¹ NRO D2587, letter of 20 January 1781; for club meetings, see D7938/17r , 24r .

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Clays and later Stevens lived in involved neighbourly connections up to the gentry and down to labourers—in ways that support Amanda Vickery’s view of provincial life in the eighteenth century as composed of an ‘inclusive local elite’ made up of the ‘lesser gentry’ and professionals tied to those below them in the trades.⁸² And John Clay in particular was related to many local professionals and even members of the local gentry through his wife Ann Rushworth, the daughter of John Rushworth, a surgeon in Northampton who married Jane Danvers of an old county family.⁸³ John Clay’s eldest and eventually most successful son Samuel made an advantageous marriage himself at the end of 1769 with Mary Chadwick of Rugby. The property held in trust for Mary Chadwick at her marriage included fifty-eight acres of farmland, rented out at £70 a year, of which £34 per year was to go to her mother; it was sold for £2,800 in 1778. By the time his first child, Elizabeth, was born in Warwick in October 1770, Samuel Clay was established as a bookseller there, where two rival bookshops already operated.⁸⁴ The family moved when Samuel’s younger brother William died at age 22. William’s business was assumed as outlined by an advertisement in Jopson’s Coventry Mercury on 6 and 13 July 1772, dated from Rugby on 30 June: Samuel Clay Begs Leave to acquaint his Friends and the Publick in general, That he has taken and entered on the Shops and Stock in Trade of his Brother, Mr. William Clay, deceased, and, with the Assistance of Mr. Harry Wilson, the Businesses of Ironmonger, Cutler, Seedsman, and Grocer, will be carried on as usual in all their Branches, at his respective Shops in Rugby, Lutterworth, and ⁸² Amanda Vickery, ‘Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women’s History’, Historical Journal 36 (1993), 396–7. Vickery’s essay cogently critiques notions of ‘separate spheres’ and ‘domestic ideology’ as forming a distinctive ‘middle class’ ideology in this period, an ideology that Lenore Davidoff and Catherine Hall argue for at length in Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). ⁸³ NRO Isham Pedigree, Rushworth of Northampton. The pedigree omits Ann Rushworth’s marriage to John Clay at Church Brampton on 14 April 1743 (67p/2), but cites the marriage of her sisters Alicia to Charles Watkins, a draper of Daventry, and Susannah to John Adams of Daventry, a younger son of the Adams family of Charwelton. Anne, one of Susannah Adams’s sisters-in-law, married into one of the first families in the area: she was the second wife of Lucy Knightley of Fawsley, having been earlier the companion to Mrs Knightley. See the pedigree of Adams of Charwelton in George Baker, History and Antiquities of the County of Northampton (London: J. B. Nichols & Son, 1822–30). ⁸⁴ Fergus, ‘Eighteeth-Century Readers’, 160; Clay settlements NRO YZ5911, YZ5912.

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Daventry, where his former Friends, and the Publick in General, may depend on being served on the lowest and best Terms.

The reference to ‘former Friends’ alludes to Samuel’s earlier work for his father at his bookshops in Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth. By 1784, the second volume of Bailey’s British Directory: or, Merchant’s and Trader’s Useful Companion listed Samuel Clay as a banker, ironmonger, and grocer in Rugby: he had added banking at some point and bookselling again as well, having taken over the Rugby bookshop when his brother Thomas died in 1781. At Thomas’s death, the Daventry and Lutterworth shops that he had operated since his father John Clay’s death in 1775 were sold, but Samuel evidently thought bookselling to Rugby residents and schoolboys worth pursuing. He remained until retirement a substantial citizen of Rugby, serving as an overseer of the poor there as he had at Warwick,⁸⁵ though he sent his elder daughter ‘Betsy’, born at Warwick, to school at Daventry. She died in Daventry on 12 September 1778, aged 7, and the burial registers list her as being from ‘ye boarding School’. The only other child of the marriage, Maria Ann, born at Rugby, was then 9 months old. Samuel Clay’s will, made at Bilton near Rugby in 1794 six years before his death, set up trusts to enrich primarily this daughter and the children of her marriage to her second cousin Clarke Watkins, a banker’s son.⁸⁶ Mary Chadwick Clay was the residuary legatee and was also left £1,000, given her by bond before marriage, and the income of certain lands. The connection of the Clays to the Daventry community was strong. Once Samuel Clay retired from business in Rugby, he settled in Daventry and styled himself Samuel Clay, Esq.⁸⁷ Even Samuel’s brother John, who became a London tradesman (dealing in oils and hops), continued to subscribe to the local hunt: Thomas Clay noted ‘Have Recd . of Mr . John Clay one Pound 11s /6d for his Subscription to the Hounds.’⁸⁸ The Clays took subscriptions for books produced by local authors; for instance, John Clay received two shillings on 24 April 1765 from ⁸⁵ Warwickshire County Record Office (WCRO) DR 133/56/2. ⁸⁶ One of their descendants married in the mid-nineteenth century Thomas Cooke Thornton of Brockhall, representative of an old county family whose great-grandfather had bought books from the Clays a century earlier: see Oswald Barron, Northamptonshire Families (London: A. Constable, 1906), under Thornton of Brockhall XI, p. 309. Samuel Clay left legacies to his sisters and their children and the children of his deceased younger brother John. Because Clay owned lands in several counties, his will is on deposit in The National Archives, PRO IR 11/1350/846, 853. ⁸⁷ Fergus, ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers’, 160. ⁸⁸ NRO ML 10/32v .

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Mr Williams of Napton, and from several other customers at other times, for subscriptions to Mr Lee’s ‘book of name of Jesus’ and received ‘of Mr . Oneley [John Onely, a customer and local curate] from Mr . Dicey [a printer] 100 of his sermons’ to sell.⁸⁹ In details like these—as well as in Thomas Clay’s note that he arranged to rent a neighbour’s privy for a year at a cost of 5s. per annum—the lives of the Clays and their reading community emerge.⁹⁰ Amusingly, Timothy Stevens also recorded his sanitary arrangements in his ledgers: he noted a debt to ‘Mr John Timbrell’ 14s. ‘for him emptying the Necessary’ on 17 August 1789, perhaps the same Mr Timbrell, mercer, who borrowed Peregrine Pickle on 4 November 1788 and who bought devotional works.⁹¹ In short, as the anonymous author of ‘A Sentimental Journey. By a Lady’ in John Wheble’s Lady’s Magazine wrote, ‘A bookseller’s shop in the country is, in a great measure, what a coffee-house is in town; and with this advantage, that the door of the former is equally open to the ladies and to the gentlemen. Here we never fail to be entertained, not only with the chat of the day, but with the news papers, the magazines, and every new publication.’⁹² Whether or not the Clays’ and Stevens’s shops themselves operated as gathering places in this way, they formed part of a face-to-face community. Magazines and occasionally newspapers for those living outside the town were often delivered by butchers or cheesemen on their rounds or called for in Daventry by neighbours, who also sometimes left orders. The Clay records show too that magazines could be shared officially through joint subscriptions by individuals—not just informally, by lending them about, and not simply in book club subscriptions. Although evidence can be found in London bookselling ledgers that a few provincial customers ordered print from London, presumably in preference to local sources, residents of Daventry and Cirencester who wished to buy printed matter most likely patronized the Clays and Stevens, given these booksellers’ integration into their communities as well as their efficiency in filling orders. Those in trade ⁸⁹ NRO D2931/2v ; according to ESTC, neither Mr Lee’s nor John Onely’s work has survived. ⁹⁰ On the front endleaf of NRO ML 88, Thomas Clay wrote ‘Mar 25: 1776/Then Agreed wth Saml Judkin [a shoemaker] for ye use of the necessary House at 5s p[er] Annum’. For more information on the customers and their community, see Fergus, ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers’, 166–71, and Fergus and Portner, ‘Provincial Bookselling’, 147–63. ⁹¹ GRO B/7, A/304. ⁹² Wheble’s Lady’s Magazine 3 (Oct. 1772), 443; reference to Timbrell, B/7.

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would be particularly inclined to shop locally unless some quarrel had taken place: it would not be in their interest to set an example of avoiding town suppliers. The London Hookham and Carpenter ledgers F and G, incidentally, record only about seventeen provincial customers, less than 2 per cent.

C L AY D AY B O O K S , T H E I R N AT U R E A N D P RO B L E M S The records of the Clay shops are very incomplete. Apart from a continuous series of ledgers recording the purchases of Rugby schoolboys from 1744–84, sales for the three decades before 1770 are represented only by Daventry day books for the years 1746–8, 1758–9, and 1764–6, and one Rugby day book (1768–70). Thus nothing can be concluded about the immediate provincial market for works not issued during those years. Despite their major gaps, however, the day books’ survival among the Clay records makes them more valuable than if ledgers alone remained. Day books can include the buying of marginal audiences. At first, this inclusion may seem counter-intuitive. After all, day books recorded each day’s credit transactions: how would poorer customers establish credit? Surprisingly, a number did so at least temporarily. Credit rather than cash was an established mode of doing business among booksellers.⁹³ Strictly cash transactions are as a rule absent from the records. Customers who came to the shops, found what they wanted, and paid in ready money simply do not appear. Accounts of those who did not pay were posted to ledgers, usually once a month, and allowed to accumulate for as long as a year, at which point a bill would be copied from the ledger and presented for payment. Sometimes, however, a customer who had no ledger account took away an item and returned within a month to pay for it in cash, thus having established temporary credit. In addition, as previously noted, the day books also record cash borrowings from the Clays’ small circulating libraries. These day books, along with the Clay Rugby ledgers (which indicate borrowing by Rugby schoolboys) and the Stevens ledgers (which include some ⁹³ James Lackington was the first bookseller to abandon this practice, much to his competitors’ disgust. ‘He sold for cash down only; no one—not ‘‘even the nobility’’—was allowed any credit; and in spite of all the ridicule which the trade as a whole heaped upon this experiment, and the low prices which Lackington charged for his books, he retired with a large fortune’ (Frank A. Mumby and Arthur Norrie, Publishing and Bookselling, 5th edn. (London: Jonathan Cape, 1974), 184).

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customers’ borrowings), constitute the only records of any commercial eighteenth-century circulating libraries that are so far known to have survived. In the Clay day books, purchases appear in four possible places. First, lists of subscribers to part books (serialized publications) were entered on the endpapers. One manservant, William Brown of Yelvertoft, was listed as taking forty-two numbers of Francis Willoughby’s edition of A Practical Family Bible, first published in 1772–3, on the front endleaf of the records for 1777 (NRO ML 88). Second, monthly lists of subscribers to magazines appeared at regular intervals in the day books, approximately at the end of each month’s transactions. In these lists, David Prowett, employed as a servant probably to a draper, subscribed to the Magazin a` la mode d´edi´e aux dames for two months in 1777, switched to the Lady’s Magazine in March, and apparently maintained this subscription beyond when the records end in 1780, much the longest subscription by any servant. The third place in the day books wherein purchases were recorded was the most common: the lists of daily sales made on credit. If customers took away an item but did not pay immediately, or if they borrowed books, those transactions would appear among that day’s records. Again, those who established temporary credit took their purchases away from the shop and returned to pay for them some time later (perhaps a week to a month or so), and at that point, the earlier entries against their names would be crossed out. Generally these payments occurred before unpaid purchases had been posted to the ledgers where long-term credit accounts were kept. Such ledgers have survived only for Rugby. In them, a few of the more substantial members of the community are represented, such as clergymen and tradesmen, but primarily the ledgers are devoted to Rugby schoolboys’ accounts. Occasionally, however, short-term credit purchases would become long-term ones. If customers had not paid a debt in full when a new day book was begun, and if they were not substantial enough to have their own pages in the ledger, the unpaid totals were re-entered in the first pages of the new book as ‘brought over’ from the previous book. The servant David Prowett’s father, an innkeeper in Daventry, had evidently wished to give his son a classical education: he purchased three elementary Latin textbooks in 1765 which were delivered to his son David. Nine years later, the elder David Prowett had still not paid the 4s. 6d. owing on these texts: John Clarke’s Introduction to the Making of Latin, the ‘Eton Latin Grammar’ (probably William Willymott’s Shorter Examples to

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Lily’s Grammar Rules, for Children’s Latin Exercises), and Nomenclatura, or, Nouns and Verbs in English and Latin, to be Formed and Declined by Children of the Lowest Forms.⁹⁴ Finally, purchases could appear in the undated section entitled ‘Bespoke’ at the back of each day book, where orders for books not in stock would be noted. The Clays entered here their own reminders of what to restock as well as customers’ orders for items not in the shop, undated orders that would be crossed off when they were filled. If customers then paid cash, no further record would appear in the day book. The crossing off of orders therefore often provides the only evidence that customers obtained them, obviously not very satisfying evidence. Certainly some of these bespoke orders were never received, such as that placed sometime in 1758 by the maidservant of Mrs Brooke, an innkeeper, for ‘The Wanton Wife of Bath, a play’. This order was never crossed out, indicating that John Clay never obtained it. A ballad with this title and a conjectural date of 1750 survives, but no such play is listed in the ESTC or in The London Stage, although John Gay published a comedy entitled The Wife of Bath in 1713. Other bespoke orders, however, are almost certain to have been filled: for example, when Mr Chipman, coachman to Sir Francis Skipwith, ordered a six-shilling octavo Bible, he left the money to pay for it.⁹⁵ Although admittedly the bespoke records are not very satisfactory, I have mined them for sales of novels in Chs.1 and 2 because they offer access to the intended cash purchases of otherwise inaccessible audiences—servants, labourers, and women of all classes, none of whom are as well represented in the records as are tradesmen, professional men, and gentlemen. Casting the widest possible net for underrepresented audiences is worthwhile, even if a few of the orders they placed were never actually filled. And in fact, these bespoke orders for novels do not seriously distort the record. Altogether, forty-five adult orders are thus included, eleven by women; in addition, Daventry schoolboys ordered five novels. These forty-five adult orders represent 19.5 per cent of all the adult Clay purchases of novels (231). The proportion of novels ordered by women, 23 per cent (eleven of the forty-seven novels women bought altogether), is very comparable to the proportion of novels bought by them (47 of 231, or 20%; see Table 1.1.1 for figures), which suggests that including orders does not bias the results—but does ⁹⁴ NRO ML 692, ML 89/1r . ⁹⁵ NRO D2931/19r maidservant; D2925/9r coachman.

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broaden the representation of women and of women’s fictional choices as well as men’s.⁹⁶ The bespoke records offer an occasional window onto the cheapest transactions. Purchases of printed matter costing a penny or so almost never appear; people who bought them paid in cash. This cheap print includes ballads, penny histories, and penny godly books, all of which the Clays stocked (testified by notes in bespoke sections to restock), but generally orders or purchases of such works are recorded only when a customer bought them in quantity, as did a woman in Lutterworth who appears to have been a dealer in a small way.⁹⁷ Nonetheless, a ‘Mr . Richd . Fennell Buckby’ is listed as having ordered three anthems in 1777 ‘made for the 3 great Festivals’, as well as a twopenny ‘Book of Service Anthems’; remarkably, he appears in the 1777 Militia List for Long Buckby as a poor man with six children.⁹⁸ Interest in somewhat more expensive popular fiction such as children’s books and eightpenny chapbooks does occasionally appear among servants, lower artisans, and even labourers, either because the works had to be ordered or because they were expensive enough that the customer could not pay on the spot. Thus, in 1770 Molly Baxter ordered a history of Jane Shore, most likely an eightpenny chapbook (NRO D2930/3v ). She was probably a servant or labourer since the appearance of her full name without any title such as ‘Miss’ indicates lower social status; the ‘Mr .’ before Richard Fennell’s name suggests a somewhat better position, though ‘Mr. Fennell’ would rank higher. Molly Baxter’s order offers some evidence that lower-class women were willing to pay for stories of women, in this case a transgressive one. Notes made within the bespoke sections, on endleaves, or in ledger accounts with suppliers also include much detail about how the Clays operated their business. For instance, John Clay’s arrangement with ⁹⁶ Including male requests allows the order of an apothecary’s apprentice in Lutterworth for John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, commonly known as Fanny Hill, with ‘Cutts’ or illustrations (NRO ML 694/46v ), to appear in the lists of novels—the sole reference to this work in the Clay or Stevens records. ⁹⁷ Mrs Mary Warner of Lutterworth is noted as having ordered ‘50 Histories amongst them Mother Bunch & Fortune Books’ plus a half-ream of ‘Ballads Godly Books & Slipps’ sometime in 1777 (NRO ML 694/66r ). Shortly afterward (69r ), Thomas Clay made a note to himself in the bespoke section, ‘lett the Woman know as buys the histories that I cant afford them under 2s /9d lb [i.e. per hundred] as 2s lb was a mistake’. ⁹⁸ NRO ML88/24r ; Victor A. Hatley (ed.), Northamptonshire Militia Lists 1777 (Kettering: The Northamptonshire Record Society, 1973), 61. The Richard ‘Fennel’ listed as a poor man in Long Buckby is the only man so named in all of Northamptonshire in the 1777 militia lists.

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London suppliers allowed him to stock magazines on a sale or return basis: he notes in his ledger that he returned ‘5 Mag[azines]’, for which he received a credit of 2s. 1d., or 5d. each, to his supplier James Buckland on 22 August 1774.⁹⁹ Evidently, the Clays made 1d. for every sixpenny magazine sold. Thus, when the Clays had 240 subscribers, they would take in £1 per month in profit, but (as Ch. 5 will show) subscribers seldom rose to that number. Books also passed through the shop to be bound. Before Samuel Clay left Daventry to open his own bookshop in Warwick, he was his father’s bookbinder. After Thomas Clay took over the Daventry shop, however, he hired an assistant who did binding at £8 per year: ‘1776 Aug 29th | Then Agreed wth Henry Lines for 1 Years Service to commence at Michaelmas next for 8 Pounds’ is written, along with a note that he gave Lines a shilling in earnest money. Lines is listed as a bookbinder in Daventry in 1777.¹⁰⁰ In order, again, to cast the widest possible net for consumers of fiction, I have included among purchases novels that were merely bound or (in one instance) lettered by the Clays or Stevens, presumably at some time after they were bought either from the Clays or Stevens or elsewhere—a total of 32 out of 584 sales to Clay and Stevens customers. By contrast, St Clair assumes that he can add the cost of binding books to their initial price, yielding a much more expensive article in general. For him, ‘The first thing most buyers in the romantic period did, before they even took a new book home, was to place an order to have it rebound in leather’, though he also believes that novels were expensively bound ‘only occasionally’.¹⁰¹ If he intends his comments to refer to the second half of the eighteenth century, he exaggerates the frequency of binding in general and its cost. For instance, Fitzherbert Adams, a member of the gentry, ordered expensive binding (‘in Calf Gilt’) for his two-volume copy of Charles Jenner’s Placid Man (1770) on 21 November 1774, a copy obtained earlier; he was charged 3s. But the Lutterworth Society specified half binding when ordering its copy of Samuel Jackson Pratt’s three-volume Shenstone Green on 26 August 1779 and was charged only ninepence more than the 7s. 6d. price advertised for a copy ‘sewed’ in sheets. Half binding or ‘half calf’ is the style most frequently ordered in the provinces. ⁹⁹ NRO ML 689/265. ¹⁰⁰ For Lines NRO ML 88 front endleaf; Hatley, Militia Lists, 38. ¹⁰¹ St Clair, Reading Nation, 192, 193.

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D AY B O O K A N D L E D G E R EV I D E N C E A N D T H E MARKET FOR FICTION Before the records can be used to address more complicated questions about the audiences for fiction, their limitations must once more be acknowledged. Although the numbers of Clay and Stevens customers for printed material are respectably high—2,742 for the Clays¹⁰² and about 588 for Stevens—caution is necessary in drawing conclusions from the customers’ purchasing. Because the Clay records before 1770 are so incomplete, nothing can be concluded about the provincial demand for works not issued during those years. The 1770s are better represented, but not evenly. These records therefore are not equivalent to the continuous Stevens ledgers; indeed, only the Clays’ continuous Rugby ledgers can compare, but they almost exclusively document schoolboys. For this reason, I have chosen to extract information about as many consumers of fiction as possible from all these sources, aware that the sources are not fully comparable. And I have decided wherever possible to supplement the raw information about numbers of customers, their sex, and their choices with case studies of individual Clay consumers. In Ch. 3, I vary this procedure by offering an analysis of a particular work, Goody Two-Shoes, and its schoolboy audience. This mixed methodology is possible only because the Clays’ records offer enough information about customers so that, together with an examination of parish records over a wide area and some printed sources, I can sometimes flesh out their connections and class positions. This focus on the bookselling records begs the question of how far the Clay and Stevens shops or customers were typical within provincial England or even the Midlands. Obviously, we cannot know. But some evidence does suggest that they might be representative. First, parallels exist among all the shops, that is, including Stevens’s in Cirencester (parallels among the Clay shops alone might not be significant). All five—in Daventry, Rugby, Lutterworth, and Warwick, as well as Cirencester—were located in market towns and served a clientele drawn from about eight to ten miles away in all directions, suggesting ¹⁰² These include 1862 adult customers for print at the Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth shops, 611 Rugby boys, 79 boys at the Daventry Dissenting Academy, and 190 customers for printed materials at the Warwick shop; to derive the latter figure see ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers’, 171–2. See Table 1.1.

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that such a circle represents a usual catchment area for customers at this time. The shops were well run: none of the booksellers went bankrupt despite the evident need to offer credit to many customers, and despite increases in bankruptcies in the book trade from the 1770s, particularly in the provinces.¹⁰³ (Samuel Clay’s Warwick shop—with two rival booksellers in the town—was not successful enough to hold him there once the opportunity to take over his brother William’s business arose, but neither had it failed.) All the shops attracted a clientele whose class positions varied, but in them all professional men and some of their wives proved the best customers for print generally and for fiction specifically. That is, customers’ behaviour looks surprisingly consistent, sometimes in defiance of received ideas. For instance, in Lutterworth, a centre for dissent, novels were attractive: its book club ordered in four years as much fiction as other clubs had within a decade’s worth of sales. In Daventry, the Academical Society, composed largely of boys at the Daventry Dissenting Academy, was equally interested in buying novels. The small libraries operated by the Clays and Stevens seem reasonably comparable, though borrowings from both are imperfectly represented. We can presume that the Clay day book records of borrowings are likely to be accurate for the restricted periods of time they cover, if only because the Clays needed to know which customers had which books. The Clays generally charged 3d. to withdraw a volume; in Warwick Samuel Clay experimented with a 2d. per volume fee. Stevens offered three months’ reading at 4s. and charged the usual 3d. per volume otherwise; his ledgers are defective for the purposes of this study in that they specify borrowings of those who took out a novel or two but not those who paid quarterly. Despite such archival shortcomings, however, the libraries show some commonality. The ninety-seven novels that we know were borrowed from the Clays—listed in App. 1—tend to have been published primarily in the 1760s and 1770s (more than half, or fifty-four). Similarly, about half the seventy novels borrowed from Stevens in the last sixteen years covered by his ledgers were published then, in the 1790s and 1800s (thirty-three or 47 per cent; these titles can be generated from App. 2). That is, both libraries circulated recent works in similar proportions. And both libraries had customers who withdrew much earlier novels—fourteen titles borrowed from Stevens published before 1770 and twenty-seven from the Clays published before 1750. ¹⁰³ Feather, Provincial Book Trade, 30: ‘Bankruptcies in all areas of trade increased in the last three decades of the century, but more markedly so in the book trade.’

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That the libraries are comparable does not at all mean that they or their customers are typical. But the Annual Register for 1761 assumed that the typical country circulating library had a stock of ‘about 100 volumes’.¹⁰⁴ If so, and if we take volumes to mean titles, and titles of novels at that, the Clay stock of fiction is altogether about right. Later small libraries’ catalogues ‘averaged 430 titles of which seventy per cent were fiction’,¹⁰⁵ a figure that may approximate the Stevens library: though we have evidence for the circulation of only seventy novels, a novel published in 1788 was numbered 477 in his catalogue, which has not survived.¹⁰⁶ Even if we accept that the Clay and Stevens customers and circulating libraries are reasonably typical of those in market towns throughout England, however, some problems of interpretation remain. Failure to borrow certain books or genres, for instance, may occur because the Clays and Stevens simply did not choose to make them available—but that choice does imply either a lack of customer demand or, equally likely, a lack of conviction that enlarging the small libraries would be profitable. I have calculated that Samuel Clay’s circulating stock of novels at Warwick, though almost half were recent (at least twenty-seven titles published between 1768 and 1772), attracted only £2. 18s. 8d. in withdrawals in nineteen months.¹⁰⁷ Other problems of interpretation inhere in this project. The behaviour of non-elite men and especially women is always difficult to tease out of the historical record. The task of measuring women’s consumption of fiction in archives is complicated by the problem of registering married women’s reading. The Clay magazine subscription records, for instance, reveal the existence of concealed purchasers—women whose subscriptions were recorded under someone else’s name, typically a husband’s, a phenomenon examined in Ch. 5. A fourth of all female Clay subscribers were concealed in this way.¹⁰⁸ Married women did not exist legally apart from their husbands and were thus less likely than widows and unmarried women to obtain credit from tradesmen for their own purchases, and all women were likely to have less disposable ¹⁰⁴ Quoted by Q. D. Leavis, Fiction and the Reading Public (1932; repr. London: Penguin Books, 1979), 111. ¹⁰⁵ Erickson, ‘Economy of Novel Reading’, 580. ¹⁰⁶ GRO A/20. ¹⁰⁷ See Fergus ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers’, 173; App. 1 indicates the fifty-eight novels that circulated in Warwick. ¹⁰⁸ Jan Fergus, ‘Women, Class, and the Growth of Magazine Readership in the Provinces, 1746–1780’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 16 (1986), 44.

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income than men. Married women are therefore underrepresented in all the accounts that I can produce of women readers, probably owing also to the exigencies of marriage itself: as suggested by case studies in Ch. 1, in all but affluent families, bearing children, raising them, and running households may not have left much time or money for female reading, or male for that matter.¹⁰⁹ It is no accident that women show up even less frequently in the Stevens ledgers than in the Clay day books. A woman or child who obtained credit might be recorded in a day book entry but not in a ledger account entry—unless under a husband’s name. Rugby ledgers, with accounts listed under schoolboys’ names, are highly unusual in clearly recording the buying of children, and even there, parents’ names occasionally appear instead. Fortunately, however, booksellers sometimes indicate in ledgers who orders or takes delivery of an item, if only to forestall questions when the bill is presented. Thus, the purchases of Miss Smith, a Stevens customer, are so labelled on the account of her relative John Smith, Esq. But without that indication, her purchase of Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling would appear to be John’s; their purchases are discussed in Ch. 2. I would argue that because a greater proportion of women appear in the Clay day books, necessarily more comprehensive than the ledgers that are all that survive for Stevens’s shop, the Stevens figures for female customers are probably seriously deflated. No doubt some of the men represented as Stevens buyers and borrowers in the totals in App. 2 were obtaining books for wives or daughters, not for themselves—or not merely for themselves; and undoubtedly some male customers of the Clays did so also. But equally certainly, as will be shown, some men obtained novels solely for their own pleasure. In the five chapters that follow this introduction, some specific advantages and limitations of the records will be reviewed when appropriate. The first chapter, ‘Audiences for Novels: Gendered Reading’, takes issue with assumptions about gender and fiction in this period: novels were neither primarily written by women nor primarily, in the provinces, consumed by them. The word ‘consumed’ throughout this study is meant in a purely economic sense, not in the pejorative sense of ¹⁰⁹ See Richard D. Brown, Knowledge is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700–1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), ch. 7, for an analysis of letters and diaries of married women in America, whose roles and responsibilities reduced their discretionary time, so that they read less than single women and had different concerns.

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mindless ‘consuming’ or devouring of fiction. In addition, words such as ‘consuming’ and ‘borrowing’ rather than ‘reading’ generally appear whenever customers’ behaviour is characterized in declarative rather than speculative sentences: with few exceptions, I prefer not to assert that any particular work was actually read by a particular customer. I begin, therefore, by reviewing the buying and borrowing of two men with a strong interest in print, John Latimer of Warwick and Henry Bagshaw Harrison of Daventry. Figures for adult buying and borrowing of fiction taken from the Clay and Stevens records are summarized and tabulated, and this evidence of adult men’s and women’s consumption is placed in the context of their other purchases. Men are so numerous, however, that I focus upon a subgroup, men who subscribed to the Monthly and Critical Reviews, because their subscriptions allow me to investigate the possible effect of reviewing on purchases of new fiction and other works. (No women subscribed to review journals in the Clay records and only one in Stevens’s.) I look at the far fewer women customers for fiction in detail, offering case studies of purchases and borrowings of women who were members of the gentry and the professional, trading, and servant classes. In concluding, I speculate first on why the novel was in eighteenthcentury England so closely identified with women even though no empirical evidence seems to support this identification—and second on what men might gain by being culturally invisible as readers of fictions. In the second chapter, ‘Consuming Practices: Canonicity, Novels, and Plays’, I mine the records for evidence of ways in which novels are consumed by this provincial audience. Adopting a crudely behavioural definition of the canon (I consider any novel canonized that was bought by both Clay and Stevens customers, and at least fifteen years apart), I compare how novels by men and women fare over time, with consideration of how anonymous publication affects that comparison. Some 32 of 321 novels sold or lent out meet those criteria for canonization, and just 4 are female-authored. Initially and indeed within five years, demand for fiction written by men and by women is approximately equal, but over fifteen years, women’s novels are forgotten. Men’s plays likewise seem to be remembered and purchased ten or more years after their initial publication whereas women’s plays disappear over time. Finally, I offer some evidence of how books were read that can be inferred from the records: multiple and repeated readings and particularly desultory reading. The third chapter, ‘Schoolboy Readers: John Newbery’s Goody Two-Shoes and Licensed War’, focuses on the boys at Rugby School. A

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sense of who they were is gained by looking at the nine who paid to read Frances Burney’s Cecilia as soon as Samuel Clay’s circulating library made it available in 1784, two years after publication. Rugby boys form a partially recoverable interpretive community. In order to understand how they might have read the children’s books, chapbooks, and novels that they obtained in great quantities (at least 1,401 children’s books between 1744 and 1784), I then review the curriculum at the school, the books available there, and above all how school culture scripted their lives, in a manner that I have called ‘licensed war’. The demand for Goody Two-Shoes (published by John Newbery), one of the more popular children’s books at Rugby, indicates the boys’ willingness to read across gender lines. Available information about the age and careers of boys who bought Goody Two-Shoes, a detailed summary of the story, and an attempt to recover how this complex and multifarious tale might have been read by boys in their harsh all-male world follows. Continuing the study of boys’ reading, Ch. 4, ‘Schoolboy Practices: Novels, Children’s Books, Chapbooks, and Magazines’, investigates the consumption of all these fictional forms by Rugby boys as well as the appetite for novels and magazines among somewhat older students at the Daventry Dissenting Academy. The chapter begins with four actual accounts of reading by boys who attended Rugby during or just after the period covered by the Clay records (William Bray, Ralph Abercromby, Walter Savage Landor, and Charles James Apperley); the first three were Clay customers. Their remarks underline the importance of self-chosen reading to young people. Subsequently, this chapter considers the market for ‘little books’, showing that children’s books published by Newbery and others became much more popular among Rugby boys than their earlier favourites, eightpenny chapbooks—more so too than the novels that far fewer boys bought and borrowed. I analyse in detail novel consumption over time at Rugby, and in particular the possibility that boys made efforts to keep their borrowing of certain novels secret from those who paid their bills—parents or housemasters or even headmasters. Boys at the Daventry Dissenting Academy, though hardly ever consumers of chapbooks or children’s books, were proportionally more interested in novels than Rugby boys and somewhat more interested in magazines that included fiction. Cross-gendered reading is evident here too: at least three boys from each institution took the Lady’s Magazine (and at least one may have hidden his subscription). In short, in certain cases boys appear to have sought

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the kind of invisibility as readers of fiction that adult eighteenth-century men managed to achieve in their own time and in ours. Chapter 5, ‘Audiences for Magazines and Serialized Publications’, begins by considering four issues in relation to the Clays’ large customer base for magazines: the intersection of male and female taste; expansion of subscriptions; subscription attrition; and the relations between audiences for magazines and the novel. For instance, the contributions that a Clay customer, William Gough (probably employed at an inn outside Daventry) actually made to the Lady’s Magazine, especially his poem in its praise, are analysed in detail—along with his poetical exchanges with other male readers—as evidence for cross-class and cross-gendered reading of and writing for this important magazine. I also investigate its success in attracting women subscribers. Here too I explore the phenomenon of women’s concealed reading: women whose subscriptions are recorded for years under a husband’s, father’s, or brother’s name. Second, the chapter considers how subscription histories (what magazines are taken, and for how long) illustrate the workings of the market. As magazines, most of which incorporated fiction, increased in number, audiences expanded, driven by the increasing supply—but only up to a point. After this provincial market was saturated, all magazines had to compete for more or less the same customers, and a pattern of attrition is evident even among the longest-established publications—the third topic explored. Fourth, I analyse the relation between audiences for magazines and for novels, showing that generally magazine subscribers did not also buy or borrow novels. Although case studies of customers who subscribed to many magazines show their somewhat greater interest in consuming other forms of fiction, even subscribers to the Novelist’s Magazine did not necessarily buy or borrow other novels—and most did not subscribe for long. Finally, I turn to the incomplete Clay records for serialized publications; only one novel, Don Quixote, was purchased in serial form by Clay customers, who bought primarily reference books and Bibles in fascicles. Even though the more than 230 customers for serialized works were reasonably likely also to subscribe to magazines, they were not particularly likely to obtain fiction in any other form. That is, this chapter’s study of works issued periodically indicates that although the Clays’ smaller audience for novels tended to show interest in magazines and even serials, the reverse was simply not true: as the magazines reached wider audiences, their subscribers did not obtain or borrow novels in any greater proportion

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than other customers. Among these provincial customers, proliferation of fictions in magazines did not expand the audience for novels. A final chapter briefly outlines conclusions about provincial consumption of fictions that can be drawn from the records. In this project to historicize readers by studying eighteenth-century provincial booksellers’ records, I am interested in many kinds of fiction that eighteenth-century men and women obtained—in chapbooks and children’s books and magazines as well as in novels and plays—and equally in the stories or fictions that have arisen around these readers both then and now. My hope is that the evidence that I can offer in the following chapters of cross-gendered, cross-class, intergenerational consumption of texts will encourage critics to engage in more complex readings of eighteenthcentury fictions of all kinds, thus recovering a wide range of readerly pleasures—male and female—that have been neglected or occluded.

1 Audiences for Novels: Gendered Reading To speak of ‘the’ audience for any form, including eighteenth-century novels, is a mistake. Audiences are multiple, shifting, and intersecting, and each reader belongs to many. Booksellers’ records can offer only a narrow window onto these intersections and multiplicities, but this window may offer a better perspective than some other evidence currently cited, much of which comes from anecdote and from contemporary moralists’ comments on readership. In the eighteenth century, moralists denounced the novel as a dangerous popular entertainment and closely associated the genre with women, much the way that soap opera today is assigned to a female audience. Modern scholars have tended to echo those eighteenth-century, generally male, moralists by identifying reading novels as a particularly female activity. But this identification is not at all supported by either the Clay or the Stevens bookselling records. Overwhelmingly, the records show that in the Midlands men were the major purchasers and borrowers of novels. Even if we assume that some were obtaining fiction for their wives or daughters, others can be shown not to have done so. Furthermore, we cannot discount the eager interest of schoolboys. Novels were not written only for women and decidedly not consumed by them exclusively. In trying to understand earlier periods, in other words, we cannot uncritically accept contemporaries’ accounts. Their views may be biased, partial, wrong. The historical record, in so far as we have access to it in booksellers’ records, reveals that eighteenth-century male critics’ anxious identification of the novel with female writers and readers was inaccurate, for whatever reasons. We need to be more conscious of, and more careful to avoid, the dangers of mistaking contemporaries’ interested narratives and accusations for the ‘truth’—in this case, mistaking eighteenth-century men’s anxieties and cultural fantasies about women readers for the ‘real’. I do not dispute that the culture identified reading novels as ‘feminine’ and usually so identified the novels themselves as

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well; I simply dispute our tendency to believe that this identification corresponded with what was ‘really’ happening.

T H E AU D I E N C E S F O R N OV E L S A N D G E N D E R In The Woman Reader, 1837–1914, Kate Flint has called attention to the persistence of cultural fears about women’s reading: ‘The patterns of reasoning which lay behind Renaissance prescriptive remarks concerning women’s reading were remarkably close, in outline, to ones which were repeated during the next three centuries, linking together preoccupations with bodily and mental fitness. Whilst too great an acquaintance with light reading might lead her sexually astray, either in imagination or reality, it would also distract her from developing intellectually and spiritually.’¹ These anxieties go along with accusations that such dangerous reading is increasing or pervasive among women. But again, the historical record in eighteenth-century booksellers’ accounts tells a much more complicated story of reading by men and women. At least in the Midlands, the proliferation of the novel between 1740 and 1770 was not closely associated with an expanded, middle-class audience largely composed of women—or indeed any expansion of the reading public for fiction. By about 1770, however, the availability of cheaper, more ephemeral, and more specialized sources of fiction—in children’s books or magazines aimed at specific audiences, for instance—did seem to enlarge both the male and female fictionbuying public, which then began to include women of the middling sort: tradeswomen and tradesmen’s wives, farmers’ and yeomen’s wives. But they obtained their fiction from the Clays largely through magazines (see Ch. 5). Here my findings partially corroborate William St Clair’s assertion that ‘Only in the areas of newspapers and periodicals do we see a compensating trend towards a widening of the reading nation’ before 1774, though in this case not much before.² The post-1780 Stevens customers, however, consumed novels in substantially greater proportions than did the adults and schoolboys served by the Clays. As Table 1.1 can show, although Clay buyers and borrowers of novels amounted overall to under 11 per cent of their customers for print (299 of 2,742 altogether), over 18 per cent of Stevens’s credit ¹ Kate Flint, The Woman Reader, 1837–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 23. ² St Clair, Reading Nation, 100.

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customers obtained novels.³ Within both clienteles, however, the gentry and the professional classes—clergymen, attorneys, physicians, and so forth, and sometimes their wives and daughters—always constituted the largest proportion of the audiences for fiction. And among these provincial customers, the tastes of male and female readers of all classes were not as different as many scholars have supposed—or as many eighteenth-century moralists alleged. The most dedicated consumer of novels in all the Clay and Stevens records was John Latimer, a butcher in Warwick, who was at least 46 years old when he began to borrow fiction from Samuel Clay and whose household included his wife Ann Hodgson and a son, William, in his late twenties. I have elsewhere dealt with Latimer’s borrowing in detail.⁴ He patronized Samuel Clay’s Warwick circulating library some six months after the shop opened and withdrew forty-four different novels between 11 January 1771 and 18 February 1772, though none at all during the summer (17 May to 6 October). Reading was apparently an activity for long winter nights. Latimer took out sixty-four volumes between 11 January and 5 March 1771, as well as forty-nine more volumes between 9 January and 18 February 1772, altogether two-thirds of the reading matter that he obtained during thirteen months (113 of 169 volumes). He could sometimes get through a volume a day. For instance, he withdrew nine novels and another work between 11 and 30 January 1771, at which time he obtained eight more novels. Having rented twenty-one volumes of novels, then, in less than three weeks, he took out another fifteen volumes by 16 February. It is possible that these works were being read aloud to the whole family, but a volume a day of such works as The History of Miss Indiana Danby (1765) or Richard Griffith’s The Gordian Knot (1769) would have taxed both reader and listener alike. Not all the works that Latimer obtained were novels. He withdrew essay periodicals such as Samuel Johnson’s Rambler and George Colman and Bonnell Thornton’s Connoisseur in February 1771, or the Beauties of ³ See figures in Table 1.1, part 2. Because some of the twenty-four women and fifty-seven men who also paid to use Stevens’s circulating library but whose borrowings are not recorded probably withdrew fiction, the proportion of Stevens customers who consumed novels was quite likely higher, to a maximum of 32 per cent. By contrast, in the Hookham and Carpenter F and G ledgers, more than a quarter of the customers bought novels, while the figures for buying alone for Clay adults come to 5.6 per cent (114 of 2,052) and for Stevens 14 per cent (83 of 588). Audiences for novels were growing. ⁴ Fergus, ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers’, 184–6 and appendices.

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the Spectators, Tatlers, and Guardians later in the fall of that year. Still, he was the sole borrower of most of the fiction classics—Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), Amelia (1751), and Jonathan Wild (1743), Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1747–8) and Sir Charles Grandison (1754), Tobias Smollett’s Launcelot Greaves (1762)—as well as of fifteen less well-known novels in Samuel Clay’s library at Warwick, comprising at least fifty-eight novels and twenty-five other works.⁵ None of Latimer’s borrowings included any indication that some other household member was ordering or picking up the books, though such notices do appear in entries for other customers: day books generally are discursive about such matters. Latimer even reread four novels, twice right away: Eliza Haywood’s four-volume Betsy Thoughtless in November and December 1771, and Richardson’s seven-volume Sir Charles Grandison in October and November 1771. (Alternatively, another member of the household read them or Latimer required extra time to complete them.) Furthermore, he withdrew the anonymous Indiana Danby in January 1771 and February 1772, and Frances Brooke’s Emily Montague in May 1771 and February 1772. Altogether, at twopence a volume, Latimer spent £1. 8s. 2d. on reading in thirteen months. Most of these charges were made on credit, and it is not clear whether Latimer eventually paid for them; he was certainly in arrears in his poor rate payments by more than £4 by June 1772. Latimer alone accounted for 48 per cent of all the borrowings from the circulating library, so whether or not he ever discharged his debt, the library was far from a profitable venture. On the other hand, Samuel Clay’s library probably required relatively little capital outlay. I suspect that the fiction stock derived largely from works that his wife Mary Chadwick had accumulated just before their marriage in 1769. Many of the novels that circulated to Latimer and others were recent, some fifteen published in 1768 and 1769, for instance, more than a quarter of the circulating stock of fifty-eight novels. These exceeded the twelve new fiction titles acquired and circulated by ⁵ For various reasons, these figures slightly contradict those published in ‘EighteenthCentury Readers’. I now place Arabian Nights Entertainments among novels; the lady’s memorandum book that one customer bought and returned is no longer listed as part of the lending library, nor are the three works I still cannot identify (History Monsieur Bosheim, Antient Sages, and Adventure Beauchiere). I also exclude Susannah Minifie’s Barford Abbey (1768); although evidently available in the library, it was not actually borrowed. See App. 1 for Warwick novels.

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the Warwick library between 1770 and 1772: see App. 1. The records show Mary Clay’s interest in obtaining new fiction in the late 1770s: see the case studies later in this chapter. Together, Mary Chadwick Clay and John Latimer may be the most dedicated readers of fiction in all the Clay records, but neither case is sure. The example of Latimer does not offer unambiguous evidence of male readership for novels. In general, however, male readership of fiction is hard to establish except for schoolboys, since we are so ready to assume that men who buy or borrow it are doing so for wives or daughters or even mothers at home. But in some cases, we can determine that this assumption is inaccurate. For instance, Susannah Maria and Walter Ruding of Kineton declared to Samuel Clay at Warwick their separate readings of a new epistolary novel, the anonymous The Generous Inconstant (1771), on 5 and 21 October 1771. Presumably the anonymous ‘Officer at the Swan’ in Warwick who withdrew the first volume of The History of Miss Indiana Danby in September 1770 was billeted there briefly, without family. And at least one customer in Daventry, Henry Bagshaw Harrison, an attorney, was single when he bought thirty-three books from John Clay in 1758–9, including five novels. He seems not to have had any family in Daventry at this time. Once he married three years later, his altered condition appears to have extinguished his taste for reading or possibly his ability to afford it in time or money. The novels that Harrison chose to purchase before his marriage were Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1754), Edward Ward’s The London Spy (1698–1700), Charlotte Lennox’s Henrietta (1758), Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and Richard and Elizabeth Griffith’s A Series of Genuine Letters between Henry and Frances (1757); he also borrowed a translation of Charles de Fieux Mouhy’s La Paysanne Parvenue (1738), entitled The Fortunate Country Maid, from the Daventry shop’s library, smaller than Samuel Clay’s at Warwick (App. 1). He was a subscriber for fourteen months during this time to the Monthly Review, but apparently none of his purchases occurred under the immediate influence of a review. Harrison bought Robert Dodsley’s Cleone, a Tragedy (1758) before a review appeared in the Monthly, and obtained two of the five novels within six months to a year of their being favourably reviewed: Henrietta and Letters between Henry and Francis. His thirty remaining purchases were unreviewed within a year of acquisition, including such works as the three other novels, Jonathan Swift’s Tale of a Tub (1704), Haywood’s The Female

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Spectator (1744–6), John Pomfret’s poems, Rochester’s works, Joseph Davidson’s translations of Horace and Virgil, a history of Freemasonry, Theophilus Cibber’s Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland, various other plays including Ambrose Philips’s The Distressed Mother (1712) and Nicholas Rowe’s Jane Shore, a Tragedy (1714), and Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary (1755). Harrison continued to reside and practice law in Daventry, married in 1762, raised several children there, and sent to Rugby School two sons who bought children’s books and Robinson Crusoe. But Harrison himself never again subscribed to a review journal in the extant records and bought few other books from the Clays—almost exclusively law books and school books, presumably for his children. In fact, his eldest daughter ordered a copy of the Newbery Clarissa early in 1775, one of the few indications within the records that schoolgirls as well as schoolboys were interested in the Newbery books (NRO ML 89/33v ). Clearly, Harrison had been acquiring cultural capital by building a non-legal library in 1758–9, but he was not doing so through the Clays by the time the records resume in 1764. And as a bachelor, he apparently liked to own both new and classic works of fiction, including those written by women. Possibly Harrison may have ordered books after his marriage from London booksellers. This practice seems unlikely, however: a local attorney would prefer to patronize a local tradesman unless some quarrel had taken place, and Harrison purchased legal forms and paper from the Clays throughout his career. I have not been able to confirm that any other adult male purchaser or borrower of novels in the provinces was as free of female connections as he. But his example, taken together with Latimer’s behaviour, with the strong interest of young men (as schoolboys) in print gendered female (argued in Ch. 4), and with the evidence of adult male readership of the Lady’s Magazine (presented in Ch. 5), supports my contention that eighteenth-century men’s interest in fiction—even novels by women and about women—has been seriously underestimated in modern studies.⁶

⁶ Going further, St Clair contends for parallel reading among men and women: women’s commonplace books in the nineteenth century show that ‘the patterns of reading for women of the upper-income groups was much the same as that of men, and that it was much the same across the whole country, with some local additions in Scotland and Wales’ (Reading Nation, 119).

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A D U LT C U S TO M E R S O F T H E C L AY S A N D S T EV E N S This section will consider adult men and women customers for novels as recorded by Clay and Stevens. Admittedly, the combined records, extending from 1744 through 1807, are not fully comparable. Although the Stevens ledgers are continuous, from 1780 through part of 1807, they record fewer customers than do the discontinuous Clay records, including far fewer women and almost no schoolboys. The 1780s are effectively weighted in favour of the Clays though their records end by 1784 because they served more customers in more areas than Stevens did and because Stevens’s transactions are concentrated later in the decade. The greater numbers of customers in the surviving Clay day books from the 1770s yield figures higher in most categories than those for subsequent decades, a result that certainly misrepresents actual trends. Also the recorded Clay customers are drawn from a wider social spectrum than those of Stevens, as the Introduction points out. I have argued elsewhere that servants’ purchases from the Clays displayed intellectual curiosity as well as a desire for self-improvement. Male and female servants obtained similar reading matter, except for fiction. Samuel Hutchins, the manservant of Mr Wedding (possibly a farmer in Crick), paid to read volumes vii and viii of Richardson’s Clarissa and ordered Franc¸ois de Salignac de La Mothe F´enelon’s Telemachus, and the manservant of Mrs Brooke, an innkeeper in Daventry, borrowed volume vii of Clarissa only—the sole evidence from the Clay records that reading of novels extended to servants.⁷ But no woman servant purchased or borrowed novels—not even the exceptional Mrs Philippa Hayes of Charlecote, discussed in the next chapter. That is, I concur with St Clair that, in general, circulating libraries, even small, inexpensive, local ones like those of the Clays, ‘did little to deepen [access to reading] down the socio-economic scale’.⁸ Certainly, the Clay and Stevens records indicate that, overwhelmingly, men paid to buy and borrow fiction. Table 1.1.1 indicates that altogether, women bought 47 novels from the Clays and borrowed 67; ⁷ Jan Fergus, ‘Provincial Servants’ Reading in the Eighteenth Century’, James Raven, Helen Small, and Naomi Tadmor (eds.), The Practice and Representation of Reading in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 202–25; see especially tables 2 and 3. ⁸ St Clair, Reading Nation, 241.

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Table 1.1. Novels bought and borrowed; customers for all novels and for novels by women 1.1.1 Total numbers of novels bought and borrowed (novels written by women in parentheses): Novels

Women

Men

Total

Clay records∗ , adults: Bought Borrowed

47 (13) 67 (18)

184 (26) 153 (41)

231 (39) 220 (59)

Stevens records, adults: Bought 17 (4) Borrowed 12 (7)

231 (54) 84 (38)

248 (58) 96 (45)

schoolboys: Bought Borrowed

Rugby 75 (14) 113 (33)

Total 105 (20) 197 (42)

Men and Boys 520 (100) 434 (121) 954 (221)

Total 584 (117) 513 (146) 1097 (263)

Daventry 30 (6) 84 (9)

Novels obtained, all customers: Women Bought 64 (17) Borrowed 79 (25) Totals 143 (42)

1.1.2. Total numbers of individual customers who buy and borrow novels: Customers

Clay women men

Stevens

Schoolboys

total

All ∗

women men women men

Daventry Rugby Buy novels Borrow novels Buy and borrow

27 41 6

87 49 9

18 24 10

40 51 13

8 9 2

75 37 19

35 50 8

220 161 51

255 211 59

Total customers for novels

62

127

32

78

15†

93†

77

330

407

Total Customers for print

302

1,750

79

611

69

519

371

2,959 3,330

∗ Clay sales and customers for Daventry, Rugby, Lutterworth, and Warwick included; book clubs’ purchases appear under those for men and include 54 for Clay customers, 49 Stevens; but clubs are not counted among numbers of male customers. Warwick adult customers for publications come to 145 men and 45 women; no book clubs or schoolboys. Warwick customers for novels = 20 female borrowers, 2 female buyers (both also borrowed); 17 male borrowers, 3 male buyers, none who did both. † In addition, 24 women and 57 men patronized Stevens’ circulating library; withdrawals unknown.

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adult men bought 184 and borrowed 153. The Stevens results are even more lopsided and undoubtedly underrepresent women’s reading: women bought 17 novels and borrowed 12, men bought 231, borrowed 84. Schoolboys’ recorded interest in novels far outstripped recorded women’s, with a total of 105 purchases and 197 withdrawals. Table 1.1.2 tabulates customers and demonstrates that, even if we look at numbers of customers instead of numbers of purchases or borrowings, men still outnumber women (though less remarkably). Clay customers for novels include 7 all-male book clubs, 62 women, 127 adult men, and 110 schoolboys. Among adults, 41 women and 49 men borrowed novels, the closest that women come to matching men’s consumption of fiction within the records. Stevens’s customers for novels amount to ninetythree men and fifteen women altogether, plus three book clubs and the twenty-four women and fifty-seven men who were charged for reading in the circulating library, often at four shillings for three months. Thus, 77 provincial women bought and borrowed novels from the Clays and Stevens, compared to 220 adult men, or just under 26 per cent. Although women accounted, then, for a quarter of the adult customer base for fiction in these Midland areas, they accumulated just 13 per cent of the total transactions for novels (143 of 1,097). Even at best provincial women never actually reach parity with men as customers for novels, but they come closest as borrowers. In the Stevens records, women make up about 30 per cent of subscribers to the circulating library for periods of a month or so to a year (twentyfour of eighty-one), a much better showing than they make as buyers: no withdrawals are indicated, however, just subscription costs. In the Clay records, again, women most nearly equal men as borrowers of fiction. Their visibility here probably arises because the Clays meticulously noted borrowing, often indicating volume by volume who had what for how long. The Clays’ most ambitious circulating library, at Warwick, was the only one to attract more women than men as customers: twenty in nineteen months, out of more than three hundred credit customers, compared to seventeen male borrowers. If the Clay records for adults at Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth are added to those of Warwick, women closely follow men overall as patrons of the library (Table 1.1.1). Nonetheless, even borrowing novels—the cheapest way to obtain fiction, at 3d. a volume in Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth, as well as later in Cirencester, 2d. in Warwick, and the best way to leave a record in day books—does not reveal a predominantly female audience for fiction in the Midlands.

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Although women did not dominate the provincial market for novels, those that did buy or borrow fiction did so in greater proportions than men. That is, a woman entering the Clay or Stevens shops was more likely than a man to take away a novel, even though she seems much less likely to have entered the shop at all. Figures in Table 1.1.2 make clear that while 20.5 per cent of the Clays’ female customers for print consumed novels (62 of 302), just 7.3 per cent of adult men did so (127 of 1,750). Similarly, 22 per cent of Stevens’s female customers for printed matter can be shown to have bought or borrowed novels (15 of 69) compared with 18 per cent of his male clientele (93 of 519). Women who patronized the Clays’ shops in Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth were just as likely as men to subscribe to a magazine (see Ch. 5) but were nearly three times as likely to withdraw or purchase a novel—though subscribing was much more common to both sexes than was consuming novels. I have been implying here and elsewhere that buying and borrowing entail reading, but no such easy equation is possible, as we all know. Furthermore, the question of novels’ circulation among buyers and borrowers is complex. Many people could read a purchased book, and considerable evidence exists in letters and elsewhere indicating that in the eighteenth century books of all kinds were read aloud and lent about among friends.⁹ These could include borrowed books, though it is likely that such lending would occur within a small compass, probably within the borrower’s household. Such books may have been read aloud to the whole family when time permitted, although to do so without declaring multiple readings (as discussed later in this chapter) was not strictly fair. In the small communities that Stevens and the Clays served, however, customers may have been rather scrupulous, like the Rudings who paid separately for borrowing The Generous Inconstant in October 1771. And certain neighbours shared borrowed books but paid separately for them: Mr Hindes of Priors Hardwick and Peter La Roque, the clergyman there, borrowed two volumes of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy from John Clay shortly after they were published—and later did the same with Smollett’s Humphry Clinker. Men’s reading of novels in both sets of records is so much more voluminous than women’s that men abound whenever reading practices ⁹ Patricia Howell Michaelson has compellingly analysed accounts of oral reading of novels in the eighteenth century in Speaking Volumes: Women, Reading, and Speech in the Age of Austen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).

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are examined: they feature throughout sections in Ch. 2 on multiple readings and desultory readings of novels as well as in Ch. 5 as subscribers to magazines containing fiction and to serialized publications. All classes of men except labourers consumed novels—clergymen, medical men, schoolmasters, country gentlemen, tradesmen, servants—but as a rule professional men predominated. To take an extreme example, one particularly frequent borrower of novels was the clergyman of a parish adjoining Daventry, Francis Baker, the vicar of Staverton. He apparently was single although he could have shared his home with the two sisters who were his legatees. He withdrew Smollett’s Humphry Clinker (1771), Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), Ann Emelinda Skinn’s The Old Maid (1771), and volume i only of the anonymous Visiting Day (1768) in just three months, from November 1771 through January 1772, when he was about 70. He died in February 1773, after forty-two years in his parish.¹⁰ Baker was another seasonal reader like John Latimer, perhaps, for in the winter months of the previous set of records—February 1765 and October 1765 to February 1766—he had borrowed a number of travel and history volumes (among them a history of Virginia and a description of Holland) along with another five novels: Haywood’s Invisible Spy (1755); Thomas Amory’s John Buncle (1756); Fielding’s Amelia (1751), the anonymous Sir Harry Harald (1754); John Hill’s Adventures of George Edwards a Creole (1751), and the anonymous Leonora (1745). Baker had taken home John Clay’s catalogue of his books to lend prior to this borrowing spree and it would be reasonable to assume that he borrowed more in intervening years that are not represented in the records. But he appears not to have done so as a younger man in the 1750s, though he bought history, divinity, and other genres (not fiction). In any event, most clergymen and other professional men who borrowed fiction did so less often than Francis Baker. Those who bought it usually did so sparingly. Particularly sparing were non-professionals, such as the shopman of Stowe who bought Oliver Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield (1766); Mr Welch, a butcher, who bought the first seven numbers of Don Quixote in fascicles (1611); or a manservant to Mr Carpenter of Stowe who purchased Pilgrim’s Progress (1678–84), as did Mr Sharman of Lutterworth, a woolcomber who seems to have ¹⁰ Henry Isham Longden, Northamptonshire and Rutland Clergy from 1500, 15 vols. (Northampton: Archer & Goodman, 1938– ), i. 151, 153.

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ordered also Jonathan Edwards’s famous sermon, The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners sometime in 1776.¹¹ The many men who borrowed and bought fiction form so unwieldy a group that I have chosen to limit my consideration here to a particular audience: male Clay customers who subscribed to the Monthly and Critical Reviews. To focus on these men allows the interest of some in fiction to be examined in the context of their other reading. And to focus on subscribers is also to include the all-male book clubs, for most of them took at least one review journal. Book clubs like the Academical Society became increasingly prominent as buyers of novels over time; that is, they began to dominate the fiction market by the time the Clay records end.

M E N , R EV I EW S , A N D B O O K C LU B S The clubs have been studied in detail by Paul Kaufman, whose groundbreaking work is essential reading for any student of the eighteenthcentury reading public.¹² Normally consisting of some ten to twenty members who would pay a yearly fee (usually between ten shillings and a guinea), the book clubs met regularly to discuss books and decide what new books to order, to distribute the new books to each member in turn, and to auction all books to members at the end of the year.¹³ Generally, the clubs that patronized the Clay and Stevens bookshops were composed of gentlemen and professional men. The Academical Society comprised students and tutors at the Daventry Dissenting Academy. The Rugby Society did not include students but embraced tradesmen as well as clergymen, the booksellers Thomas and Samuel Clay among them. The societies located in or near Cirencester and served by Stevens were made up of gentlemen and clergymen, relieved by the occasional local merchant and, if Kaufman is right, by Stevens himself.¹⁴ Obviously, female relatives of these members could obtain access to club books, but the records can include no indication of their doing so. ¹¹ NRO ML 694/86r . ¹² Kaufman’s ‘The Community Library’ sums up much of his scattered work on book clubs, subscription libraries, proprietary libraries, and commercial circulating libraries. ¹³ Paul Kaufman, ‘English Book Clubs and Their Role in Social History’, Libri 14 (1964), 3. See also Kaufman’s study of the book clubs that Stevens served in ‘Bookseller’s Record’. ¹⁴ Kaufman, ‘Bookseller’s Record’, 285.

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The Clay and Stevens shops operated very efficiently. It was possible for a customer to place an order at Daventry—then seventy-two miles from London by road—and to receive the book in two weeks or occasionally less. At Stevens’s shop in Cirencester, eighty-nine miles from London, an order placed on 13 January 1789 was delivered and charged to the buyer on 21 January (A/428). Both review journals appeared at the end of the month, as did all magazines. In Daventry, a January review journal—or any other periodical dated January—would have been available at the earliest on 1 February, and probably not much later than that, for Daventry was located on a major road, and by 1791 various wagons and coaches made at least one trip each way between London and Daventry six days a week.¹⁵ Consequently, when in a joint project with Ruth Portner I studied the Clay book clubs, we decided to consider books reviewed in a January issue, for instance, and received by a subscriber from 15 February to 15 April, as ‘influenced’ purchases. Anything bought later, up to a year from the appearance of a review, we classified as a ‘reviewed’ book. Anything bought earlier we classed as an ‘eager’ purchase. And any book not reviewed during the twelve months before purchase we called ‘unreviewed’.¹⁶ Obviously, the times used to define these four categories were arbitrarily chosen. But we were not talking about very large numbers in any of the categories except unreviewed purchases.¹⁷ Those books not reviewed at all within a year of purchase amounted to over 70 per cent of 62 male review journal subscribers’ purchases from the Clays (out of a total of 533 books) and 45 per cent of book clubs’ purchases (from a total of 277 books). Altogether, we found that men were not particularly influenced in their book selections by the review journals, though book clubs were. The Clays’ book clubs tended to buy eight reviewed books (what we called ‘influenced’ and ‘reviewed’ works) for every ten unreviewed ones; ¹⁵ Peter Barfoot, The Universal British Directory of Trade, Commerce, and Manufacture (London, 1793), ii. 771. ¹⁶ Fergus and Portner, ‘Provincial Subscribers’, 157–76; what follows here condenses this article. ¹⁷ For example, most eager purchases were made well before reviews appeared. In the Clay records, only four purchases by individuals occurred within the two weeks immediately following the appearance of a review; we classified these as eager purchases. The six book club purchases made within the two weeks after a review appeared and thus not reasonably classifiable as ‘influenced’ buying we also considered eager purchases. Even if these were all to be classed as influenced rather than eager purchases, the totals would scarcely be altered: each category would then account for 10.5 per cent of publications sold rather than about 10 per cent (influenced) and 11 per cent (eager).

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individual men bought only four for every ten. Although individual subscribers actually bought more books overall than did the clubs, increasingly the clubs assumed greater importance as a market for new publications. Clubs obtained about one-third of the works purchased by all Clay subscribers to review journals, then, but they accounted for 57 per cent of purchases influenced by the appearance of a review. Furthermore, the clubs were also responsible for increased percentages of purchasing over time. Roughly, four book clubs purchased about 10 per cent of the novels sold to adults at Daventry, Rugby, Lutterworth, and Warwick before 1770, but six clubs amassed about 20 per cent afterward, doubling the clubs’ share of the fiction market. In the 1790s—the decade best represented in the Stevens records—just two book clubs were operative, but they bought over a quarter of all the novels sold on credit in that decade (26 of 101). Modern students of book history take for granted that circulating libraries absorbed and even produced the majority of all new novels. In his study of anonymous fiction published between 1750 and 1830, for instance, James Raven remarks that most of these novels ‘were soon left to gather dust, summarily disposed of, or returned, after brief reading, to the fashionable circulating libraries for which so many of them were chiefly written’.¹⁸ But historians may overestimate the libraries’ importance in the market outside London. As provincial book clubs, with their great interest in obtaining new publications, began to proliferate and to constitute a large proportion of the audience, they may have provided publishers with a more reliable market for new works, even new fiction, than did the provincial circulating libraries. What was most surprising in this study was how limited the review journals’ influence seemed to be upon men’s purchases. In his study of print and readership in the romantic period, St Clair reached similar conclusions: ‘I can discern no correlation between reviews, reputations, and sales, or between contemporary and later reputations.’¹⁹ A study of actual provincial readers’ behaviour in the mid-eighteenth century produces a similar result. We could attribute only a little over £8 of male Clay subscribers’ purchases to the review journals’ influence—along with £11 of book clubs’ purchases—in over fourteen years of recorded ¹⁸ James Raven, ‘The Anonymous Novel in Britain and Ireland, 1750–1830’, in Robert J. Griffin (ed.), The Faces of Anonymity: Anonymous and Pseudonymous Publication from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 141. ¹⁹ St Clair, Reading Nation, 189.

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buying.²⁰ These sums represent a minute proportion of the Clays’ overall sales of printed matter. In just one month, October 1747, for instance, John Clay sold publications worth almost £39 at Daventry, and in October 1779, his son Thomas’s sales were worth over £33.²¹ Even if we were to conflate reviewed with influenced buying—thus making allowance for buyers who might have left their review journals lying around for months before they placed orders—we would still not be able to attribute great influence to the journals. They would thereby affect about 17 per cent of men’s buying (under £22) and 36 per cent of book clubs’ (under £18). The review journals’ limited influence is especially evident in individual cases among the Clays’ customers. At one extreme, Benjamin Warren, the curate of Bugbrooke, seems to have subscribed to the Monthly for more than twenty-two years.²² But Warren bought only seven books in the scattered eight and a half years for which Daventry records survive—along with at least parts 20–82 of a serialized edition of Smollett’s History of England ; he also paid 2s. in 1758 to read Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit des Lois (1748). Just two of his books were bought in consequence of a review: a translation from the German of A Compendious History of the Popes by C. W. F. Walch (1759), reviewed in June 1759 and bought for 5s. on 1 August of that year, and Jakob von Staehlin’s An Account of the New Northern Archipelago (1774), noticed in the October 1774 issue and purchased for 2s. 6d. on 27 November 1774. Two were bought eagerly: Temple Henry Croker’s The Satires of Ludovico Ariosto (1759) and William Dalrymple’s Travels through Spain and Portugal (1777). The only evidence for the presence of fiction in Warren’s home, besides the excerpts printed in the Monthly, lies in his sister’s subscription to the Town and Country Magazine in the 1770s. More surprisingly, William Basely, a maltster of Daventry, took the Critical for more than ten years (from at least January 1770 to August 1780), but bought no other publications from the Clays. At the other extreme, none of Henry Bagshaw Harrison’s thirty-three book ²⁰ Admittedly, subscribers may have been ordering books directly from London. But given the Clays’ and Stevens’s efficiency in filling orders, however, probably only those members of the gentry who also resided in London for part of the year placed orders there. ²¹ Fergus and Portner, ‘Provincial Bookselling’, 160 (table 2.1). ²² See Ch. 5 for a consideration of how uninterrupted subscriptions can be inferred from the records despite their frequent gaps.

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choices, made while he subscribed to the Monthly for fourteen months in 1758–9, was immediately influenced by a review. Or to take an even more striking example of provincial book-buying that seems to have very little to do with the review journals: Peter La Roque, the clergyman of Priors Hardwick who joined with Mr Hindes of the same parish in borrowing fiction by Sterne and Smollett, was a devoted but rather finicky subscriber to review journals between 1758 and 1780. He began with the Monthly, had changed to the Critical by 1764, took that until the end of 1774, tried the newly issued London Review for one month in 1775 (as a few other customers did), switched back to the Critical, and then reverted to the Monthly by 1779. All this chopping and changing, exceptional among subscribers to review journals, was not accompanied by any great dependency on the reviewers’ opinions: he bought thirty-six books (no fiction), twenty-nine as a Critical subscriber, but only three were influenced purchases: John Lawson’s Occasional Sermons (1764), Richard Cumberland’s comedy The West Indian (1771), and Hugh Blair’s Sermons (vol. i, 1777). Although a letter in the Public Advertiser for Thursday, 14 May 1761, signed P.D. and dated from York, asserted that ‘You must know, we Country Readers are apt to be guided in the Choice of Books and Pamphlets by the Decisions of our Periodical Critics, scarce ever venturing to purchase without the Sanction of their Opinion’, for Harrison and La Roque and other subscribers, the review journals must have served some purpose other than to ‘guide’ purchasing of books.²³ No doubt, as do modern counterparts, the journals offered sheer entertainment and permitted readers to keep abreast of intellectual life in the metropolis. St Clair has argued that, unlike circulating libraries, book clubs and reading societies did not really begin to order novels until Walter Scott’s were published early in the nineteenth century.²⁴ But all-male book clubs did obtain a wide variety of novels long before Scott’s were published. The Lutterworth Society in 1779 bought Samuel Jackson Pratt’s Shenstone Green (1779), Richard Graves’s Columella (1779), and Frances Burney’s Evelina (1778); see Ch. 4 for the Academical Society’s purchases of novels. Stevens recorded that the three book clubs he served ordered at least forty-six novels between 1788 and 1803, ten titles being ordered by two clubs each: Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho, John Moore’s Zeluco and Mordaunt, Richard Cumberland’s ²³ I am grateful to Antonia Forster for bringing this letter to my attention. ²⁴ St Clair, Reading Nation, table 13.1, p. 263.

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Henry, Frances Burney’s Camilla, James Henry Pye’s The Democrat, Jane West’s Tale of the Times and Infidel Father, Egerton Brydges’s Arthur Fitz-Albini, and George Walker’s The Vagabond (see App. 2).²⁵ True, novels were not major acquisitions among Stevens’s book clubs: just nine were bought during 1786–9, twenty-four during 1790–9, and thirteen during 1800–6, but purchases seem to have increased in the 1790s, an important decade for novels.²⁶ Favourable reviews of novels and other works did seem to exert some positive influence on purchases by both clubs and individuals. About 40 per cent of the relatively few influenced purchases overall resulted from long, favourable reviews and another 40 per cent from short, favourable ones. Some 20 per cent of these purchases, then, were made despite mixed or unfavourable reviews. Altogether, the six novels that were bought under the influence of a review approximate these proportions: four reviews were favourable and two were mixed or negative. Positive reviews appeared for the anonymous Anecdotes of a Convent (1771, bought by the Daventry Society of Clergymen on 17 September 1771), Smollett’s Humphry Clinker (1771, taken by the Revd Mr Graham of Newbold Pacey, a Warwick customer and subscriber to the Monthly), Henry Brooke’s Juliet Grenville: or, the History of the Human Heart (1774, purchased by the Academical Society on 22 February 1774), and A. Roger’s The History of Miss Temple (1777, Academical Society 7 October 1777). More interesting are the two purchases that were influenced by ‘mixed’ reviews combining favourable and unfavourable judgements: The History of Miss Indiana Danby (1765) and The Tears of Sensibility (1773). The notices of these two novels also underline the different practices—and entertainment value—of the Monthly and the Critical Reviews. The Critical is far more scathing, detailed, judgemental, and hilarious. The Academical Society obtained the anonymous History of ²⁵ St Clair relies in part on Paul Kaufman’s ‘Bookseller’s Record’ for his assertion that clubs did not order novels: Kaufman, for instance, finds no fiction titles among the 147 that he transcribes for the years 1788 and 1794, the Bibury and Fairford societies (actually the same), and 1791 for the Cirencester book club, which goes by several names in the records. He notes too the societies’ purchases did not duplicate each other and that no works by Burney or Moore are recorded (Reading Nation, 285). But these findings reflect Kaufman’s choice to tabulate only three years, so he misses two purchases of Burney and five of Moore. ²⁶ Kaufman, ‘Bookseller’s Record’, counts 561 publications purchased by the two clubs in the nearly eight years represented before 1794, so that the ten novels taken then represented just 2 per cent of purchases (283).

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Miss Indiana Danby by 28 August 1765, despite access to the June 1765 Monthly reviewer’s displeasure ‘with the Heroine’s unfortunate and unmerited Catastrophe’.²⁷ The Monthly’s short mixed review concluded, however, with bland praise of the novel’s ‘natural and affecting’ incidents. The Critical instead parodied the clich´es of the ‘vile and improbable … story’ with fascinated relish: ‘the bride and bridegroom [prove] to be brother and sister—Hey!—what’s to be done now? Puleing work.’²⁸ Conversely, the Monthly gave The Tears of Sensibility, translated by John Murdoch from D’Arnaud’s work containing four short novels, a somewhat more severe short notice than did the Critical. But its critique produced only insipid generalities that could be applied indiscriminately to many other works. The Critical seems at first more appreciative, judging three of the four short novels in The Tears of Sensibility ‘truly pathetic’, but becomes more detailed and funnier than the Monthly about its faults: We should be better pleased were not some of the incidents beyond the reach of probability … for instance … where lady Harriet, having the curiosity to follow her husband, saw him go into a field and labour the ground yoked to a plough … [and] the farmer tells the unfortunate lady, that with the money her husband cost him, he could maintain a pair of oxen which would do more service to him.²⁹

This brief quotation takes up about one-third of the review, which concludes, ‘the work will probably be no unacceptable present to the public’. It is hard to imagine what moved Henry Pepperell, a clergyman and a Critical subscriber, to buy The Tears of Sensibility on 21 April 1773, having just been exposed to this mixed notice in the March issue, unless perhaps a rich sense of humour. Chapter 5 will show that he tied with one other customer for the distinction of subscribing to most magazines, fifteen at various times. Print was evidently important in his family (including a wife, son, and daughter). Pepperell was also a fairly devoted consumer of novels: he purchased seven in the 1770s, from a canonical work like the Pilgrim’s Progress to other acquisitions like Jean-Louis Carra’s Cecilia, or the Eastern Lovers (1773, bought in 1777), William Guthrie’s The Mother, or the Happy Distress (1759, acquired 1771), the first volume of a scandalous history, The Memoirs of Miss Arabella Bolton (1770, acquired in that year), Le Pileur d’Apligny’s The ²⁷ Monthly 32 (1765), 480. ²⁹ Ibid. 35 (1773), 233.

²⁸ Critical 19 (1765), 468.

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Hermit of the Rock (1779, acquired 1780), and William Tooke’s The Loves of Othniel and Achsah (1769, acquired 1770). Pepperell was the sole customer for all these works except Pilgrim’s Progress and Arabella Bolton. Strikingly, the first two of these novels were not ‘novel’, not new: the market for these little-known male-authored works endured for some years at least. Obviously, booksellers’ records can yield only the crudest behavioural definition of buying influenced by a review journal, as in the case of Henry Pepperell’s purchase of The Tears of Sensibility. They can take no account of taste, judgement, word of mouth, or even whim—what we often call impulse buying.

P ROV I N C I A L WO M E N R E A D E R S Only one woman reader in all these provincial records subscribed to a review journal: Mrs Shellard, a clergyman’s widow, who obtained through Stevens first the Monthly (1787–8), then at least the Critical (1791–3), and finally the British Critic (1793 until her death in 1797). Although her subscriptions lasted nearly eight years, she purchased little else, primarily devotional books and many copies of Cheap Repository Tracts. She borrowed one novel, however, Mary Meeke’s Abbey of Clugny, plus two unnamed volumes. In subscribing to a review journal, Mrs Shellard was unique among these Midland women, but in choosing to obtain printed matter primarily in the form of a subscription to a periodical she was quite typical.³⁰ The raw numbers for women readers of novels and plays confirm that provincial women do not constitute a particularly large or broad market for fiction in the last half of the eighteenth century. The 111 women altogether who took magazines from the Clays in Daventry, Rugby, Lutterworth, and Warwick represent the widest female market for any form of fiction among the Clay or Stevens customers. By contrast, as Table 1.1.2 summarizes, novels attracted sixty-two female Clay customers, twenty-seven who bought and forty-one who borrowed (six women belonged to both groups).³¹ Nine women among Stevens’s customers borrowed novels, eight bought them, for a total of fifteen readers, since two did both. And sixteen more women who did not otherwise buy ³⁰ GRO A/333; B/261, 394; C/7, 142. ³¹ Most of the material in this section is drawn from ‘Women Readers’, 155–76, whose numbers are slightly smaller.

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or borrow fiction were charged with ‘reading’ at various times in the library—no titles were given. Because Stevens’s surviving records do not include his magazine ledger book, neither Mrs Shellard’s subscription nor the others indicated in the ledgers appear among statistics for magazines. Stevens’s groups of fiction readers overlapped perhaps a bit more than the Clays’ buyers and borrowers did, but the numbers are too small to warrant the conclusion that, later in the century, women who were interested in one form of prose fiction were likely to be interested in others. Records of Stevens’s customers’ borrowings do permit us to infer somewhat more female novel reading, however, than is initially evident. Altogether, eight of the fifteen customers for novels were among the twenty-four women charged with unspecified reading in the library. These women may not actually have been borrowing fiction from the library, but certainly Stevens stocked a number of novels, and in the 1780s and 1790s, novel production was increasing.³² In the earlier Clay records, however, all four different sets of female fiction consumers—buyers of novels, borrowers of novels, buyers of drama, and subscribers to magazines—remain essentially separate as well as quite small. The greatest proportion of each group does not intersect with any other group. This is especially true of the two largest segments of the market, subscribers and borrowers—those who were obtaining fiction cheaply—in the Clay records, at sixpence a copy for a magazine or twopence or threepence a volume for borrowed novels. For instance, if all the Clays’ women subscribers are considered, including those in Warwick that for various reasons are omitted from Ch. 5, it appears that about 76 per cent of female subscribers (84 of 111) apparently obtained no other fiction from the Clays in any form.³³

C A S E S T U D I E S O F WO M E N C U S TO M E R S All groups of buyers and borrowers seem, in the end, quite abstract and disembodied without some sense of how individual women behaved. I have therefore analysed in detail the purchasing of two women from each class—the gentry, the professional classes, tradeswomen and farmers’ wives, plus one servant. I have restricted myself to the more numerous ³² James Raven’s ‘Historical Introduction’ cites 655 novels first published in the 1790s in London, compared to 378 in the 1780s: table 11, p. 72. ³³ See Fergus ‘Women Readers’, fig. 3, p. 161.

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and varied Clay customers and have chosen in each of the first three classes one woman who bought or borrowed a good deal and one who did not. These women are also those whose lives I have been able to document in part from sources outside the Clay records. Most striking here is that women in all classes tended to buy or borrow most as widows or as single women—recalling the behaviour of Henry Bagshaw Harrison while unmarried. We can see this tendency particularly well by looking at one gentry woman who purchased a good many novels and especially plays (and borrowed novels also), Jane Williamson of Eydon. She was a daughter of Lucy Knightley of Fawsley, who died in 1738 when Jane was 12. The Knightleys were a very old county family.³⁴ A series of accounts and letters, including a rather brisk one from Jane herself, probably to her aunt Deborah Knightley, detail the items of dress necessary for a young gentlewoman at about the time that Richardson’s Pamela (1740) was published. Indeed, the list might almost have been written by that fictional teenager herself: Honrd Madam the things we want are as Follows Shoes for our best & for every day: Stockings: flannel & dimity petticoats: quilted coats: Gloves: fans: white Necklaces Pockets & Pockethandkerchiefs: hoops Night caps: hair caps: Powder & pommatom: pins: narrow & broad Ribbons & flowers laces: threads: bindings & tape: Buckles. Garters. bobing our best Suits of Linnen & Caps must be wash’d & made up for the ball: at the Milleners if you think proper My Sister [Lucy] joins with me in Duty who am Your affectionate Neice [sic] Jane Knightley PS I beg you will excuse the writing³⁵

Books became attractive purchases only later. Jane’s husband Richard Williamson was a captain in the Northamptonshire militia and bought the manor of Eydon in 1750; it was located nine miles from Daventry. ³⁴ See Barron, Northamptonshire Families, 169–207, for the Knightleys of Fawsley, 193–4 for Jane Knightley and her immediate family. ³⁵ NRO Th 1161; the bills indicate that the girls’ aunt Deborah Knightley expended nearly £50 for Jane and Lucy Knightley, including these outlays, between 19 February 1738 and 20 April 1739, and including a ‘Year’s Board’ for Jane at £40 in 1739.

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They had ten children baptized between 1753 and 1764; only four survived. Richard Williamson died in 1768; he bought just Lesage’s The Devil upon Two Sticks in translation in the surviving records. Jane Williamson’s purchasing did not begin until she became a widow and the lady of the manor of Eydon.³⁶ She subscribed to John Wheble’s Lady’s Magazine for at least two months before the records end with the January 1772 issue; she borrowed Brooke’s The Fool of Quality (5 vols., 1765–70) in 1774, in the same year that she purchased Giovanni Marana’s The Turkish Spy (1684), and five years later the novel Village Memoirs by Joseph Cradock (2 vols., 1765; 2nd edn. 1775). Above all, she bought plays: so many that she had at least eight volumes bound between 1773 and 1779. The records specify only eight titles, however, all of them classic plays, bought in this order: Richard Steele’s Conscious Lovers, Susanna Centlivre’s Busy Body, John Vanbrugh’s Provoked Wife, Steele’s Tender Husband, William Congreve’s Plain Dealer, George Villiers’s Rehearsal, Thomas Southerne’s Oroonoko, and Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserved. Drama was evidently her preferred form of fiction, though she obtained all forms.³⁷ Jane Williamson was reasonably well off; a fortune of £6,000 was held in trust for her.³⁸ Not all gentry women were in her position. In Sarah Scott’s novel Millenium Hall (1762), we learn that for gentlewomen of reduced means, ‘retirement in a country town’ is the conventional recourse.³⁹ Mary and Frances Westley, two unmarried sisters who almost certainly belonged in this marginal category, lived in Rugby, a country town, and borrowed the eight volumes of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa over a three-and-a-half-month period in 1768. Their only purchase in the seven and a half years before 1784 that the Rugby records cover also occurred in 1768: a Ladies’ Diary for 1769 on 10 December 1768. At some time before April 1768, they had also obtained Francis Gastrell’s Christian Institutes (1707) as well as two copies of the often-reprinted New Week’s Preparation for a Worthy Receiving of the Lord’s Supper (orig. 1737; 2s. each), but had not yet paid for them; they did so at some time before August 1770. The Westley sisters apparently did not spend ³⁶ NRO D3362. ³⁷ Two households rival Jane Williamson’s in the acquisition of plays. That of Catherine Huddesford is discussed later in this section. Those purchased by Miss Smith and her relative John, customers of Timothy Stevens, are discussed in Ch. 2. ³⁸ NRO Th 84. ³⁹ Sarah Scott, A Description of Millenium Hall and the Country Adjacent, ed. Gary Kelly (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 1995), 121.

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much money on books. They had each been left a fortune of £200 in a draft of their father’s will, made in 1710 when that sum was more substantial than it later became.⁴⁰ The sisters evidently lived on interest; Frances wrote to her connection George Pearson: ‘I am obliged to you for yr takeing thought about my money, but I cant say I approve of purchasing a Fen Estate I had rather have it out at less interest nigher home wch I hope I shall soon have an opportunity to do.’ Low interest on £400 would yield so small a yearly income—no more than £20—that the sisters most likely had more money. They offered in 1763, for instance, to pay ten pounds toward the cost of their nephew Littleton Westley’s education at Rugby School; Littleton bought nothing but school supplies while there, 1763–5. Seven years earlier, the Westley sisters had been able to discharge their nieces’ school fees, although they required reimbursement from the girls’ guardian Pearson. The letters are circumstantial about money and education but have almost nothing to say about books: the only reference occurs when Frances asks George Pearson to ‘send ye other voll: of [Defoe’s] ye tour through great Britain & I will return them together’.⁴¹ The series of letters stops before the sisters borrow Clarissa in 1768. On the whole, professionals rather than the gentry were the Clays’ and Stevens’s best customers for books, a consequence perhaps of the gentry’s greater access to print from other sources. I suspect that many of them were obtaining books from London booksellers or at watering places on visits. Certainly one gentry woman, not a Clay customer, did so: Miss Mary Orlebar of Ecton kept a list of ‘Books Read’ for the years 1789–1820, between the ages of 59 and 90. She borrowed books from over forty-one members of the gentry and clergy in her neighbourhood, most of them women. By contrast, she obtained only seven books altogether from circulating libraries in all that time. Obviously, booksellers’ records can tell only a small part of the story of provincial reading. And even when parish and bookselling records speak more eloquently than usual, interpretation remains difficult. My favourite such example is a clergyman’s wife—Mrs Freeman of Long Buckby, formerly Edith Hanwell—who ordered volumes iii and iv of Pamela sometime in 1765. Her wish to own these tomes, guides to proper wifely behaviour in every ⁴⁰ See NRO D2925/2r for billing; for will, WCRO CR 2405/26. In this draft, William Westley describes himself as a gentleman. ⁴¹ WCRO CR 2806/57, 25 February 1758; WCRO CR 2806/69, 15 January 1764. For Littleton Westley’s school bills, see NRO D3412/110, ML 691/20; for the letter offering help, WCRO CR 2806/63, 26 January 1763.

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conceivable trying circumstance, is highly amusing given her subsequent history. She was about 24 when she ordered Richardson’s didactic work, and beginning some five or six years later (we are told by the 1814 burial records for Long Buckby), she ‘from an obstinant temper kept to her Bed 44 years’.⁴² Her husband, vicar of the parish, withdrew the whole of Grandison in 1770, apparently the year in which she took to her bed, as if to try what Richardson could do in this crisis. He may have given the novelist another chance the next year when he ordered a second-hand seven-volume edition of Clarissa, or perhaps not.⁴³ Was Edith Hanwell exercising passive resistance, refusing the wifely duties assigned to her, or was she simply passive, embracing a quality increasingly enjoined on women in this period? Catherine Huddesford, a wealthy clergyman’s wife living at Bourton upon Dunsmore, was the most dedicated female purchaser of all kinds of fiction that the Clay records document. Between April 1768 and August 1770, one Rugby day book documents her purchases of ten plays, nine novels, and at least twenty-four other works, including poetry, politics, history, voyages, divinity, and the widely bought New Manual of Devotion. All but one of the novels were purchased within a year of publication, five of the ten plays within three months of their first appearance on stage in London.⁴⁴ Her husband William was purchasing books too, ⁴² NRO 197P/20. For the order of Pamela, see NRO ML 692/14r . ⁴³ St Clair conjectures that the sale of second-hand novels and other works by booksellers may have been restricted during the ‘high monopoly period’ between 1710 and 1774 (Reading Nation, 240), and I have found no evidence that contradicts him. The Clays did sell second-hand editions of novels and other works but on the few occasions when prices were indicated, they show no profit: see p. 107 on the passing of John Warren’s copy of Joseph Andrews to William Hughes in 1770. But for evidence that second-hand sales could offer a living, however scanty, to at least one itinerant salesman in this area, see Fergus and Portner, ‘Case of John Clay’, 157. ⁴⁴ Catherine Huddesford’s book purchases, 1768–70 (D2925) using month/day/year dating—Plays: 12/17/68, Bickerstaffe, Hypocrite; 1/27/70, Colman the elder, Man and Wife or Shakespeare Jubilee; 1/27/70, Cumberland, Brothers; 1/7/69, Dow, Zingis; 6/18/68, Hartson, Countess of Salisbury; 1/7/69, Hoole, Cyrus; 1/7/69, Howard, Almeyda; 12/3/68, Johnson, Medea; 6/18/68, Kenrick, Widowed Wife; 6/18/68, Portal, Indiscreet Lovers. Novels: 9/17/68, Sheridan, History of Nourjahad half bound; 9/17/68, Light Summer Reading for the Ladies, 3 vols.; 11/5/68, Orphan Daughter, 2 vols. stitched; 11/5/68, True Delicacy, 2 vols.; 1/28/69, History Amintor and Teresa; 4/15/69, Smollett, Adventures of an Atom, 2 vols., boards; 8/26/69, Brooke, Emily Montague, half bound; 5/19/70, Atkyns, The Hermit, 2 vols.; 8/4/70, Bridges, Adventures of a Bank Note, 6s. Other, quoting Clay’s own titles: 4/9/68 Dodd’s Testament (serialized); 4/16/68 Young’s Works, 5th vol., 3s.; 6/18/68 Wheeldon’s Sacred Pollutions, 1s.6d., and Amyntor and Theodora, 2s.; 6/25/68 Byron’s Voyage sewed 4s.6d.; 10/8/69 The Festoon [miscellany], 2s.6d., and The Happy Life or the Contented Man, printed for Hinton 3s.; 12/17/68

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though less frequently, and partially through his membership in the Rugby Book Society (he ordered Charlotte Lennox’s play The Sister for the Society, for instance). Together the Huddesfords acquired a library large enough to make it worth Catherine Huddesford’s while to get John Clay to value the books after her husband’s death on 23 January 1770.⁴⁵ William Huddesford had earlier bought a few books from John Clay’s Daventry shop in 1746–8, when he resided at Leamington Hastings; he removed to Bourton at some point, nearer to the Rugby shop. When its surviving records begin, in 1768, both William and Catherine were frequent customers although neither seems ever to have borrowed books or subscribed to magazines from the Clays. Catherine did not survive her husband long: although she was still buying books from the Clays as late as May 1770, she was buried a year later in the same parish. In the meantime, however, she had moved away from the Clays’ area to another Warwickshire parish, Allesley, with her four surviving daughters, the eldest 32 and the youngest 16, and her son William who had acted as his father’s curate for several years before his death. She was probably accompanied there by Elizabeth Hands, the plebeian poet who later published The Death of Amnon (1789). Hands is known to have served the Huddesfords. Aged about 24 at the time of the Huddesfords’ move to Allesley, Hands married in 1785 a blacksmith from Bourton and asserted in an advertisement for her volume that she had had access to books ‘in the Families to which She was a Servant’—certainly including the Huddesfords’ books.⁴⁶ The family was evidently wealthy, and perhaps the children continued after their parents’ death to build a library, but if so no evidence remains. When Elizabeth Huddesford, the last of the unmarried daughters, died aged 92 on 6 April 1836, her will was sworn ‘under £16, 000’ for the purpose of legacy Letters on the State of the French Nation, 5s.; 1/7/69 New Manual of Devotion, 3s.; 1/14/69 History of Greece, 4s.; 2/15/69 Letters on Several Parts of Europe, 2 vols., 10s., and Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 3 vols., bound calf, 10s.6d.; 7/29/69 Shenstone’s Works, 2 vols., Scotch edition, 5s.; 10/21/69 History of England, 2 vols., 6s.; 11/4/69 Shenstone’s Works, vol. 3, bound calf, 3s.6d.; 11/21/69 Great Events from Little Causes, 3s.; 12/9/69 Travels of a Philosopher, translated, sewed, 2s.6d.; 2/3/70 Works of Marchioness de Lamberts, 2 vols., 6s.; 3/31/70 Price on Morals, half bound, 5s.6d., and Price’s Dissertation, 6s.; 6/9/70 History of the Peace at Belgrade, 6s.; 6/16/70 Deserted Village, 2s.; order: Full History of the Duke of Cumberland, 2 vols., bound, 6s., 52v , and The Trial of the Duke of Cumberland, 1s.6d., 52v bespoke section. ⁴⁵ 45 NRO D2925/54r . ⁴⁶ See Cynthia Dereli, ‘In Search of a Poet: The Life and Work of Elizabeth Hands’, Women’s Writing 8 (2001), 170 and 180 n. 6, for Hands’s birth date and for the quotation from Jopson’s Coventry Mercury of 24 November 1788.

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duty.⁴⁷ That sum represents a close approximation of the value of her cash, shares, and furniture. The real estate that Elizabeth also bequeathed was not dutiable, so its value is not included in the £16,000 estimate. One of the more interesting professional buyers of fiction was Mistress Ann Harris, later Mrs Fraunces, primarily because her buying was—unlike Catherine Huddesford’s—so limited and very much confined to her spinsterhood and widowhood. The daughter of a former bailiff and burgess of Daventry, she bought the first volume only of Robinson Crusoe on 31 December 1746 for a shilling. Five days earlier, she had obtained a ninepenny Crusoe (a chapbook) along with a ninepenny Guy, Earl of Warwick. At this time she was 35, which accounts for her being styled ‘mistress’ though she was single. Two years later, on 19 December 1748, she married Joseph Fraunces, an apothecary in Daventry. He was ambitious enough to develop and advertise ‘Fraunces’s Female Strengthening Elixir’ in the Northampton Mercury (21 February 1757) as retailed by ‘the Patentee’ in Daventry and by other agents in London and Northampton; it is alleged to be effective against ‘the Fluox Albus, or what is vulgarly called the Whites; a Disorder to which Women of all Ages and Constitutions are liable’. A tendency to blur gender boundaries is evident (and makes good marketing sense) in the assertion that the elixir is good for men too: ‘In the other Sex, in all Relaxations of the Seminal Vessels, and Weakness of the Genital Parts, from whatever Causes arising, it will be [f]ound a most efficacious Restorative and Strengthener.’ Whatever the success of his elixir, Joseph Fraunces died after fourteen years of wedlock, and the only child of the marriage, Elizabeth, died six years later at age 18. Curiously enough, however, after her marriage Ann Fraunces only once showed any interest in fiction in the more than seven years that the records cover: a query on 23 June 1777, asks whether she read the two volumes of Hugh Kelly’s Memoirs of a Magdalen (1767; NRO ML 88) for sixpence. The uncertainty is not explicitly resolved in the records, but she was charged 6d. for reading them. At this time, Ann Fraunces had been a widow for fifteen years. Before the marriage, her husband bought only a ‘Philosophical Analysis of Antimony’ (8 August 1747, 1s.) and two gardening books thereafter (21 March 1759, April 1759, 18s. and 4s.). It was highly unusual for an apothecary or other medical man not to buy recent medical works. After her husband’s death, Ann Fraunces bought Great Importance of a Religious Life (9 Jan. 1772, ⁴⁷ WCRO CR 1709/285/2.

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2s. 8d.) and a number of other devotional works, Every Man His Own Vermin Killer (5 November 1771, 1s. 6d.), Klopstock’s three-volume Messiah (23 November 1773, 9s.), an Abridgement of the History of the Bible (2 November 1774), and at least one yearly almanac. In 1777, the year in which she may have read Kelly’s novel, she took the serialized version of Charles Middleton’s New and Complete System of Geography (1777), thus becoming one of few women to subscribe to a serialized publication (see Ch. 5). Neither Ann Fraunces nor her husband ever subscribed to magazines through the Clays. They enjoyed at least a middling degree of prosperity, however, as indicated by the sale of Ann Fraunces’s household goods after her death. The Northampton Mercury’s advertisement twenty days after she was buried on 4 January 1780, aged 68, mentions ‘Goose Feather Beds, with Moreen and other Hangings; Pier and Dressing Glasses; Mahogany and Walnut-tree Chairs … a good Spinnet’, and so forth; the absence of a library for sale is consistent with the Fraunces’s scarce orders for books. Tradeswomen or farmer’s wives who bought or borrowed novels are sparse in the records. So far, only ten have emerged among the Clay customers, along with two probable readers among Stevens’s. Two of these customers are actually Clays themselves: Samuel Clay’s wife Mary and John Clay’s cousin Elizabeth Clay.⁴⁸ If I am right that Mary Chadwick Clay acquired a substantial library of novels before her marriage in 1770, and that Samuel Clay circulated them later in Warwick and Rugby, then she is one of the few women who does seem to support contemporary accusations by men that women—especially women in the middling ranks—were spending considerable time (and money) on fiction. But if so, her purchases dropped off somewhat after marriage, as other women’s did. She was the sole purchaser of four new novels from her brother-in-law Thomas Clay in Rugby between 1779 and 1781: Coxheath-Camp: A Novel. In a series of Letters, which she first borrowed and then bought in 1779, its year of publication. She ordered three other new novels in 1781: Distressed Virtue (1781), Gilham Farm (1781), and ⁴⁸ Apart from the Clays and the Brookes already mentioned, tradesmen’s and farmers’ wives among the Clay customers for fiction include Mrs Adams (who inherited her husband’s carrier business); Miss Mary Berry, an innkeeper’s daughter; Mrs Fowler, a butcher; Mrs Catherine Hickman, a farmer’s wife; and in Warwick, Mrs Allen, a patten-maker, and Mrs Parkes, a draper’s wife. In addition, Stevens charged Elizabeth Selfe, a clothier’s wife, for reading during 1788 but the books are not specified (GRO Stevens A/63); Miss Haines, probably a tradesman’s daughter, borrowed Ellis Cornelia Knight’s Marcus Flamineus and bought Rasselas from Stevens.

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Lady Eliza Audley (1779; a retranslation of an earlier fiction). Mary Clay subscribed through Thomas Clay to the Novelist’s Magazine in 1779–80 and is listed as a subscriber to Elizabeth Hands’s Death of Amnon (1789) and to Jane West’s Miscellaneous Poems and a Tragedy (1791). At that time Mary Clay and her husband were living next to Rugby in Bilton, the parish where Joseph Addison’s daughter lived until her death. Sarah Brooke, however, the widow of an innkeeper in Daventry, shows a taste for fiction coupled with practical works and divinity—a taste evident also in members of the professional classes such as Catherine Huddesford and in the gentry as well. The Wheat Sheaf, one of the town’s largest inns, had been operated by several generations of Brookes since before 1721. Sarah Brooke gave birth to six children between 1753 and 1759; if we remember Jane Williamson’s ten births in eleven years, we will not be surprised that like her, Mrs Brooke bought no print from the Clays in the surviving records during her childbearing years. After her husband’s death in 1764, Sarah Brooke for at least sixteen years managed the inn. The management had passed by 1784 to the husband of her daughter Frances, John Ashworth, whom she was then wishing to sue. During the 1770s, the Wheat Sheaf paid tax on 119 windows, amounting to £12. 0s. 1d. for each year.⁴⁹ It was evidently a large and prosperous establishment. In 1746–8 and 1758–9, Sarah Brooke does not appear as a Clay customer. Her husband John did buy two books: a rather ominous medical work, The Distinct Symptoms of the Gravel and Stone (30 May 1759), and a two-volume England’s Gazeteer, perhaps for the convenience of his travelling customers (6 October 1758). After his death, however, Mrs Brooke became a reasonably frequent purchaser of printed matter. The first evidence we have of her interest in fiction is an order for Richardson’s Pamela in four volumes, not lettered but probably bound, placed sometime in 1766. At about that time she also bought Robert Dodsley’s The Oeconomy of Human Life (1750; often purchased by provincial customers), Joseph Symonds’s Case and Cure of a Deserted Soul (1639), and Select Remains of the Reverend John Mason (1736). In the next set of records, Mrs Brooke began to obtain fiction in magazines; in June 1770, a few months after the Court and City Magazine was first issued, she became a subscriber for five months. Once she cancelled that subscription, she began to take John Wheble’s Lady’s Magazine with the ⁴⁹ For the suit, see NRO NPL 2161, 2166; taxes, NRO 96P/144, 142, 147.

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December 1770 issue. It had begun publication in July. Her daughters ordered back issues of this publication, so as to have the complete set; they ordered too a copy of Christopher Anstey’s New Bath Guide (1766).⁵⁰ The eldest daughter, also named Sarah, was about 16 when she placed this last order; her sister Frances was 15, Ann 14, and Christian 11. (The two sons, John and Thomas, do not appear as customers.) After a four-month break, the Clay records resume in July 1771 with the Misses Brooke, not their mother, listed as subscribers to the Lady’s Magazine; in only one other instance does a daughter’s name supplant a living mother’s as a magazine subscriber. Mrs Brooke is extraordinary in allowing her young daughters to act for themselves. They maintained their subscription to the Lady’s at least until August 1780 when the Daventry records end. During the long life of this subscription, the Brookes occasionally obtained fiction in other forms also. The daughters ordered Robinson Crusoe as ‘a Chap. Bk .’ in 1771;⁵¹ in the Clay records, only some thirteen other women appear to order or obtain chapbooks. Mrs Brooke bought Maria Susannah Cooper’s twovolume epistolary novel The Exemplary Mother: Or, Letters between Mrs. Villars and her Family (1769) on 30 September 1773, four years after it had first been published. Mrs Brooke also bought a devotional work by Thomas Wilson, Lord Chesterfield’s Witticisms, and Samuel Johnson’s ten-shilling two-volume Dictionary—she and Henry Bagshaw Harrison being among only twelve Clay customers who bought the abridged version. After this time, the sole order for fiction appears in 1774–5, in the daughters’ names: two anonymous novels published at least five years earlier, Fatal Obedience, or the History of Mr Freeland (1769) and True Delicacy, or the History of Lady Frances Tylney and Henry Cecil (1769). The Brookes, like Mary Clay, do support notions that women of the middling sort were increasingly interested in fiction, especially from the late 1760s: the daughters in particular show attraction only to fiction. But it is worth noting that the Brookes’s purchases of novels even in the 1770s, a decade well represented in the records, are few. We have no evidence of intense or even sustained interest apart from the long subscription to the Lady’s Magazine. Yet some evidence exists that the household in general was quite receptive to literature. Her maid was ⁵⁰ For Pamela, see NRO ML 692/43v ; Lady’s D2930/34v , 37r , 38r ; Anstey, D2930 26v . ⁵¹ NRO D7719/4r . See the discussion of the Clays’ use of the word ‘chapbook’ in Ch. 4.

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unable to obtain ‘The Wanton Wife of Bath’ as a play sometime in 1758 and Mrs Brooke’s manservant, one of the two servants in all the Clay records who actually borrowed fiction, paid to read the seventh volume of Clarissa on 18 June 1777. Another servant, Polly Atkins, was left a total of £100 in her employer Edward Sawbridge’s will, a legacy she collected some five years after she obtained a copy of William Leybourn’s Panarithmologia: or, the Trader’s Sure Guide for 1s. in 1770. She also ordered one of the plays most in demand among the Clay customers, Bickerstaffe’s comic opera, Love in a Village. This work, first performed in 1762, remained in the repertory throughout the century. No record remains of Polly Atkins’s purchases, if any, after her legacy.⁵²

S O M E C O N C LU S I O N S In studying female readers, class distinctions become slippery the more one knows about particular women. The Westley sisters’ anxieties over money and education suggest that they feel themselves and their relatives to be marginal within their class. In other words, the more that I study these provincial readers, the more I can understand the temptation to lump everyone together as ‘middle class’, or, more plausibly, to consider professional men and women as members of that class. But it does seem important in studying the reading public to try to distinguish professionals, whose position in society depends to some extent on elite education, from tradesmen and women on the one hand and local squires, gentry, and aristocracy on the other—and yet to realize how closely connected all these groups were in provincial life. To do so, however, means that the generalizations that we might like to make about gender and class in this world require constant readjustment and qualification, and this rule applies with special force to generalizations about the female reading public. With such reservations, then, I have concluded that to some extent, the middle-class provincial female reading public for fiction was created by the market: by a magazine that appealed to women across class lines, the Lady’s, as I will argue in Ch. 5, and that succeeded in attracting readers who would not otherwise have been customers for fictional forms. But these readers did not necessarily go on to consume other ⁵² See Fergus, ‘Provincial Servants’, 211, 209, 220.

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fiction. What is clear is that in the provinces, the female audience for fiction was not especially large. More suggestively, the women who did buy fiction, or indeed any printed matter, tended, like Jane Williamson, Ann Fraunces, and Sarah Brooke, to be widows or single women. During their married lives, these women bought no books at all, and we cannot assume that their husbands were buying for them, for their husbands bought very little—nothing to compare with what their wives bought once they were widowed and in control of their households and finances. Furthermore, those very few married women who purchased a number of fictional works either had grown-up children (like Catherine Huddesford) or just one child (like Mary Clay). It may well be that the best way to study the female reading public would be to analyse differences between all other women and widows and spinsters as consumers of print culture. Although it is possible that such women in turning to fiction when unattached were acting out what J. Paul Hunter has called the ‘novel’s addictive engagement with solitariness’, I suspect that the lifting of constraints on money and time is more likely to account for their reading.⁵³ Unfortunately, it is much more difficult to study the male reading public through records, at least as long as we assume that men who buy or borrow genres associated with women cannot possibly be doing so for themselves. It is hard to prove a negative: parish records only rarely can establish that any particular male customer had no female dependants or relatives for whom he might be acting. Still, the very great preponderance of men as consumers of fiction in the Clay and Stevens records cannot be easily dismissed. Much attention has been paid to the ways that fiction, including sentimental novels, may have formed eighteenth-century women’s subjectivities; ways in which eighteenthcentury men’s subjectivities were shaped through such fiction deserve at least equal consideration.⁵⁴ Finally, if it is true that, as these provincial records suggest, eighteenthcentury women were not as early and widely addicted to novels as ⁵³ Hunter, Before Novels, 40. ⁵⁴ Nancy Armstrong, in Desire and Domestic Fiction, argues that women were constructed as desirable for their ‘femaleness rather than in traditional signs of status’ (20). For her, ‘It was at first only women who were defined in terms of their emotional natures. Men generally retained their political identity in writing that developed the qualities of female subjectivity and made subjectivity a female domain’ (4). I would argue that male and female subjectivity and identity in eighteenth-century writing was more fluid than Armstrong contends, and that male subjectivity was construed in more complex ways in eighteenth-century fiction.

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contemporary moralists asserted, then why did writers of conduct literature and book reviewers so firmly and frequently identify women as the form’s consumers? This large cultural question invites thorough historical analysis, but perhaps a few speculations may be useful here. Some objections to women’s reading of novels decried it as a waste of time that took women away from household duties—a reasonably straightforward if repressive moral stance. Other objections seem more fraught, however, even hysterical. The isolation of the reader, especially the female reader, was culturally suspect.⁵⁵ Women readers were thought to require special care and supervision because, as a Critical reviewer put it in 1766, ‘a softness of temper renders them … susceptible of bad impressions; and if their hearts are not fortified by virtuous principles, they are easily captivated by the follies and vices of the age. Plays and romances warm their imagination, and stimulate their passion.’⁵⁶ Implicit here is a fear of female fantasy or sexual stimulation, crystallizing in the prevalent male fantasy that women who read novels will reject ordinary men who love them, cherishing instead a romantic daydream.⁵⁷ That is, men who worried over female fantasies were fantasizing women rejecting them. The uncontrolled imagination here may be more male than female. Possibly the energy with which eighteenth-century moralists expressed increasing anxiety over women novel readers (as well as those in the lower classes) derives in part from a male perception that the written word was now making a broader and more frequent appeal to the imagination, and some of that writing was coming from women. Previous appeals to the female imagination from devotional literature were, after all, largely controlled by men. Suddenly, however, male writers could not control women’s reading or writing, and perhaps for this reason imagined threatening scenarios, asking what would women readers do? Become sluts? Run away? Fail to find ordinary men—as opposed to men in novels—appealing? Such dire prognostications appear frequently within anti-novel discourse. Thomas W. Laqueur has argued that three culturally defined threats were seen to arise simultaneously in the 1710s—credit, masturbation, and the novel. Although Laqueur dates the ‘rise’ of the novel too early, he rightly notes that all these threats ⁵⁵ See especially Hunter, Before Novels, 40–2; Flint, Woman Reader, ch. 1 passim. ⁵⁶ Critical Review 22 (1766), 18; quoted by Antonia Forster in an unpublished paper, ‘ ‘‘Women First, Artists Second’’; Images of Women as Writers and Readers, 1749–1785’. ⁵⁷ See John Tinnon Taylor, Early Opposition, 71–2.

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focus on the uncontrolled imagination or ‘fictionality’. He concludes that all three (especially masturbation) might best be understood as threats to sociability, ‘part of a history of the reconceptualization of private versus public’.⁵⁸ If men saw women reading novels as engaged in ‘solitary vice’, we cannot be surprised that these supposed activities were exaggerated as well as denounced with increasing intensity. Whether or not men saw women in this way, they were themselves reading the novels that they identified with female readers, and that fact entails consequences for the study of fiction. Even if the provincial customers of the Clays and Stevens are not typical of the reading public as a whole, they offer clear evidence that substantial numbers of men read novels and that, in some groups, these men could outnumber women readers. We cannot uncritically accept eighteenth-century statements about overwhelmingly female readership, such as those in conduct books that deplored extensive reading of novels by women. Conduct book ideology is sometimes too easily and simply equated with a whole culture’s ideology; but conduct books were usually contestatory, arguing against some practices and naturalizing others.⁵⁹ Their statements serve various cultural agendas, and they themselves were vying with fiction for an audience. In the Clay records, sales of conduct books were relatively rare, and despite increased interest at the end of the century, Stevens sold at least twice as many novels as conduct books, often to the very same men, book clubs, and (occasionally) women. If the same generally male audience reads novels and attacks on novels, then these readers are operating in a field where they themselves are largely invisible: few novels describe male novel readers, especially adult ones, and even fewer conduct books do so. Although women’s novel reading was often disciplined, that of men was much less so. The idea that ‘men don’t read novels’ puts into not just social but economic terms (always more credible) the notion that novels had no material effect on men, no relation to male subjectivity. Men’s invisibility as novel readers means that, ideologically, just women were thought to suffer material consequences from reading, as if only their subjectivity were affected. We should therefore ask more insistently how men positioned ⁵⁸ Thomas W. Laqueur, ‘Credit, Novels, Masturbation’, in Susan Leigh Foster (ed.), Choreographing History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 121, 127. ⁵⁹ Among others, Nancy Armstrong makes extensive use of conduct book evidence in her discussion of the eighteenth-century novel; see especially ch. 2 and 3 of Desire and Domestic Fiction.

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themselves when they read novels, how their subjectivity was being constructed; we should more closely examine what male fantasies are exercised and satisfied by these works. In other words, cultural historians should look at so-called ‘women’s novels’ with an eye to how they construct men and male reading, not just female identity and female reading. They should pay more attention to the reports we have of men’s reading of women’s novels, such as Charles Burney’s statement on Mr Villars in Evelina: ‘that man is always right’.⁶⁰ Modern readers of Evelina strongly disagree, finding Villars’s paternal advice, like that of Mr Tyrold in Camilla, exactly calculated to exacerbate young women’s difficulties—and finding Dr Burney anything but ‘always right’ in his relation to his daughter Frances Burney.⁶¹ Clearly Burney p`ere was able quite comfortably to read himself into what moderns find to be a very dubious patriarchal construct, to appropriate it—and no doubt other eighteenth-century male readers could do so as well. Possibly awareness of such comfortable readerly ‘poaching’, to use Michel de Certeau’s term, made it possible for female novelists such as Burney to entertain and embody subversive possibilities in their texts as well as conservative positions.⁶² What is certain is that, like Rugby schoolboys reading children’s books (as we will see in Ch. 3), eighteenth-century men were offered multiple subject positions in the novels that they read and could identify themselves with women’s positions in many novels, if they wished, or with men’s, or both—without attracting much cultural scrutiny or criticism for these activities. ⁶⁰ Annie Raine Ellis, The Early Diary of Frances Burney, 1768–1778 (London: George Bell, 1907), ii. 242. Burney glosses her father’s overheard comment as ‘meaning in his [Villars’s] advice and judgement of things’ (242). ⁶¹ See especially two excellent studies, Margaret Anne Doody’s Frances Burney: The Life in the Works (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988) and Janice Farrar Thaddeus’s Frances Burney: A Literary Life (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000). ⁶² See Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, transl. Steven F. Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 174. Henry Jenkins’s Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992) explores fans’ resistant responses to and rewritings of such series as Star Trek.

2 Consuming Practices: Canonicity, Novels, and Plays Booksellers’ records can be valuable not only for the light they throw on gendered and class-based reading of novels, as discussed in the previous chapter, but also on consuming practices. Appendix 2, for example, to some extent supports assertions by recent historians and critics that emphasize the great increase in novels produced and consumed during the last decades of the eighteenth century.¹ But a question remains that has been central to all interrogations of eighteenth-century fiction over the past decades: by what process did certain works become canonized, so that audiences turned and returned to them over the years? The Clay and Stevens records can address this issue because some novels were bought and borrowed initially by more than one or two readers but dropped out of sight shortly afterwards. Others, however, commanded an audience over time. Both canonization and erasure raise important questions. What novels were in demand at first and by what audiences? What novels sustained demand (became canonized) and why? How and when did the processes of canonization operate in the provinces over the six decades covered by the Clay and Stevens records, in other words? And in what way did novels by women fit into these processes? Or to put the questions another way, do novels disappear, do they go out of print or fail to circulate, because demand dries up or because supply evaporates? Both operate, but I will here treat canonization in the provinces—a continued demand for specific works—as a practice of consumers. This treatment is very different from that of William St Clair. For him, canonization is measured by available cheap editions, ¹ Clifford Siskin is one such critic: following the work of James Raven, he writes, ‘the 1780s and 1790s … were precisely the decades in which the novel took off, with publication reaching, in Raven’s words, ‘‘unprecedented levels in the late 1780s’’ ’ (‘Eighteenth-Century Periodicals and the Romantic Rise of the Novel’, Studies in the Novel 26 (1994), 26).

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which mushroomed from 1774. Because from this time publishers like John Bell issued very inexpensive copies of eighteenth-century poets’ works, and a few earlier ones, their lists formed what he calls the ‘old canon’, which lasted until the Romantic poets’ publications came out of copyright and began to be issued in cheap editions from the 1850s. That is, he is investigating supply, primarily of poetry, and I am looking at demand for novels and plays. In addition, he is seeking expansion of the reading nation to lower socioeconomic classes, whereas I am asking what difference gender, age, and class make in demand for fictions and in reading practices. We intersect on class, and there my sources can partly corroborate his: at least one provincial servant, David Prowett, ordered several volumes of Bell’s editions of poetry in 1777: James Thomson, Edward Young, and perhaps Jonathan Swift.² Investigated as a consuming practice rather than as an artefact of literary gatekeepers, canonicity is not produced by what the market makes available or advertises or keeps reprinting but by what customers choose to purchase. Provincial consumers are not passive, wholly manipulated by the literary marketplace. Their shopping preferences, I will argue, are certainly inflected by culture, class, age, and gender, but these influences still allow shoppers some selectivity, some agency, despite market forces. For instance, all eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century publishers’ records that I have examined show that new novels sold best immediately upon publication. Nonetheless, Clay and Stevens customers often bought them several years after they first appeared. While it is remarkable that, even without reprinting, the trade evidently made many novels available for years, what interests me is that customers often waited some time to buy them, as when Henry Pepperell purchased Cecilia, or the Eastern Lovers (1773, bought 1777) or when the Brookes purchased novels four and five years after publication (see Ch. 1). Agency is also evident, as will be seen, in a tendency among Clay and Stevens customers to avoid anonymous novels though these dominated the market, and in female customers’ measurable preference for fiction written by women. Because canonization, understood as sustained demand, is such an important aspect of the relation between fiction, the market, and audiences, I propose to compare the canonizing of novels among these provincial readers with that of another fictional form, the drama. There too, to examine how women’s plays fare in relation to men’s plays is revealing. What emerges from this study is that immediate demand for ² Fergus, ‘Provincial Servants’, 219.

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women’s novels and plays over five years or so is comparable to that for men’s works, but over time, ten or fifteen years, women’s productions are erased, as though women are required always to produce something ‘new’ (a value opposed to canonization).

C A N O N I Z AT I O N , R E A D E R S , A N O N Y M I T Y, A N D F E M A L E N OV E L I S TS Research has shown that both the numbers and the proportion of women novelists expanded considerably in the last half of the eighteenth century. Judith Phillips Stanton has concluded that numbers of women writers in general rose by ‘around 50 per cent every decade starting in the 1760s’.³ Focusing on novelists only, Antonia Forster found that the ‘proportion of women novelists (if we include the anonymous authors claiming to be women …) certainly did increase between 1770 and 1799, from 18 per cent to 42 per cent (with the 1780, 1785, and 1790 figures 35 per cent, 49 per cent and 39 per cent respectively)’.⁴ James Raven does not include anonymous authors asserting female authorship and therefore gives lower percentages for women authors: 14.3 for the 1770s, 29 for the 1780s, and 36.9 for the 1790s.⁵ Though lower, Raven’s figures support Stanton’s and Forster’s conclusions about rising female authorship. Evidently, this increase was disturbing enough to contemporary observers that they exaggerated it. As Forster points out, ‘The Monthly Review’s comment in 1773 that novel writing ‘‘appears, now, to be almost entirely engrossed by the Ladies’’ (MR 48, 1773: 154) was inaccurate then and remained so at the end of the century.’⁶ Many scholars, however, tend to echo the Monthly’s assumption: Ian Watt, for example, claims in passing that the ‘majority of eighteenth-century ³ Stanton, ‘Statistical Profile of Women Writing in English from 1660 to 1800’, in Frederick M. Keener and Susan E. Lorsch (eds.), Eighteenth-Century Women and the Arts (New York: Greenwood, 1988), 248. ⁴ Antonia Forster, ‘ ‘‘A Considerable Rank in the World of Belles Lettres’’: Women, Fiction and Literary History in the Last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century’, in Katherine Binhammer and Jeanne Wood (eds.), Women and Literary History: ‘For There She Was’ (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2003), 117. I am very grateful to Prof. Forster for allowing me to consult this work before publication. ⁵ Raven, ‘Historical Introduction’, table 6, pp. 46–7. ⁶ Forster, ‘Considerable Rank’, 116.

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novels were actually written by women’ and feels no need to cite evidence. Even Nancy Armstrong, a feminist scholar engaged in a compelling interrogation of Watt’s study, quotes part of his sentence to castigate Watt not for failing to produce evidence but for failing to consider ‘why’ women wrote the ‘majority’ of novels.⁷ That is, this assumption that women produced most eighteenth-century novels, reiterated by commentators at the time and (before the work of James Raven and Antonia Forster in the first volume of The English Novel, 1770–1829) comfortably accepted by modern scholarship, has a history parallel to the equally pervasive assumption dealt with in Ch. 1, that women were the principal readers of novels. But fortunately the clich´e about women writers is easier to prove mistaken, as Raven and Forster do. Altogether, Raven calculates that identifiable women writers produced 14.2 per cent of novels between 1750 and 1769 and 29.8 per cent from 1770 to 1799. Including, as Forster does, anonymous authors who chose to identify themselves as female (by announcing that the book was written ‘By a Lady’, for instance), women authors most likely produced no more than a third of novels published in Britain during the last half of the eighteenth century. If this estimate is correct, then novels by women achieve close to proportional representation in the Clay and Stevens records, accounting overall for almost exactly one-third of the titles bought by customers: see novels listed in App. 2 (106 of 321). And considering them by decade of publication, women’s novels purchased or borrowed in the Midlands show increases parallel to those that Forster’s work detects, at least after the 1770s. Novels by women in App. 2 amount to eight of the twenty-seven published in the 1750s (30 per cent), eighteen of fifty-seven published in the 1760s (32 per cent), sixteen of sixty-one published in the 1770s (26 per cent), nineteen of forty published in the 1780s (47.5 per cent), twenty-one of fifty-four published in the 1790s (39 per cent), and fourteen of twenty-two published in the 1800s (59 per cent).⁸ But this tale of expansion in both production and consumption of women’s novels looks very different if we consider Midlands consumption more closely. We will see that women fare less well than men as writers within the market. Fiction identified as written by women was less likely than men’s fiction to find acceptance over time. ⁷ Watt, Rise, 298; Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction, 7. ⁸ Ten earlier novels by women were also consumed by Clay customers: see App. 2, Date of 1st publication (with bibliographers’ numbers) 1679 W169; 1719M 95; 1724M 163; 1724M 167; 1727M 209; 1744B 146; 1744B 149; 1747B 223; 1749B 273.

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To study the reception of gendered fiction, I used standard bibliographies, including Raven and Forster’s, to determine whether to consider a novel as anonymous or as female- or male-authored. Even accepting those determinations, other problems arise: how is one to classify Richard and Elizabeth Griffiths’s jointly authored Letters between Henry and Frances, for instance? Because I am casting a wide net for novels written as well as read by women, and because Elizabeth Griffith is responsible for half the work, I have counted it among female-authored fiction in the 1750s. Like Forster, I have also included in that category anonymous novels whose title pages or prefaces indicate that they were written ‘By a Lady’, as well as those whose prefaces assert female authorship—a total of eleven, including the Griffiths’s work, among 106 novels classed as written by women. Novels lacking such markers of gender are counted as male-authored, though certainly some can more rightly be thought of as gendered neutral. Obviously, such categories are slippery and unsatisfactory. Sarah Scott’s Millenium Hall (1762) and Elizabeth Bonhote’s Rambles of Mr. Frankly, whose first volume was issued in 1772, are included among novels by women, even though when they came out they were supposed to be written by ‘A Gentleman on his Travels’ and ‘Mr Frankly’, and even though contemporary reviewers used masculine pronouns when referring to the authors. Most of the sales and borrowings of such works occur, however, some time after they were issued when their authorship was known at least to reviewers. As a result, it seems reasonable to include them with other novels written by women. What is most striking is that all anonymous novels, however gendered, seem less attractive over time to Clay and Stevens customers than works of fiction whose authors are more knowable. Raven states categorically that the ‘overwhelming majority’ of eighteenth-century English novels ‘were published without attribution of authorship either on the title page or within the preface or elsewhere in the text … . [O]ver 80 per cent of all new novel titles published between 1750 and 1790 were published anonymously’. Raven goes on to detail an increase in admitted authorship in the 1790s, but he points out that after 1810 ‘the proportion of anonymous novels increased again’, rising to 80 per cent by the end of the 1820s. What he means by anonymous works are those that do not provide proper names in title pages or prefaces, but of course scholars can nonetheless identify many of the authors—as some contemporary readers could also, at least in certain cases. Raven makes clear, however, that scholarship cannot offer attributions for 56.7 per cent of novels published between 1759 and 1769, 55.2 per cent

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in the 1770s, 44.4 per cent in the 1780s, and 29.6 per cent in the 1790s.⁹ Overall, by his calculations, nearly 40 per cent of the novels first published during the last three decades of the eighteenth century remain anonymous. Only if women produced every one of these unattributed novels—an unlikely contingency—could they be said to have dominated the writing of fiction in this period. Given these figures, it is remarkable that just 22 per cent of the titles that the Clay and Stevens Midlands customers bought or borrowed over six decades were anonymous, that is, 71 of 321 titles, a far cry from Raven’s 80 per cent or even his lower figure of 40 per cent. This result probably reflects provincial interest in classic or dated novels but also suggests that provincial consumers may have wanted something like a ‘brand’ when they ventured on a novel, particularly if they were buying it. Though overall Clay and Stevens customers bought more novels than they borrowed, for anonymous novels they reversed themselves, borrowing two for every one purchased (121 withdrawals of the 71 titles versus 58 purchases). St Clair categorically states that ‘Throughout the romantic period, with the possible exception of ‘‘The Author of Waverley’’, there is little evidence that readers cared much about the identity or gender of the writers of novels they read’, but provincial readers, in addition to preferring novels that were not anonymous, actually seem to pay some attention to authors’ gender. St Clair also considers that the popularity of anonymous publication might have sprung from attempts to avoid libel laws and threats of duels, but that the ‘main driving force’ was ‘probably the ongoing attempt by the publishers and circulating libraries to impose greater similarity, regularity, and predictability, on the nature and habit of novel-reading, in other words to turn novels into uniform and mutually substitutable commodities’.¹⁰ He appears to discount the usual explanation for anonymity, that the low reputation of novels, and the stigma against publicity as immodest or against making money as vulgar, discouraged writers with any pretensions to gentility, especially women, from announcing their authorship. But if he is right that anonymity was a marketing strategy, it does not seem to have worked effectively among eighteenth-century provincial customers, who preferred non-anonymous works. In the discussion that will follow, comparing consumption of maleand female-authored works, anonymous novels will be silently included. ⁹ Raven, ‘Anonymous Novel’, 143, Appendix 2, 162–3. ¹⁰ St Clair, Reading Nation, 174, 175.

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Table 2.1. Total sales of novels; male, female, and anonymous authors Men

Women

1. All titles counted as by men: 215 160 titles bought 467 times: av. 2.92 96 titles borrowed 367 times: av. 3.82

All titles counted as by women: 106 72 titles bought 117 times: av. 1.63 58 titles borrowed 146 times: av. 2.52

2. Titles, male-authored: 155 127 titles bought 416 times: av. 3.28 63 titles borrowed 264 times: av. 4.2

Titles, female-authored: 95 66 titles bought 110 times: av. 1.67 49 titles borrowed 128 times: av. 2.61

3. Anonymous titles (male-identified, neutral): 60 33 titles bought 51 times: av. 1.54 33 titles borrowed 103 times: av. 3.12

Anonymous titles (female-identified): 11 6 titles bought 7 times: av. 1.17 9 titles borrowed 18 times, av. 2.0

4. Total buying and borrowing of all novels: Titles = 321 Total bought, 584 Total borrowed, 513 Grand total = 1097 Notes: Clay female customers buy 47, borrow 67; Clay adult male customers buy 184, borrow 153. Rugby boys buy 75, borrow 113; Daventry Academy boys buy 30, borrow 84. Stevens female customers buy 17, borrow 12; Stevens male customers buy 231, borrow 84. How often titles bought and/or borrowed: once only = 157 titles (109 bought once [33 titles written by women], 48 borrowed once [20 titles by women]), twice altogether = 70 (29 titles by women); three times altogether = 27 (6), four = 9 (3), five = 7 (5), six = 12 (2), seven = 5 (0), eight = 5 (4), nine = 2 (1), ten = 2 (0), more than ten = 25 (3 titles by women: 1769 R1314; 1771:52; 1782:15).

As noted in Table 2.1, however, the sixty male-identified or neutral titles and the eleven female-identified were less popular than works whose authors were more identifiable. Including them therefore simply lowers average consumption figures somewhat, more for male writers than female. That is, my choice to consider novels coded female (written ‘By a Lady’ or with some similar indication of gender) among novels authored by women deflates the percentages measuring consumption of women’s fiction slightly, just as the choice to include novels that are male-identified or neutral among titles by men deflates percentages of consumption of male-authored fiction. But when strictly male- and female-authored novels are compared, consumption of women’s fiction remains considerably lower than that of fiction by men (Table 2.1.2). Indeed, as the entire table makes clear, novels gendered male or neutral obtain proportionally more customers in every category than do works gendered female. In fact, the average of the least popular category on the men’s side—anonymous titles—almost equals the very best female category in sales and exceeds that same category in borrowings. Remarkably too, the very best category, the one that produces both greatest consumption and greatest average consumption, is that of

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male-authored titles. In other words, in this provincial market, a novel coded male had an advantage whereas an anonymous novel was at a disadvantage. Table 2.1.1 also tells us that, although novels written by women constitute a third of the titles sold to Clay and Stevens customers and listed individually in App. 2, buying and borrowing of them amount to under a quarter of the total. Women’s novels were bought and borrowed a total of 263 times, men’s 834, which means that consumption of fiction by women comes to 24 per cent of the total. Though titles chosen for purchase roughly correspond to Forster’s figures for production during the last decades of the eighteenth century, with nearly a third by women, men’s novels were bought nearly twice as often. Table 2.1.1 indicates an average of 2.92 sales per title were made of men’s novels compared to an average of 1.63 for women’s. Women’s novels were somewhat more likely to be borrowed than men’s: more than half the women’s titles were borrowed (58 of 106, or 55 per cent), less than half of the men’s (96 of 215, or 45 per cent). But they were not demanded as often: women’s novels that attracted borrowers were withdrawn an average of 2.52 times per title, men’s 3.82 times. One reason that men’s novels were consumed more than women’s is certainly that men were in charge of most transactions and were decidedly the principal buyers of novels: see Table 1.1.2. The Clay records indicate that when women controlled transactions, they were twice as likely to purchase works by women as men were—28 per cent of the time (13 of 47 works) rather than men’s 14 per cent (26 of 184; Table 1.1.1). Women novelists would probably have fared better in the provincial marketplace before 1780 if women had been the principal consumers of fiction. Over time, however, provincial men did become more likely to purchase women’s novels as more were produced: 23.4 per cent of Stevens’s male customers’ purchases of novels were written by women (54 of 231), just as 23.5 per cent of female customers’ purchases were (4 of 17).¹¹ Similarly, though over time men increasingly borrowed women’s novels, they tended to do so slightly less than women did. Nonetheless, these provincial records show that women’s fiction found its best ¹¹ Schoolboys bought slightly more women’s novels proportionally than adult men, but not as many as women did (Academy boys six of thirty or 20 per cent, Rugby boys fourteen of seventy-five or 18.7 per cent).

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market in the small circulating libraries. A respectable number of novels by women were available for lending in the Clay and Stevens libraries, rising over time from less than a third of the circulating stock to more than two-fifths: see the lists of books withdrawn from the various Clay libraries in App. 1. Altogether, women’s fiction constituted 27 per cent of titles withdrawn at the Daventry and Warwick shops, operating through 1780 (23 of a total of 86 titles, which does not include 11 titles—4 by women—that circulated only at Rugby). Through 1784, 32 per cent of titles that circulated to Rugby boys were written by women (11 of 34). And women wrote 46 per cent of the identifiable titles that customers withdrew from Stevens’s library between February 1783 and January 1807 (32 of 70 titles; 45 of 96 withdrawals). But both sales and withdrawals by Clay and Stevens customers are disproportional: women’s novels account for nearly 38 per cent of the borrowed titles but overall about 28.5 per cent of the actual withdrawals; novels written by women that were purchased constitute over 33 per cent of titles but just 20 per cent of sales. Nonetheless, women’s novels do fare somewhat better in the market as circulating texts rather than as acquisitions. Because the Clay and Stevens libraries were so small, their customers’ behaviour probably departs from that typical of patrons of larger circulating libraries. But small libraries were more widespread.¹² And the limited demand that these provincial libraries show for all fiction (but especially women’s fiction), even though the Clays and Stevens served more than 3,300 customers for print, makes it clear that earning money by producing novels before 1800 remained a chancy business for publishers and particularly for women. Small editions would satisfy such restricted demand. But even more serious implications for the sale, reputation, and survival of women’s fiction emerge if, instead of looking at all novels bought and borrowed in this provincial market, we consider ‘canonized’ novels versus those that did not make it into the canon. For the purposes of this study, I will adopt a crudely behavioural and demand-based approach to canonicity and consider novels that appear in both the Clay and Stevens records as canonized. That is, if a novel was bought or borrowed from the Clays, it was in demand at some point between 1744 and 1784; if from Stevens, it was in demand between 1780 and 1807. But to avoid distorting results in favour of works produced in ¹² See Kaufman, ‘The Community Library’, passim, and Fergus, ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers’, 173.

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the 1770s and early 1780s, a novel must not simply appear in both sets of records to be considered canonized: it must be entered in the Stevens records at least fifteen years after first publication.¹³ Clearly, only novels produced before the Clay records end in 1784 qualify for this study.¹⁴ A list of these novels appears in Table 2.2, followed by a breakdown of consumption of works by men and by women, both canonical and noncanonical in Table 2.3. By eliminating the canonical or enduring novels from the picture, and focusing on works that are primarily new, we find that men’s and women’s fiction achieves greater parity in demand than we have seen by looking at all works consumed. Though not as many uncanonized titles are by women, just 102 compared to men’s 187, demand for novels by both men and women remains almost equal at 2.14 purchases and withdrawals per female-authored title, 2.21 per male-authored title, as long as we consider only works that remain outside the canon—that is, works whose appeal does not extend to fifteen years. Margaret Ezell has pointed out that in the seventeenth century, women’s writing was not ‘silenced’ when it first emerged—the silencing occurred later; we can see the same process at work in the eighteenth century also.¹⁵ Over as short a time as fifteen years, women’s writing disappears. In sum, in this provincial audience, wherein men dominated the market, new novels by women were less likely to be purchased and more likely to be borrowed than were men’s novels. Men seemed to prefer borrowing to owning women’s novels—and to require that women ¹³ This criterion results in omission of The Memoirs of Miss Arabella Bolton (1771), Brooke’s The Fool of Quality (1766–70), Juliet Grenville (1774), Graves’s Columella; or the Distressed Anchoret (1779) and The Spiritual Quixote (1773), and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Werter (1779) in English translation. In addition, though The Adventures of a Hackney Coach (1781) was bound by a customer in 1806, more than fifteen years after issue, I have omitted it since binding does not imply the continued public availability that canonization involves. Similarly, I have excluded such novels as Francis Coventry’s Pompey the Little (1751), though bought by a Stevens customer in 1794, because no Clay customer obtained it, and Francis Fleming’s Timothy Ginnadrake (1770), paid for in 1788—perhaps lost from the circulating library, not actually bought (the records are unclear on this point). ¹⁴ St Clair has argued that small eighteenth-century editions including those of novels were designed by the book trade to keep prices high—that, in other words, small editions were not a result of low demand but a cause of it. If he is right, then after 1774, when cheaper editions of older novels were issued, we should see a spike in consumption of older novels—as for instance when John Cooke and William Bew issued their inexpensive editions. But no such spike in consumption of older novels appears in the Stevens records, though in a few instances customers order Cooke’s novels without specifying titles: see App. 1. ¹⁵ Margaret J. M. Ezell, Writing Women’s Literary History (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 25, 163.

Table 2.2. Canonical novels bought and borrowed, 1744–1807 Title

Author

1745B 167 1766R 993 1678–84 1778:10 1782:15 1605 1719M 99 1699 1742B 90 1749B 272 1751R 83 1749B 273 1706M 23 1766R1100 1759R 495 1764R 778 1708M 38 1716M 85 1771:46 1764 1740B 23 1747B 229

Life of Carew Fool of Quality Pilgrim’s Progress Evelina Cecilia Don Quixote Robinson Crusoe Telemachus Joseph Andrews Tom Jones Amelia Governess Arabian Nights Entertainmt. Vicar of Wakefield Rasselas Letters Theodosius & Cons. Devil on Two Sticks Gil Blas Man of Feeling Tales of the Genii Pamela Clarissa

Anonymous Brooke Bunyan Burney Burney Cervantes Defoe Fenelon Fielding, H. Fielding, H. Fielding, H. Fielding, S. Galland Goldsmith Johnson Langhorne Lesage Lesage Mackenzie Ridley Richardson Richardson

Total Clay

Total Stevens

Total bought

Total borrowed

Totals bought, borrowed

4 33 11 6 11 21 12 6 5 18 12 4 17 8 3 5 2 14 9 1 10 26

3 1 3 3 4 5 12 7 2 4 1 1 3 10 3 1 4 3 3 1 4 4

5 5 13 8 3 25 23 13 7 7 1 5 6 14 6 6 4 9 10 2 9 14

2 29 1 1 12 1 1 0 0 15 12 0 14 4 0 0 2 8 2 0 5 16

7 34 14 9 15 26 24 13 7 22 13 5 20 18 6 6 6 17 12 2 14 30

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Date of 1st publication

86

Table 2.2 (continued ) Title

Author

1754R 246 1771:52 1748B 253 1769R1334 1751R 100 1762R 738 1771:53 1759+R507 1768R1234 1726M 199

Sir Charles Grandison Old Maid; Miss Ravensworth Roderick Random Adventures of an Atom Peregrine Pickle Launcelot Greaves Humphrey Clinker Tristram Shandy Sentimental Journey Gulliver’s Travels

Richardson Skinn Smollett Smollett Smollett Smollett Smollett Sterne Sterne Swift

Total Clay

Total Stevens

Total bought

Total borrowed

Totals bought, borrowed

26 15 8 1 19 1 19 8 8 8

6 1 3 1 7 1 4 5 2 3

4 3 9 2 3 1 6 10 10 10

28 13 2 0 23 1 17 3 0 1

32 16 11 2 26 2 23 13 10 11

Note: Total buying and borrowing of novels: titles = 321; total bought, 584; total borrowed, 513; grand total = 1,097.

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Date of 1st publication

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87

Table 2.3. Canonical and non-canonical novels: buying and borrowing by gender Canonical novels by women = 4

Non-canonical novels by women = 102

Women buy Women borrow Men buy Men borrow Rugby boys buy Rugby boys borrow Academy boys buy Academy boys borrow

1 2 10 7 6 14 2 3

Women buy Women borrow Men buy Men borrow Rugby boys buy Rugby boys borrow Academy boys buy Academy boys borrow

16 23 70 72 8 19 4 6

Total bought Total borrowed Bought and borrowed Number titles

19 26 45 4

Total bought Total borrowed Bought and borrowed Number titles

98 120 218 102

Canonical novels by men = 28

Non-canonical novels by men = 187

Women buy Women borrow Men buy Men borrow Rugby boys buy Rugby boys borrow Academy boys buy Academy boys borrow

27 17 156 69 39 53 12 48

Women buy Women borrow Men buy Men borrow Rugby boys buy Rugby boys borrow Academy boys buy Academy boys borrow

20 37 179 89 22 27 12 27

Total bought Total borrowed Bought and borrowed Number titles

234 187 421 28

Total bought Total borrowed Bought and borrowed Number titles

233 180 413 187

continually produce something new, a requirement that guarantees erasure of their older writing. In a culture that had identified novels with women—however inaccurately, and to satisfy whatever agendas—and had accordingly devalued most of them, this result is not surprising. What may surprise is that, again, despite this devaluation, overall demand for new novels by both men and women was about equal. But once we consider canonical novels, disproportion takes over. Men’s novels swamp women’s, with 28 of 32 titles, and in circulation they triumph by nearly a factor of ten: a total of 421 purchases and withdrawals compared to 45. Seventeen of the canonical works, more than half, were written by the male writers who achieved preeminent reputations in the eighteenth century: Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe,

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Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Richardson’s Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison; Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia; Smollett’s Roderick Random, Adventures of an Atom, Peregrine Pickle, Launcelot Greaves, and Humphry Clinker; Johnson’s Rasselas, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Sentimental Journey; and Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield. Their reputations persisted. Some combination of these authors and their works were featured in most twentieth-century studies of the eighteenthcentury novel and in university courses on the period until scholars in the last decades of the twentieth century expanded the canon. Other male works are even older classics, either home-grown, like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, or translated, like Cervantes’s Don Quixote, F´enelon’s Telemachus, Lesage’s The Devil upon Two Sticks and Gil Blas, and The Arabian Nights Entertainments. James Ridley’s 1764 Tales of the Genii, imitating this last work, did not achieve comparable sales but was bought by a Clay customer, was reprinted in Harrison’s Novelist’s Magazine in 1791, and found a purchaser among Stevens’s ledger customers in another format. Four male-authored or anonymous (ungendered) fictions achieved respectable sales in their own time but do not precisely enjoy canonical status now: the fictionalized biography of Bampfylde Moore Carew (1745), John Langhorne’s Letters between Theodosius and Constantia (1764), Brooke’s The Fool of Quality (1766–70), and Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771). Mackenzie’s novel was included in mid-twentieth-century literary histories, however, as an exemplar of sentimentalism—a bad eminence. No one now is likely to be astonished that a male novel was chosen to occupy that eminence while contemporary women’s novels were simply dismissed as sentimental. Perhaps most striking, however, are the relatively small figures overall, even for the works most in request. The shrinking demand over time for women’s novels that the list of canonical works in Table 2.2 illustrates is remarkable. Predictably enough, however, two of the four women’s works that achieved canonical status were by Frances Burney, Evelina and Cecilia. Burney was one of the few women novelists to enjoy in her own time a reputation almost equal to that of a canonical male writer. Another woman’s fiction became a schoolroom classic, which may account for its persistence: Sarah Fielding’s The Governess, or The Little Female Academy (1749). Finally, a surprise: Ann Emelinda Skinn’s The Old Maid; or, The History of Miss Ravensworth squeaks by because the Cirencester Book Society obtained it in July 1786, before it was reprinted and advertised as new in 1790. That lone purchase, compared to fifteen Clay purchases and

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withdrawals, indicates a sharp decline of interest, like that for The Fool of Quality, which also enjoyed one single Stevens purchase in 1782 (more than fifteen years after the first volume was issued), but which had attracted thirty-two buyers and borrowers among the Clay customers. Skinn’s novel, however, had the advantage of some notoriety (see Ch. 4, ‘Secret Reading at Rugby?’), which perhaps gave it a longer life. Obviously, like many others in the list, it is not a ‘canonical’ novel except by a crude behavioural criterion, yet its availability and its eventual reprinting are striking. What is more interesting, however, is why other women’s novels did not enjoy this extended life. Even Burney, with her superb reputation, lost readers: although Cecilia was purchased as late as 1806, and borrowed in 1797, Evelina was not bought after 1796 nor borrowed by Stevens’s customers after 1784. Admittedly, the Stevens borrowing records are scanty, but it is still surprising that Camilla was bought or bound by just three readers in 1796, when it was issued, and found only five borrowers, the last in 1801. Certainly these figures for all novels published after 1780, including Camilla, are minimal. Some of the customers who paid to read unspecified works in the Stevens circulating library may have obtained Burney’s novels and others as well. In addition, customers who did not maintain credit accounts with Stevens could have bought or borrowed fiction. Without day books like those of the Clays, we cannot know how much larger Steven’s customer base was than the ledgers indicate. Despite their shortcomings, however, the Stevens ledgers and the fuller Clay records point out that most novels did not attract as many as five buyers and borrowers altogether. Less than one in six listed in App. 2 did so (58 of 321). After all, as the summaries in Table 2.1 sect. 4 point out, nearly half of the 321 novels, or 157, were taken by just one customer: 109 were bought, forty-eight borrowed. The twenty-nine novels most in request, those with nine or more purchases or withdrawals, were canonical and are listed in Table 2.2—with six exceptions. That is, six of the novels most demanded—two written by women—did not find consumers over fifteen years in both the Clay and Stevens records. Again, although female-authored novels encountered difficulty sustaining demand in the marketplace, they often enjoyed immediate success. The six works that did not have extended demand are Daniel Defoe’s Religious Courtship (1722; eight sales, one withdrawal), Thomas Day’s novel for young adults, Sandford and Merton (1783; twelve purchases by Stevens men between 1786 and 1797 only); Elizabeth Griffith’s Delicate Distress (1769; thirteen withdrawals, two by Academy boys, five and six

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by female and male adult Clay customers); and three anonymous works, Visiting Day (1768; ten withdrawals), Light Summer Reading for the Ladies; or, the History of Lady Lucy Fenton ‘By a Lady’ (1768; fourteen withdrawals, one purchase), and Sir William Harrington (1771; nineteen withdrawals). These three anonymous works appealed particularly to schoolboys, who borrowed them five, ten, and twelve times respectively. As a final attempt to measure demand for men’s and women’s novels, we can consider not just those works that had the longest shelf life (the canonized works) or those that had the greatest appeal (also the canonized, with the exceptions noted above) but those with the least or with medium demand between 1744 and 1806. Among the titles least in request, with one to four customers, women’s novels account for about a third. Novels with middling demand, five to eight buyers and borrowers, include eleven by women and eighteen by men—a more than proportional showing for women’s novels (nine would have been proportional). But because borrowing may be a less reliable index to demand over time than buying in these small libraries (lack of choice could create interest in dated works like these), it makes sense to group together the novels that were bought over time, not just borrowed. As usual, when demand is measured in a shorter burst of time, women’s writing fares well. Apart from canonical novels, eight were purchased over at least a five-year period: Eliza Haywood’s Invisible Spy (1755), Sarah Scott’s Millenium Hall (1762), an anonymous woman’s Memoirs of Miss Indiana Danby (1765), Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), James Annesley’s fictionalized Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman (1743), Richard Graves’s Spiritual Quixote (1773), Goethe’s Sorrows of Werter (1779), and John Aikins’s and Letitia Barbauld’s Evenings at Home (1794). In this category, men’s and women’s novels are evenly divided, at four each, counting the co-authored work Evenings at Home as by John Aikin, who wrote most of it.¹⁶ But once canonical novels are added—novels enjoying middling sales over a fifteen-year period—men predominate. Six canonical novels had between five and eight customers: Sarah Fielding’s The Governess (1749), Lesage’s Devil on Two Sticks (1708), Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742), the anonymous Bampfylde Moore Carew (1745), Johnson’s Rasselas (1759), Langhorne’s Theodosius and Constantia (1764), and only ¹⁶ See William McCarthy, ‘The Celebrated Academy at Palgrave: A Documentary History of Anna Letitia Barbauld’s School’, Age of Johnson 8 (1997), 281, who identifies this work as primarily by John Aikin.

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the first of these was female-authored. By whatever criteria are applied, men’s and women’s novels in the middle range show comparable appeal both immediately and over the first five years.¹⁷ But over an extended period, women’s novels do not fare well. They seem to disappear. How and why this erasure of women’s writing occurs remain important questions, and they persist today. In an article for Harper’s Magazine, Francine Prose cites statistics as well as reviews that show that compared to men, contemporary women writers of fiction cannot get published in magazines, do not receive prestigious literary awards, and are castigated, in Prose’s view, whenever they deal with the ‘serious’ subjects that are accepted in and in fact identified with men’s writing.¹⁸ Innumerable studies have revealed this phenomenon in other areas: when the same academic resum´e was evaluated by heads of psychology departments, the one with a male name was adjudged more qualified for a position in the department (or worthy of hire at a higher rank) than the one headed by a female name.¹⁹ Women are apparently perceived as having less effect, less achievement than men; their abilities and their works are ‘shown’ not to last as men’s do. We see the operation of such tendencies in the way, as Antonia Forster’s work has indicated, the reviewers’ lists of ‘good’ women writers varied in the second half of the century; older women give way to newer ones. Forster documents first the presence in such lists then the absence within five or ten years of Mary Leapor, Mrs Cockburn, Frances Brooke, Charlotte Lennox, Frances Greville, Elizabeth Griffith, and Mary Whateley.²⁰ It is as though eighteenth-century literature can support no more than seven or eight meritorious women writers altogether, so the roll call must change often. Or perhaps novelty is essential to women writers’ charm: as Frances Burney’s character Lord Morton ¹⁷ The remaining works with middling demand, but none bought over a five-year period, are: Charlotte Lennox’s Harriot Stuart (1750), the Miss Minifies’ The Picture (1766), an anonymous woman’s History of Miss Sommerville (1769), Frances Brooke’s Emily Montague (1769), Phoebe Gibbes’s Friendship in a Nunnery (1778), Burney’s Camilla (1796), P¯etis dela Croix’s Persian Tales (1714), Charles de Fieux Mouhy’s Fortunate Country Maid (transl. 1740), the anonymous Sir Harry Harald (1754), Richard Griffith’s The Gordian Knot (1769), the anonymous Memoirs of Miss Bolton (1770), Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling (1771), the anonymous Morning Ramble (1775), John Moore’s Zeluco (1789) and Edward (1796). ¹⁸ Francine Prose, ‘Scent of a Woman’s Ink: Are Women Writers Really Inferior?’, Harper’s Magazine ( June 1998), 61–70. ¹⁹ Cited by Virginia Valian, Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 2000), in the chapter ‘Evaluating Women and Men’, 127–8. ²⁰ Forster, ‘A Considerable Rank’, 107–8.

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in Evelina so baldly puts it, ‘I don’t know what the devil a woman lives for after thirty; she is only in other folks way.’²¹ Women’s erasure in general is clearly a topic not appropriate for this study. But we might best approach the topic of women writers’ erasure in the eighteenth century by examining a genre other than the novel. It is easier to observe the process through which women’s works drop out of the print market by looking at drama than by looking at novels, for plays have two markets, the stage and the shop, in which to measure consumer demand. Plays may remain in repertory but fail to find readers, or may find readers but disappear from the stage. Even more than novels, they participate in fashion, fads, a sense of the ‘new’ or ‘novel’, but at the same time, when revived, they may appear familiar and even classic. Older plays also appeared in cheap reprinted editions sooner throughout the eighteenth century than did novels. They offer, then, an excellent opportunity to examine how the market processes of canonization operated to turn the new into the classic, but also to explore how women’s literary careers were likely as a result to differ from men’s. CANONIZING DRAMA Judith Phillips Stanton’s research has shown that in the last three decades of the eighteenth century, the number of women who published plays increased as dramatically as did numbers of women who published novels. In fact, well over half of the seventy-one women dramatists that she records for the century began to publish after 1770.²² Common sense tells us that this surge in publication could not have happened if buyers were not increasingly ready to purchase women’s plays. But some of the same questions apply here as in the study of women’s novels. Who were these buyers and what did they buy? Were women more or less interested in buying women’s plays than men’s? Were buyers interested in new plays by women or did they prefer classics? Were they purchasing plays to read or to perform privately in amateur theatricals? How did the reading audience for women’s plays compare to that for men’s plays? ²¹ F[rances] Burney, Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World, ed. Edward A. Bloom and Lillian D. Bloom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 275: vol. iii, letter 1. ²² Stanton, ‘Statistical Profile’, 250–1.

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The Clays’ and Stevens’s small libraries seldom lent plays. The most remarkable customer who shows interest in drama is also the sole borrower of a woman’s play, Dorothy Mallet Celisia’s tragedy Almida: she was Philippa Hayes, housekeeper to George Lucy of Charlecote, a stately home near Stratford upon Avon. She became a customer at Samuel Clay’s Warwick shop, and her transactions make clear some of the difficulties of trying to infer reading activities and practices from booksellers’ records. Mrs Hayes actually bought Almida within two months of its first performance but, evidently dissatisfied, returned it and was charged instead for reading it. Her appetite for new drama was not confined to Celisia’s play: she straightforwardly borrowed Hugh Kelly’s Clementina and Richard Cumberland’s West Indian within three months of their being first performed in London. As housekeeper to a bachelor, she enjoyed some of the privileges of the mistress of the house. She corresponded with and even visited some of the local gentry, including Dorothy Mordaunt, daughter of Sir John Mordaunt of Walton Hall. An interesting letter from Miss Mordaunt was sent on 31 March 1755, to Mrs Hayes at Peterborough, where she was about to visit Derbyshire: we had a note from Mrs Dewes yesterday with the new play and entertainmt wch were sent by Miss Dewes [in London] to her Bror . I conclude you have seen both these, for I find you are Commenced a great Book worm since you left these parts. I never read the invisible spy wch I find you think worth notice a case that but seldom attends such sort of Books.²³

As Miss Mordaunt’s letter illustrates, provincial booksellers’ records can tell only part of the story of provincial interest in drama or any other fictional form. Mrs Hayes’s reading of Eliza Haywood’s The Invisible Spy (1755) is not evident in the Clay records, which register just six provincial buyers and borrowers. Further, the ‘new play’ mentioned here is almost certainly John Moncrieff’s tragedy Appius, first performed on 27 February and published on 14 March 1755, only two weeks earlier. Clearly, some provincial readers obtained new plays immediately from London correspondents (and London booksellers too, no doubt) rather than from local tradesmen; and, equally clearly, they shared these works with one another. In most cases, purchased plays were likely to be read by more than one customer. Accordingly, as always, numbers of purchases do not fully reflect the size of the audience. ²³ WCRO L6/1487. Mrs Dewes was Anne Granville, the sister of Mary Delany.

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Equally revealing is Miss Mordaunt’s assumption that Mrs Hayes will already have read the new play in Peterborough; she is sure that the play will be readily obtainable there. And she is probably quite right. Provincial readers managed to obtain new plays from local booksellers very quickly. The Rugby Society bought Frances Brooke’s The Siege of Sinope only seventeen days after it was first performed on 31 January 1781; earlier, the same society purchased Charlotte Lennox’s comedy The Sister on 18 March 1769, exactly a month after its sole (unsuccessful) performance in London. Stevens’s customers could obtain plays as quickly, though Cirencester was farther from London. For example, Elizabeth Inchbald’s Lovers’ Vows, first performed on 11 October 1798, was charged to the Cirencester Book Club only eleven days later. Using the Clay and Stevens records to address demand for plays requires exercise of the same caution required for measuring interest in novels. Once again, because the early Clay day books are so spotty, covering only the years 1746–8, 1758–9, and 1764–6, nothing can be concluded about the demand for a new play not issued during those years. Admittedly, Rugby ledgers cover 1744–84 continuously, but with few exceptions Rugby boys bought classic plays, by Shakespeare, Jonson, Congreve, and so forth. Thus a work such as Benjamin Hoadley’s The Suspicious Husband—with four purchasers and one borrower within a few months in Clay day book D64—assumes artificial importance simply because it was issued in 1747, a year fully covered in that Daventry record. Surprisingly, the small circulating libraries operated by the Clays and Stevens did not seem to make many plays available.²⁴ Thus, borrowing of plays written by men or women is negligible: the Clay customers withdrew only thirteen identifiable plays, just Almida by a woman playwright, and Stevens’s customers even fewer, only three, all by men. Part of the reason may be that plays were relatively cheap in relation to novels. It perhaps made less sense to borrow new plays at 2d. in the middle of the century than to purchase them. Although we should not infer too much from failure to borrow, this dearth does seem to reflect Midlands taste. Novels were more widely ²⁴ The Clays’ and Stevens’s apparently small stocks of plays contrast sharply with those listed in catalogues of large circulating libraries, as analysed by Paul Kaufman in ‘The Reading of Plays in the Eighteenth Century’, Bulletin of the New York Public Library 73 (1969), 562–80. London libraries in mid-century stocked many plays (over a fourth of John Noble’s catalogue in 1767 [566]), and even provincial libraries were well supplied, e.g. John Allen’s Hereford Library in 1790 (761 plays among 3,662 volumes). But catalogues cannot indicate consumption.

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Table 2.4. Buyers of drama Women

Men

Total

Clay customers Purchases of women’s plays Purchases of men’s plays

5 38

14 205

19 243

total

43

219

262

Stevens customers Purchases of women’s plays Purchases of men’s plays

2 24

12 107

14 131

total

26

119

145

A. Plays bought by Clay customers, 1744–85 Total Borrowed Purchased New Recent Dated Classic Orders Total % Closet∗ Women’s plays Men’s plays Total (Unidentified)† B.

1 12 13 (4)

1 6 7

5 42 47

5 13 18

3 43 46

2 133 135

2 6 8

19 7.3 243 92.7 262 (25)

Plays bought by Stevens customers, 1780–1807 Total Borrowed Purchased % Closet∗ New Recent Dated Classic Total

Women’s plays Men’s plays Total

– 3 –

10 4 14

8 29 37

4 27 31

2 14 16

2 45 47

26 119 145

18 82

Notes: ∗ Closet = Closet dramas; New = plays bought within three months of first performance in London; Recent = plays bought between three months and one year of first London performance; Dated = plays bought ten years or less after first London performance; Classic = plays bought ten years or more after first London performance; Orders = plays ordered in ‘bespoke’ sections of day books; date of purchase n/a. † Unidentified plays are those purchases or borrowings that are identified in the records as plays, operas, etc., but whose titles are not given or, if given, are not found in The London Stage, Nicholl’s History of English Drama, ESTC, or other sources.

purchased than plays, despite being much more expensive. In the 1770s, novels cost 2s. 6d. a volume, new plays 1s. 6d., and reprinted older plays sixpence. Later on, Stevens’s customers paid more for new plays—2s. or even 2s. 6d.—while some reprints remained cheap at 6d., but new novels could cost as much as 5s. a volume, as did Ann Radcliffe’s

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three-volume The Italian (1797). Nonetheless, Clay customers bought 336 novels on credit compared to 262 plays, and the discrepancy increases in the Stevens records: 248 novels compared to 145 plays; numbers for plays are listed in Table 2.4 and those for novels can be derived from Table 1.1.1. Women novelists too fare better than women playwrights in the provinces. Altogether, novels by women account for about 17.6 per cent of the total sold to Clay customers (59 of 336) and about 23 per cent of the total sold by Stevens (58 of 253). Just 11 per cent of the plays bought by all these provincial customers, however, were by women: 45 plays by 13 female playwrights were sold and 362 by 92 male playwrights. The results are approximately the same if we look instead at proportions of dramatists and titles. Thirteen female playwrights account for 28 titles, 92 male playwrights for 199 titles; women thus represent 12 per cent of playwrights, and women’s plays represent 12 per cent of titles purchased. This weak provincial demand for female playwrights’ works echoes the research of Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume into dramatists’ compensation in eighteenth-century London: they conclude that ‘the returns on plays by women are far worse than those by men’.²⁵ I have arbitrarily classified plays as ‘new’ when they were bought within three months of their first performance; ‘recent’ when bought from three months to a year afterwards; ‘dated’ when bought between one and ten years after first being performed; and ‘classic’ when more than ten years have passed since a first performance. The market for classic and dated plays was much more vigorous than that for new or recent ones, as Table 2.4 indicates. It indicates also that men greatly outnumbered women as purchasers of plays as well as novels, and that men’s plays did better on the market than those written by women. Nonetheless, the female Clay customers do seem to show a slight bias in favour of women’s plays, just as their female customers for novels do: while women account for only about one-sixth of the Clay purchases overall (43 of 262), they bought more than a quarter of the women’s drama sold (5 of 19).²⁶ Although women’s drama never sold nearly as well as plays by men, the records do show that provincial readers ²⁵ Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, ‘Playwrights’ Remuneration in EighteenthCentury London’, Harvard Library Bulletin 10 (1999), 44. ²⁶ The Clays’ female customers for novels, again, showed a similar bias: while they bought 14 per cent of novels sold (47 of 336), they obtained 22 per cent of those by women (13 of the 59 bought in all). The female Stevens customers, however, accounted for less than 10 per cent of the drama purchases (14 of 145) and less than 8 per cent of

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became increasingly likely to buy women’s plays during the last half of the eighteenth century, as more were published. Among the earlier Clay customers, plays by women amounted to only about one in fourteen purchases or 7 per cent; among the later Stevens customers, purchases of women’s plays was over twice as likely, more than one in every six purchases or 18 per cent. Purchasers of women’s plays, like buyers of women’s novels, men’s plays, fiction, and books in general, belonged primarily to the gentry and professional classes. Professionals include clergymen, students at the Daventry Dissenting Academy and Rugby School, schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, and even a theatrical manager and his employees. Mary Chadwick Clay bought two plays by Hannah Cowley, and perhaps some other tradeswomen and tradesmen occur among the buyers whose class I have not been able to identify. Some buyers of men’s plays belong to these groups: Mr Goodman, who bought Dodsley’s Toy Shop, was a turnpike keeper, and Thomas Rogers, who ordered Bickerstaffe’s farce The Padlock, was a 14-year-old baker’s son. A few buyers are probably drawn from still lower ranks since their names are not prefaced by ‘Mr’ or ‘Miss’ in the records: the Richard Forster who ordered Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, for instance. Polly Atkins, who ordered Love in a Village by Bickerstaff, was a servant. But more and more, the records make clear that playwrights—and other writers too, including novelists—increasingly had to rely on the book clubs for sales, particularly sales of new works. The exclusively male Clay and Stevens clubs are discussed in more detail in Ch. 1. As clubs multiplied, members’ individual purchases of books became less frequent. Members would be likely to purchase new publications through their clubs rather than individually. The book societies were, in fact, so interested in obtaining new publications that they frequently ordered them without waiting to read reviews—as did the Rugby Society when ordering Lennox’s The Sister at William Huddesford’s request. Among the Clay customers, clubs made 28 of 262 identifiable purchases of plays or nearly 11 per cent. Later, the clubs that purchased through Stevens obtained 66 of the 145 identifiable purchases, over 45 per cent—more than four times as many, proportionally. Almost all the purchases of women’s plays as new works were made by clubs: all 5 of the Clay purchases and 6 of 8 of the Stevens ones. Overall, the Clay the women’s plays sold (2 of 26), just as they obtained only 7 per cent of novels (17 of 248) and 7 per cent of novels written by women (4 of 58).

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clubs bought 42 per cent of the women’s plays sold (8 of 19), and the Stevens clubs 54 per cent (14 of 26). Men’s plays enjoyed a quite different position in the market. They sold well as classics and reasonably well as new productions. Purchases of new plays by male playwrights came to only 17 per cent of all men’s plays sold among Clay customers (42 of 243), 24 per cent among Stevens customers (29 of 119), whereas new plays by women constituted more than a quarter of the sales of women’s plays to Clay customers (5 of 19) and nearly a third of those to customers of Stevens (8 of 26). One reason, however, that a smaller proportion of men’s plays was bought new is that a much larger proportion was bought as classics, just as a larger proportion of men’s novels was bought as canonical works. More than half of men’s dramas bought by the Clay customers were classics: 133 out of 243, or 55 per cent. The Stevens customers were less likely to buy classics, but still took a sizeable number of them: among them, classic plays came to 38 per cent of the total of men’s plays. Purchases of Shakespeare’s plays as classics offer an interesting case study of their availability to provincial audiences, important because their behaviour challenges St Clair’s contention that, based on prices, the so-called national poet was really not readily accessible during the eighteenth century. St Clair devotes ch. 8 and app. 12 of The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period to demonstrating that copyrights for Shakespeare’s plays were carefully protected and that his works remained unavailable except in very expensive multi-volume editions before 1774. In app. 12, more comprehensive than his table 8.1, he lists prices from 24s. to as much as 210s. for eighteenth-century editions of Shakespeare’s works, including at the lowest end one unidentified edition listed before 1766 at 18s. and the cut-price Donaldson edition at 16s. in the 1760s. Furthermore, St Clair argues that after the 1730s, single Shakespeare plays were mostly unavailable except as parts of multi-volume sets. But even though Clay customers were not as interested overall in drama as in novels, a number were able to buy sixpenny editions of Shakespeare plays as early as 1759 (Othello and Romeo and Juliet); two copies of Richard III were sold at sixpence in 1770, as well as a sixpenny Merry Wives of Windsor in 1771, and three sixpenny Hamlets in 1773. Various editions of the complete works too were bought before 1774 by provincial customers at a range of prices, sometimes much less than those St Clair cites as standard: William Henley, a boy at the Daventry Dissenting Academy, bought two volumes of the works in folio for 7s on 23 January 1765; either John or Thomas Brewster, Rugby schoolboys

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from the West Indies, obtained a nine-volume edition of Shakespeare for 15s. on 28 January 1749; and Mr Knightley of the gentry family established at Fawsley purchased a nine-volume pasteboard edition on 5 March 1747 for a mere 10s. That is, the Clay records show that actual buyers of Shakespeare had more options than St Clair documents. For him, prices of single Shakespeare plays stabilized at sixpence only after 1774, and only by 1800 did ‘Shakespeare at last become available to readers of all classes and ages’, but single plays were bought cheaply by provincial readers of all ages (though not classes) half a century before, and Shakespeare enjoyed thirty-seven sales altogether of single or collected works, of which twenty-two occured before 1774, twenty at prices less than St Clair’s figures.²⁷ Consumers’ cleverness at finding bargains suggests how important it is, in studies of readership through price and access, to have archival sources that document demand or agency, not simply supply. That women’s plays, unlike Shakespeare’s and other men’s drama, were less likely to be purchased as classics, but were proportionally somewhat more likely than men’s to be purchased new, is more revealing about canonicity than anything else in the records—and similar to the results for women’s novels. If women’s plays, though reasonably attractive as new and recent purchases, were very seldom bought as classics, as plays ten years old or more, then women’s plays were somehow being excluded from the canon—just as women’s novels were. This means that they were less likely to be available in the cheap editions that encouraged, say, schoolboys at Daventry and Rugby to buy reprints of William Congreve and William Wycherley. When Bell’s British Theatre was issued in 1776–8 in twenty volumes, with 100 plays, only three were by a woman: Susanna Centlivre’s The Wonder, A Bold Stroke for a Wife, and The Busy Body. The 1797 edition of 140 plays retained these three and added just three more: Hannah Cowley’s Albina, Elizabeth Griffith’s School for Rakes, and Frances Sheridan’s Discovery. These figures closely reflect the purchasing of women’s plays as classics among provincial buyers. Only Centlivre was bought as a classic by the Clay customers: two copies of The Busy Body and one of A Bold Stroke. Later, one Stevens customer—Mr Le Brun, an employee of the manager John Bowles Watson (proprietor of theatres in Cheltenham and Gloucester)—bought a copy of The Busy Body in 1799, ²⁷ St Clair, Reading Nation, 157. Isaac Bickerstaff ’s plays sold thirty single copies, the runner-up to Shakespeare.

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and John Smith—a member of the gentry and a frequent purchaser of plays, along with his relative Miss Smith²⁸—bought Cowley’s The Belle’s Stratagem in 1791, eleven years after it was first performed. The Smiths were building a library of classic plays and other literature between 1790 and 1798, and their appetite for drama is exceeded only by that of Jane Williamson and Catherine Huddesford (see Ch. 1). Although they bought one recent play—John Smith acquired Richard Cumberland’s The Jew (1794) eight months after it was first performed—generally they obtained classic works. Together, their buying is impressive. Miss Smith bought two copies of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s Trip to Scarborough (1777) in 1791 and 1797 along with Aaron Hill’s Zara (1735) and Arthur Murphy’s The Way to Keep Him (1760), while John Smith purchased Sheridan’s Rivals (1775), School for Scandal (1777), and The Critic (1779), John Burgoyne’s The Heiress (1786), Richard Cumberland’s The West Indian (1771), George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem (1707), Benjamin Hoadley’s Suspicious Husband (1747), and Richard Steele’s Conscious Lovers (1722). Apart from drama, John Smith showed an interest in more recent literature. He borrowed the novels Henry and The Romance of the Forest in 1795 and 1797. His political interests seem somewhat radical: he bought such works as Barlow’s Advice to the Privileged Orders, the Trial of Horne Tooke, Thomas Paine’s Address to the Addressers, Flowers of the Jacobins, Helen Maria Williams’s Letters from France, and Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which he bound together with Williams’s Letters and Fugitive Poetry. He also bought sermons, etchings, and poems by Cowper, Akenside, and Lyttleton, and he twice was charged with reading from the circulating library (1791 and 1792; no titles given). Purchases charged to Miss Smith are more rare: she bought eleven other unidentified plays in addition to the two mentioned as well as Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (in 1790). The figures for purchases of dated women’s plays—between one and ten years old—are as unimpressive as the acquisitions of classic plays written by women. John Parker, jun., clergyman of Newbold, bought three plays by Hannah Cowley about two years after they first appeared: Albina, Belle’s Stratagem, and the farce Who’s the Dupe? As a schoolboy he ²⁸ The Stevens ledgers list John Smith Esq. as residing at Bownhams, a stately home some twelve miles from Cirencester, in 1798; before that, he seems to have lived closer to Cirencester. His purchases come to an end in 1798, and a Thomas Smith Esq. is listed in Paterson’s Roads for 1799 as the owner of Bownhams. See GRO B/367, C/8, 61 for Smith purchases.

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had obtained Isaac Bickerstaffe’s The Padlock. An unidentified Stevens customer, Mr Biddle of Tetbury, also bought Cowley’s Who’s the Dupe? about nine years after it was first performed in London, as well as Harriet Horncastle Hook’s operatic farce The Double Disguise some four years after its first performance. Disappearance from the repertory cannot explain these sparse purchases. With the exception of Cowley’s tragedy Albina, all these classic and dated plays were still being performed in London when the Clay and Stevens customers bought them. That is, they were all performed within a year of being purchased. What does the failure to achieve canonization mean for women playwrights? It does not necessarily mean less profit. Playwrights made their money primarily from benefits and sale of copyright. Funds from both sources were likely to be received within a year of first performance; after ten years, a revival or a reprinting would seldom put any money into an author’s pocket. Mr Thomas Cock, a schoolmaster in Cirencester, bought two copies of Charles Dibdin’s 1774 farce The Waterman in 1787; he may have been planning school performances, like those of Hall Hartson’s Countess of Salisbury presented by the boys of Mr Woolley’s academy in Northampton (Northampton Mercury, 17 December 1770). More certainly, Thomas Clay noted in his Lutterworth day book sometime early in 1779 that ‘Robinson a Player’ ordered three copies of Sheridan’s School for Scandal; ‘Holman the player’ actually charged one copy at Lutterworth on 6 March 1779. I have not been able to trace the performance. No doubt the purchases of theatrical manager John Bowles Watson and his employees Mr Walton and Mr Le Brun had performance in view even though only single copies were taken (of William Pearce’s Netley Abbey, Inchbald’s The Wedding Day, Frederic Reynolds’s Laugh When You Can, The School for Scandal, Wycherley’s Country Wife, Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and Centlivre’s Busy Body). Strikingly, two of these seven plays were by women. On the whole, customers bought plays singly, presumably for reading or reading aloud. The phrase used by Miss Mordaunt to Mrs Hayes, that ‘you have seen’ the latest play signifying ‘you have read’ it, is relevant here. The usage is conventional, but we might be reminded of a character in Eliza Haywood’s Betsy Thoughtless who has all the new plays sent down to her when she is in the country and who imagines them being acted as she reads them.²⁹ Among these provincial readers, Hannah Cowley, Hannah More, and Elizabeth Inchbald were ²⁹ Haywood, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (London: Pandora, 1988), 287.

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the most widely read women dramatists, enjoying sales of nine plays each—together, 60 per cent of the total women’s plays sold. The success of Elizabeth Inchbald in attracting an audience bears comparison to that of two male playwrights whose dramatic careers, like hers, peaked in the 1790s, Thomas Holcroft and Frederic Reynolds. Holcroft obtained eight sales; like Inchbald’s, almost all his plays were sold to book clubs as new or recent works. Reynolds’s nine sales, on the other hand, include purchases by only three clubs. Most of his plays were bought as recent rather than new productions. His contemporary reputation may not have equalled Inchbald’s and Holcroft’s even though Stevens’s customers bought them equally. If the Stevens records continued past 1807, we might be able to compare these three authors’ success at achieving classic status among this provincial audience. Interestingly enough, Inchbald herself, in her 1811 ten-volume The Modern Theatre: A Collection of Successful Modern Plays included four by Holcroft, ten by Reynolds, and five by herself—along with only three other women’s plays, eight in a total of forty.³⁰ But those eight plays, one-fifth of the total, do represent an advance for women playwrights over earlier collections. Women’s novels had just as much trouble finding a place in the inexpensive collections issued by James Harrison³¹ or by John Cooke, however. Harrison reproduced sixty-one titles in twenty-three volumes of the Novelist’s Magazine over ten years (1780–9); all his choices were at least fourteen years old when he published them. Ten titles were by women, but these were not bought by Stevens’s ledger customers and thus do not appear in the list in Table 2.2 of canonized works, though most of them had earlier found at least one Clay customer. John Cooke does not appear to have published any more titles by women than did Harrison.³² On the other hand, Harrison reprinted twenty-three of the twenty-eight male novelists’ titles in Table 2.2, including all the works ³⁰ The three other women’s plays are Sophia Lee’s Chapter of Accidents, Cowley’s Which is the Man?, and Charlotte Smith’s What is She? Inchbald’s earlier 25-volume The British Theatre (1808), 125 works, includes primarily older plays, such as 15 by Shakespeare. She does, however, insert five of her own plays, two by Cowley (Belle’s Stratagem and Bold Stroke for a Husband ), two by Centlivre (Busy Body and The Wonder), and one by Baillie (De Montfort), for a total of 10 or 8 per cent. All the rest are men’s plays, including just one by Reynolds and two by Holcroft. ³¹ Richard C. Taylor disagrees in ‘James Harrison, The Novelist’s Magazine, and the Early Canonizing of the English Novel’, SEL 33 (1993), 629–43, judging that Harrison’s series demonstrates a surprising ‘inclusiveness’ (638) toward female-authored novels. ³² Harrison’s titles were, according to Robert D. Mayo’s ‘Catalogue of Magazine Novels and Novelettes, 1740–1815’ in The English Novel in the Magazines, 1740–1815 (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1962): Sarah Fielding’s David Simple

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by Henry Fielding, Sterne, Smollett, Goldsmith, Richardson, Swift, Lesage, F´enelon, Defoe, Cervantes, Langhorne, and Ridley. Clearly, one of the most important steps in the process of becoming a classic (to be valued over time) or becoming canonized (to retain an audience over time) was to make it past the gatekeepers of collections such as Harrison’s. But even when women’s novels did so—as when Lennox’s Female Quixote (1752) was published in the Novelist’s Magazine—they did not necessarily find an end-of-century provincial audience; in fact, The Female Quixote does not appear anywhere in the provincial records. By contrast, Susanna Centlivre’s early eighteenth-century plays, which remained in repertory through the century, did find some purchasers. That is, her works’ presence on stage sustained demand for her plays. Admittedly, Centlivre’s provincial reading audience was small, both before and after the reprinting of three of her plays in Bell’s 1776–8 edition, but she retained that audience as mid-century women’s novelists did not seem to, whatever their early reputations. I suspect that plays in general could have a longer shelf-life than novels because, first, they had somewhat higher status as literature, and second, as in Centlivre’s case, they were revived on stage. They could seem both more enduring and more fresh. Again, as ‘new’ or apparently new works, women’s writing competed well in the provincial marketplace. Without a stage presence, however, novels had to rely on other cultural constructions to seem current or valued. One was mention in review journals, where occasionally some novels were cited as achievements against which to measure others. Few women novelists attained that eminence. Or as the earlier-cited work by Forster has shown, once they did so, they were frequently replaced, resulting in ever-changing lists of good female writers, while the ‘Notes Index’ to Raven and Forster’s The English Novel makes clear that the names of Richardson, Rousseau, Fielding, and Sterne were continually used to denigrate or to encourage more recent novelists. Outstanding women writers could win patronage from the reviewers as long as they were relatively new. If (1782, no. 41 in Mayo’s catalogue) and History of Ophelia (1785, no. 623); Mme de Grafigny’s Letters of a Peruvian Princess (1782, no. 764; with sequel, 1782, no. 1122); Lennox’s Female Quixote (1783, no. 424) and Henrietta (1787, no. 500); Haywood’s Betsy Thoughtless (1783, no. 608) and Invisible Spy (1788, no. 711); Frances Sheridan’s Sidney Bidulph (1786, no. 880) and Nourjahad (1788, no. 620); Mary Collyer’s Letters from Felicia to Charlotte (1788, no. 761). Cooke published at least the same titles by Grafigny and Lennox, as the ESTC shows. Taylor’s appended list of works included in Harrison’s series is less to be relied upon than Mayo’s catalogue: it lists Letters from Felicia to Charlotte as by ‘Mr Collyer’, for example (‘James Harrison’).

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they persisted, sooner or later their work was damned (as was Frances Burney’s Wanderer in 1814) or, worse, ignored. Although it might have helped the reputation and sales of women novelists to be more frequently reprinted in late eighteenth-century editions, this effect is uncertain because women writers did not have support from other cultural institutions. In any event, the Clay and Stevens records do not help us to determine how much cheap reprints helped sales. Their customers did not buy many novels in cheap editions—and when they did, it is often not possible to determine which novels they bought. A few such entries as ‘Harrison’s Novelists Magazine’ or ‘Cooke’s Novels’ are not revealing—except when customers subscribe to the Novelist’s Magazine at its commencement; those customers are considered as case studies in Ch. 5.

R E A D I N G P R AC T I C E S : M U LT I P L E A N D R E PE AT E D READINGS Whether or not we can grant that, if women had been more conspicuous as consumers of novels and plays written by women, those works would have sold better (as argued above), we can enquire whether the Clay records in particular reveal anything at all about how novels were read by men and women. And indeed, they do point to various practices, including multiple readings: a borrower’s declaring that a book will be read by other readers. Once John Clay acquired Tobias Smollett’s Humphry Clinker (1771) for his library, for instance, it attracted more of these readings than any other work; in each case, about a month would elapse between a multiple reading and the next withdrawal, time enough for the book to be either lent about or read aloud. Samuel Jemson, vicar of Weedon Bec since 1748, declared three readings of the novel on 16 August 1771, just two months after it was issued. Then Dr John Spier, rector of Crick, had it on 11 September; he managed to damage the first volume ‘by Burning ye Corner’—reading by candlelight?—but was not charged more than the usual ninepence for reading it.³³ William Smith, a student at the Daventry Dissenting Academy, paid for four readings of Humphry Clinker on 30 October 1771; subsequently, Francis Baker, vicar of Staverton from 1742 and the frequent borrower of novels ³³ NRO D7719.

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mentioned in Ch. 1, withdrew it on 27 November. These nine readings in three months make Smollett’s work by far the most sought-after new novel that was borrowed in the records, especially when added to the four readings of Samuel Clay’s copy at Warwick. The multiple readings are counted only once, however, in App. 2 and other totals; if included, Humphry Clinker would have been borrowed twenty-two times, not seventeen. The sole rival in demand is Burney’s Cecilia (1782), with nine withdrawals by Rugby boys in six months as discussed in Ch. 3, but this novel was not made available until nearly two years after it was first issued. Gaps in the records make it impossible to determine how many new novels the Clays actually circulated; recently issued works such as Humphry Clinker (1771) were exceptional. Altogether, the records document six instances of multiple reading, each counted as one borrowing only in App. 2. The four other instances are: in the Warwick records, four of Betsy Thoughtless (1751) by Eliza Haywood and two of the anonymous Undutiful Daughter (1771), both charged to Mrs Parkes, a draper’s wife. In the Daventry records, six readings of The Delicate Distress (1769) in 1770 as well as the three of Humphry Clinker, both paid for by Jemson, while the Daventry attorney Charles Simon Oakden—apparently a somewhat unscrupulous profiteer in the enclosure of the nearby parish of Maidford in 1778³⁴—was charged for two readings of Light Summer Reading for the Ladies, or the History of Lady Lucy Fenton (1768). Interestingly, the clergyman Jemson seems to have used this practice to persuade John Clay to order a particular book for the library. The four-volume Sir William Harrington was first advertised in the St James’s Chronicle on 15 January 1771; Jemson ordered it sometime that month. The bespoke entry reads ‘send to Mr . Jemson and he’ll engage for 5 Readg ’.³⁵ He was charged, however, with just one reading of Sir William Harrington in March 1771, but records are missing between 21 March and 28 July. Unless others borrowed the novel during that time (and in other gaps in the records), this purchase was very uneconomical for John Clay and his successor Thomas. Just seven more borrowings of his copy are recorded, five by Academy boys on 15 February 1774 (not a multiple reading: all five boys’ names are separately entered), and two in 1779. It cost 10s. sewed and collected only 8s. in fees in the approximately five ³⁴ Steven Hollowell, ‘Aspects of Northamptonshire Inclosure: Social and Economic Motive and Movements’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Nottingham, 1998), 251 ff. ³⁵ NRO D2930/34r .

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years covered by the remaining Daventry records. (The four borrowings at Warwick, included in App. 2 totals, were of Samuel Clay’s copy, which circulated after Thomas Clay’s death to seven Rugby boys.) Sir William Harrington, too, was one of the most frequently requested works: only Peregrine Pickle (1751), The Fool of Quality (1766), and Sir Charles Grandison (1754) had more borrowers. Altogether, adding to the circulating library cannot have been a very lucrative proposition for John or Thomas Clay, and it is unsurprising that their collection of fiction remained quite small and dated, with evidence for only sixty-two titles circulating at Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth. By contrast, Stevens clearly added to his much larger library. For example, Augusta; or, the Dependent Niece, published in 1788, circulated in that year as number 477 in his catalogue, which does not survive.³⁶ Rereading is another practice that the records occasionally document. John Latimer’s four rereadings were the most frequent. Apart from the desultory readers to be discussed shortly, just three students, one clergyman, and one woman among the Clay customers appear to reread a novel.³⁷ Stevens’s records do not show reborrowing, except in the case of Edward Cripps, Esq., who borrowed Agatha; or, a Narrative of Recent Events (1796) for a fortnight soon after it was issued, then again in 1801. But some customers held on to their books for a month, which perhaps allowed rereading; Stevens evidently thought a month too long, noting down the extra time but not always charging more, as when Mr Jonathan Wane kept Charlotte Smith’s Ethelinde (1789) for a month in 1797.³⁸ Clay readers, by contrast, had no clear time limits. Stevens’s library seems to have been more professionally run than those of the Clays as well as larger. Furthermore, the Clay records indicate that at least some buyers of novels either returned the books immediately and paid for reading them ³⁶ GRO Stevens A/20. A total of ninety-seven novels circulated among Clay customers, but as App. 1 indicates, the Daventry library circulated just forty-six titles, and at Rugby a further fourteen circulated that had not done so at Daventry. ³⁷ Students who reread novels (apart from the desultory readers mentioned later) were Academy boys John Coles (Fielding’s Amelia twice, October and November 1758) and J. Larkcom (the anonymous The Visiting Day, May and December 1774), as well as Rugbeian James Lloyd (Fool of Quality, 5 vols., May and October 1784). Samuel Jemson, the clergyman of Weedon Bec who paid for six readings of The Delicate Distress and The Gordian Knot in 1770 borrowed all four volumes again in 1774. The final Clay rereader was Miss Lovell, who borrowed Elizabeth Griffith’s Delicate Distress twice ( January and March 1769). ³⁸ GRO B/197.

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or, at a later time, tried to sell their copies, usually without success. The buyers who returned books and thus were charged as readers were reasonably few: Miss Prowdman returned her copy of Roderick Random (1748), bought soon after issue, as did one of the Brewster brothers his copy of Sarah Fielding’s David Simple (1744), and John Ashley, a gentleman, his edition of Haywood’s Invisible Spy (1755). Strictly speaking, these are neither purchases nor borrowings; they are listed in App. 2 among purchases, however. (Similarly, one play was returned by a book club—Thomas Hurlstone’s Crotchet Lodge—and it is counted among totals in Table 2.4.) Novels bought at some unspecified earlier time whose owners failed to sell them do not appear at all in App. 2. When a customer wanted to buy a second-hand copy of Joseph Andrews in 1770, John Clay obtained one from the local schoolmaster, John Warren. Clay made no money on the transaction, taking 2s. from William Hughes, chaplain to the Earl of Elgin, and giving the same to Warren, but Hughes’s purchase is included among the sales of the novel in App. 2. Another customer, the Revd John Smith of Lilbourne, offered six novels for sale in 1758, a seven-volume set of Clarissa as well as Peregrine Pickle, Roderick Random, Tom Jones, Charlotte Lennox’s Harriot Stuart, and Bampfylde Moore Carew. Through September 1759, there were no takers, though possibly they sold later; in any event, they are not included in App. 2. One other novel on offer but, as far as the records indicate, not sold, was William Kenrick’s four´ volume translation of Rousseau’s Emile, Emilius and Sophia (1763–5), owned by a surgeon at Rugby. In the Stevens records, a Mr Godby bought Clarissa and returned it. (He seems to have been happier with earlier purchases of Joseph Andrews, Roderick Random, and The Vicar of Wakefield.) Occasionally, borrowing would lead to purchase. One gentry woman borrowed Tom Jones in 1806, and evidently Miss Jones was entertained enough to buy it when she brought it back to Stevens’s shop. Similarly, Mrs Chambers at Warwick borrowed a four-volume set of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters in November 1771, then in December purchased a three-volume edition, and Mary Chadwick Clay bought Coxheath-Camp (1779) after she borrowed it. On the whole, however, these few instances of crossover between buying and borrowing simply reinforce the strong distinction between the two in provincial customers’ practices, at least as the records indicate them.

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Perhaps the most interesting reading practice documented by the Clay records is desultory reading: browsing within multi-volume novels, even within incomplete sets. Desultory reading occurs whenever borrowers of novels take out only odd volumes. Just the Clay ledgers and day books show this sort of reading, perhaps because Stevens permitted the withdrawal of only complete sets. The term certainly is not new. Edward Gibbon speaks in his autobiography of his pleasure (he ‘secretly rejoiced’) at being relieved by bad health from attendance at Westminster School, and the aura of remembered delight hovers over the term when it appears in his next sentence: ‘As often as I was tolerably exempt from danger and pain, reading, free desultory reading, was the employment and comfort of my solitary hours.’ ‘Free desultory reading’ is evidently blissful. But his own retrospective disapproval soon undermines these joys, and he regrets that ‘I was allowed without control or advice, to gratify the wanderings of an unripe taste.’ ‘Taste’ ushers in the usual feeding metaphor at the start of the next sentence: ‘My indiscriminate appetite subsided by degrees in the historic line.’³⁹ Gibbon’s desultory reading, however delightful, seems allied to freedom from supervision rather than to the fits and starts that we sometimes associate with the term. Within the Clay records, to read desultorily is not to abandon a book from distaste or indifference after the first or second volume. At least one of the multi-volume works that the Clays lent out, for example, lost its last volume over time but still attracted readers. And more strikingly, even when sets were complete, some readers appeared to start in the middle, as did Mrs Hervey of Warwick, who in October 1770 took out volumes ii and iii of the fourvolume edition of Pamela, containing Richardson’s sequel in volumes iii and iv. Desultory reading is not the same as rereading. Even if Mrs Hervey had read all four volumes of Pamela at some earlier time, she was not precisely rereading it by taking out the two middle volumes. And admittedly, desultory reading might not be so at all. A reader could own or have ³⁹ Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life and Writings … illustrated from his letters, with occasional notes and narrative, by the Right Honourable John, Lord Sheffield, Bicentenary Edition, ed. A. O. J. Cockshut and Stephen Constantine (Hartnolls: Ryburn Publishing; Keele: Keele University Press, 1994), 71, 75.

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access to a set of volumes that were incomplete and might be finishing a book by borrowing odd volumes. But the sheer numbers of desultory borrowings suggest that browsing is a more likely explanation.⁴⁰ Altogether, desultory or truncated borrowings include seventy-two of all withdrawals from the Clays’ small circulating libraries, over 17 per cent (of 417), a substantial proportion. If we look at customers instead of withdrawals, exactly a third of borrowers engage in this practice (55 of the 165 customers who borrowed novels from the Clays, a sum that includes 75 schoolboys). Women make up just under 30 per cent of these 55 customers who borrow desultorily (16 of 55), schoolboys another 53 per cent (29 of 55). Clearly, schoolboys were engaged in a good deal of desultory reading. J. Larkcom at the Daventry Dissenting Academy took out just the first volume of the three-volume anonymous Light Summer Reading for the Ladies, or the History of Lady Lucy Fenton (1768) in May 1774 and if the records ended there we might assume that he rejected the work, along with his schoolmate T. Withers, who had withdrawn just two unspecified volumes of it in March. But Withers then withdrew all three volumes in May, and Larkcom paid to read the three volumes in the following December. In the next set of records (1777), volume iii of Lucy Fenton apparently had been lost by a Daventry boy, Robert Slater, who was supposed to pay for it, but the third volume was still missing in 1779, when an Academy boy borrowed the work nonetheless, and in 1780, when two Rugby boys also read it without the concluding volume.⁴¹ This novel, which unfortunately has not survived in any library according to the ESTC and Raven and Forster’s The English Novel, shows perhaps the strangest circulation history in the Clay records, ⁴⁰ Stephen M. Colclough’s article, ‘Procuring Books and Consuming Texts: The Reading Experience of a Sheffield Apprentice, 1798’, Book History 3 (2000), demonstrates that Joseph Hunter obtained books from various sources and read them in various ways—completely as well as desultorily: ‘Hunter often read [travel] texts in part, or plundered them for illustrations, rather than engaging with them in their entirety’ (37). ⁴¹ Identification of Daventry Dissenting Academy students is made possible by reference to Thomas Belsham’s ‘A List of Students educated at the Academy of Daventry under the Patronage of Mr. Coward’s Trustees, and under the successive superintendence of the Rev. Caleb Ashworth, D.D., the Rev. Thomas Robins, and the Rev. Thomas Belsham’, Monthly Repository 17 (1822), 163–4, 195–8, 284, 332. Belsham’s identification of T. Withers, entered in 1773, may be mistaken: a Samuel Withers, identified as a student at the Academy in NRO M203, Dissenters’ Births and Baptisms, Daventry, is noted as the father of a son, Joseph, with his wife Sarah, born 24 August 1776; another son Samuel was born 29 October 1779.

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but schoolboys and other customers chose to read many other works in a desultory fashion even when the Clays’ sets were complete. For instance, at Rugby one of the boys who withdrew Lucy Fenton while it was missing the third volume, Egerton Stafford, also took out the second volume of Margaret and Susannah Minifie’s The Picture (1766) in September 1779, and then all three volumes in November of the following year. Two other Rugbeians, Richard Lickorish and William Boultbee Sleath, seemed to have combined to withdraw Richardson’s Clarissa (1747–8), but even in combination they took out only the first four volumes and volume vi between March and May 1776, though the Clays’ eight-volume edition appears to have been intact at that time; they thus missed or avoided the rape, which occurs in the fifth volume. Both were great consumers of print; see Ch. 4 for further consideration of their purchases and borrowings. Another Rugby boy borrowed only the third volume of the Arabian Nights (1706), while at the Daventry Dissenting Academy, all four readings of the Arabian Nights included odd volumes from a six-volume set, and one boy, Mr Maxwell, took out volumes iii, iv, and v in 1777 and iii, v, and vi in 1779. Similarly, another Daventry boy, William Hawks, took out volumes i, ii, and iv of Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle (1751), thus skipping the interpolated memoirs of Lady Vane in volume iii; and finally, John Cooke, a future member of the Royal College of Physicians, withdrew the second volume of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) in 1770 and just the fourth volume of Henry Brooke’s The Fool of Quality (1766) in 1771, but all five volumes of the latter in both 1770 and 1773. Because some schoolboys withdrew the full sets of novels which they at one time borrowed only in part, we cannot automatically assume that others who took the first volume or two of a novel and no more lost interest. They may have been reading desultorily, or they may have finished the novel at another time not covered in the records. Some readers certainly took quite a while to get from one volume to the next, for whatever reason, yet over time did complete the work. The Westley sisters in Rugby read Clarissa in sequence, as noted in Ch. 1, beginning with the first two volumes on 24 July 1768 and withdrawing the last volume four months later on 5 November.⁴² Perhaps unsurprisingly, Richardson’s novels were often withdrawn incompletely, particularly Sir Charles Grandison (1754), borrowed seventeen of twenty-eight times in ⁴² The Westleys withdrew volumes iii and perhaps iv on 6 August, v and vi on 27 August, vii on 29 October, and viii on 5 November (NRO D2925).

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this way by Clay customers. In fact, eleven of these seventeen truncated borrowings do not seem to have proceeded past volume ii.⁴³ One boy at the Daventry Dissenting Academy, William Smith, made two efforts, taking out the first volume in May 1770, and the first two the following October, but he got no further in the extant records. On the other hand, five readers took out just the last volumes. Altogether, the records document only eight complete borrowings of Grandison, four of them by Rugby boys and two by John Latimer of Warwick. Clarissa fared similarly with ten truncated readings, but it was borrowed less often, sixteen times.⁴⁴ Curiously enough, only Mrs Hervey borrowed a truncated Pamela. The four male borrowers of Pamela took all four volumes, which include the sequel. After Richardson, Brooke’s The Fool of Quality attracted most desultory readers. Apart from the schoolboy John Cooke’s reading of one volume mentioned earlier, at least twelve other desultory or truncated readings occur out of twenty-nine borrowings.⁴⁵ Nevertheless, three boys rushed to borrow the fifth and final volume as soon as it was available in May 1770; one had just read the four earlier volumes in January. Smollett’s Humphry Clinker was read desultorily by one Rugby boy out of seventeen borrowings and Peregrine Pickle five times out of twenty-three borrowings.⁴⁶ Tom Jones seems to have always been ⁴³ These included borrowings by three women, four Rugby boys, and four Academy boys, counting Smith twice. ⁴⁴ Latimer, three Academy boys, and Thomas Master, Esq., a Stevens customer, read all eight volumes of Clarissa, as did the Westley sisters. Two servants withdrew final volumes: Samuel Hutchins the two last volumes and Mrs Brooke’s manservant just vol. vii. Miss Lover of Crick jumped from vols. i and ii to vi, while Mrs Lucas of Kilsby skipped from vols. i and ii to iv, then halted. Jones the turnpike keeper withdrew six volumes, and at the Academy George Lewis took out the first volume, Barron French volumes vii and viii, and W. Brown vol. vi. ⁴⁵ Miss Lovell took out volumes i and iii of The Fool of Quality, Mr Ireland of Rugby i, ii, iv, and v, Miss Crossfield (who boarded boys at Rugby) volume iii, a Babington brother at Rugby School volumes iii and iv, John Wightwick Knightley at Rugby and N. B. French of the Academy volumes i and ii, and two other Academy boys, W. Brown and George Lewis, volumes i–iv in 1779, well after the fifth volume was issued. In addition, Henry Hunt, William Smith, and Josiah Townsend of the Daventry Academy withdrew only the fifth volume, as did Joseph Watson of Warwick; in the absence of information to the contrary, I have classified these as truncated readings, though in fact these readers quite likely read the first four volumes earlier and withdrew the fifth volume to complete the work. ⁴⁶ One of the Harpur brothers at Rugby withdrew Humphry Clinker desultorily, vols. ii and iii. Both withdrawals of Tristram Shandy in the Clay records were of volumes vii and viii, taken soon after they were issued; these borrowings by Mr Hindes of Hardwick and Peter La Roque, a clergyman of Hardwick, do not, therefore, fall into the

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borrowed complete in four volumes (fifteen withdrawals), perhaps a tribute to its complex plotting, if we assume that Sleath (vol. i) and Lickorish (vols. ii–iv) at Rugby School were sharing the novel without paying for two readings, as they apparently did for the desultory reading of Clarissa immediately afterward. Two of the twelve borrowings of Amelia, however, were desultory or truncated; in fact, a Miss Sawbridge, who took only the third and fourth volumes, seems to have made rather a practice of browsing. In one year, 1779, she took out just two unspecified volumes of the anonymous Sir William Harrington (4 vols.) and five of six volumes of the Arabian Nights; the novels that she chose to read completely in 1779–80 were Ann Emelinda Skinn’s The Old Maid (1771; 3 vols.) and the anonymous Morning Ramble (1775; 2 vols.). Two Rugby boys, however, took out only the first two volumes of The Old Maid, and though all five other borrowings of the four-volume History of Emily Montague (1769) were complete, one boy at Rugby withdrew only its first two volumes: Matthew Wise of Warwick, who also borrowed Lucy Fenton when it was missing its last volume. Apart from Miss Sawbridge, other adult desultory readers include Mrs Lucas of Kilsby (vols. i, ii, and iv of Clarissa), Mr Jones, a turnpike keeper (Clarissa vols. i, ii, iv, v, vi, and viii), and Mrs Bromfield, wife of a clergyman-schoolmaster (vols. i, ii, and iv of the seven-volume Sir Charles Grandison). Writers other than Richardson attracted this sort of browsing by adults: for instance, Mr Harris, a mason in Warwick, volume ii of Fieux de Mouhy’s Fortunate Country Maid (1740; 2 vols.). In all cases except for Arabian Nights, subsequent borrowings of a complete set show that desultory reading cannot be attributed to missing volumes. Just a few other titles were read in this truncated fashion: Francis Baker, the clergyman of Staverton who frequently borrowed novels (see Ch. 1), took out the first volume alone of Visiting Day (1768); Mrs Innys the first volume of Pupil of Pleasure (1776); Mr Baucot of Braunston just the second part of Pilgrim’s Progress (1678–84); an officer staying at the Swan Inn in Warwick the first volume of The History of Miss Indiana Danby (1765); and a Mrs Stanton the first volume of The Marriage Act (1754). Unless readers took out volumes one at a time, the records do not indicate how long books were retained. Schoolboys tended to get through one or occasionally two volumes in a week, though not always; category of truncated or desultory readings. All buyers and borrowers of Sterne’s novel were male, incidentally, except for one Stevens customer.

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Sleath and Lickorish took two weeks to read each volume of Tom Jones, perhaps because they shared them.⁴⁷ John Latimer was consuming about a volume a day between 11 January and 15 February 1771. But of course, he and other readers who withdrew whole sets of novels might well have been reading desultorily rather than completely. Some of the titles that were borrowed desultorily suggest possible causes for this evidently quite common mode of reading fiction. Eighteenth-century prose fiction was not always linear in structure, and it was not always complete when issued. Thus, eighteenth-century readers might have been comfortable with a less linear approach to fiction than some moderns take for granted, or than nineteenth-century readers might have adopted when buying successive numbers of a part publication. Clay customers’ desultory reading might tell us something about how non-linear eighteenth-century texts such as Tristram Shandy (1760–7) were appropriated, Sterne’s novel being just the most famous of a number of works that either remained nominally unfinished, such as Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling, allegedly from a manuscript that had lost many chapters in the process of supplying wadding for guns, or that appended later volumes, such as The History of Miss Indiana Danby, which was published ‘By a Lady’ in two volumes in 1765 but added two more in 1767. Another novel favoured by Rugby boys and others, Alain Ren´e Lesage’s Gil Blas, was originally issued in France in four volumes over twenty years, 1715–35. No less than five of the forty titles first published in 1770 according to Raven and Forster either added to earlier volumes as did The Fool of Quality and the Griffiths’s Genuine Letters between Henry and Frances, or would add volumes later (Thomas Bridges’s Adventures of a Bank-Note, Francis Fleming’s Timothy Ginnadrake, and the anonymous Memoirs of Miss Arabella Bolton). Although all the five works just mentioned found provincial readers, we have evidence that just one of the three available to borrowers—The Fool of Quality—was withdrawn desultorily. Like Richardson’s Clarissa, Brooke’s Fool of Quality was originally issued serially, although over a longer period. Richardson’s novel appeared in three chunks, 1747–8, and Brooke’s in four: the first and second volumes in 1765, the third in ⁴⁷ Other sorts of sharing also caused delays in reading. Mrs Cave of Lutterworth read the first three volumes of Tom Jones at about the same rate as Sleath and Lickorish between 26 February and 26 March 1778 but did not obtain the fourth volume for four weeks. She had to depend on Thomas Clay’s bringing the volumes with him to Lutterworth from Rugby School, where Richard Walker was charged with reading all four volumes on 21 March.

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1768, the fourth in 1769, and the fifth in 1770. This sort of production favoured desultory reading, although Brooke’s rambling novel seems particularly to encourage it. Other novels also borrowed desultorily, albeit issued all at once, were picaresque or episodic, such as Peregrine Pickle; were collections of tales, such as the Arabian Nights; or were internally divided into separable sections, such as Gulliver’s Travels. Finally, desultory reading of epistolary works might arise because they do not usually depend on a strong, linear plot for their interest, as Samuel Johnson’s famous judgement suggests: ‘if you read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment.’⁴⁸ Reading for ‘sentiment’ could very well be desultory. Indeed, Richardson himself extracted the ‘instructive sentiments’ from his novels and published them separately. Johnson commented, according to Hester Thrale, ‘how few books there are of which one ever can possibly arrive at the last page!’, continuing, ‘was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim’s Progress’.⁴⁹ These three works were among the most in demand among provincial readers, but bought rather than borrowed: the first two were not available in the lending library, and no evidence therefore exists to indicate whether or not they tended to be read desultorily. Johnson’s comment may offer a way of thinking about desultory reading practices, however, practices that differ markedly from those of mid-twentieth-century academic readers (especially those taught by formalists to value unity) but which may not differ from those of common readers, now or then. Johnson, after all, praised the Critical Review for having writers who did not need to finish books to be inspired to write on them: they ‘lay hold of a topic and write chiefly from their own minds’.⁵⁰ To browse in a book that has already been read or that might be read completely in the future (or never) is a stimulus to imagination, to ‘mind’ as Johnson puts it, or to ‘appropriation’, as we might put it, following Roger Chartier. Through appropriation, ⁴⁸ James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman, corrected by J. D. Fleeman (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 480. ⁴⁹ Hester Lynch Piozzi, Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D, During the Last Twenty Years of his Life, ed. S. C. Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925), 179–80. ⁵⁰ Boswell, Life of Johnson, 740.

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readers construct a text’s meaning for themselves, refashioning what they consume and possibly reading against the grain.⁵¹ Eighteenthcentury novels are frequently multiple, self-reflexive, digressive, episodic, depending on several narrative voices to hold them together and move them along rather than on a developed plot; Mikhail Bakhtin’s study of the ‘dialogic’ emphasizes these elements.⁵² Such literature resists closure and rewards browsing. And although Samuel Johnson may be willing to admit to and even encourage this sort of reading, later critics have been more inclined to police it. A final way to think about desultory reading practices in the eighteenth century is to remember the ubiquity of selections from various writers—‘beauties’ and extracts—or the collection of sentiments within his novels that Richardson compiled. St Clair has argued that before 1774, copyright restrictions clamped down on anthologies, but that afterwards, the reading nation welcomed an ‘outpouring’ of such works.⁵³ Barbara M. Benedict, however, finds many earlier examples; she lists four and a half pages of anthologies published between 1616 and 1774.⁵⁴ Although we might tend to think of such anthologies as providing snippets adapted to a poorly educated, tasteless reading public’s short attention span—the way George Gissing’s character Whelpdale describes them in New Grub Street⁵⁵—we might be more accurate if we saw their popularity as adapted to desultory reading practices. Extracts and anthologies of various kinds afforded opportunities, in other words, for readerly appropriation that might incorporate various kinds of resistance, and a number of recent scholars have been usefully studying the effects of such compilations. In her study of anthologies and the eighteenth-century novel, Leah Price emphasizes that ‘Far from reducing readers to passive consumers, … the novel has relentlessly forced ⁵¹ This concept appears through most of Chartier’s work; see the ‘Introduction’ to The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France, transl. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 6–7, for a concise discussion. ⁵² M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, transl. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982). ⁵³ St Clair, Reading Nation, 75. ⁵⁴ Barbara M. Benedict, Making the Modern Reader: Cultural Mediation in Early Modern Literary Anthologies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). ⁵⁵ Whelpdale, a character who wishes to give the masses what they want, says that ‘Everything must be very short, two inches at the utmost; their attention can’t sustain itself beyond two inches. Even chat is too solid for them: they want chit-chat,’ George Gissing, New Grub Street, ed. John Goode (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 460.

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them to choose which audience to identify themselves with, and which rhythm of reading.’⁵⁶ Currently, hypertexts offer readers the opportunity of constructing and perusing texts in multiple ways, not in a linear fashion, and current browsing metaphors may reflect desultory reading practices that existed and still exist alongside more linear modes. When I have described eighteenth-century desultory reading to friends, many claim with pride to be desultory readers also, as though they feel empowered or liberated by such readerly control of narrative, and no doubt eighteenth-century readers could share these satisfactions in spite of cultural prohibitions against skimming. E. J. Clery reviews the rhetorical energy of these prohibitions in rather extreme terms: the circulating library ‘is believed to encourage the still greater perversion of obsessive non-reading, not far from madness: a skimming and dipping technique which begins at the conclusion and allows a volume to be effectively gutted in minimum time’.⁵⁷ Desultory readers may feel—to switch from a murdering to a feeding metaphor—that they suck the juice or obtain the meat of the text, without being obliged to take in every word. James Boswell’s account of Johnson’s way with books seems to admire such efficient voracity: ‘Dr Johnson seized upon Mr Charles Sheridan’s Account of the late Revolution in Sweden, and seemed to read it ravenously, as if he devoured it …‘‘He knows how to read better than any one (said Mrs Knowles;) he gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it.’’ ’⁵⁸ To begin in medias res is a hallowed literary technique, after all. Skimming or browsing in a book is a way to accumulate cultural capital at a small expense of time—capital even more readily amassed, as the earlier material on review journals and book clubs suggests, by reading reviews of books (or films) rather than by consuming the works themselves. And possibly the cultural devaluation of novels that persisted in the eighteenth century despite attempts to achieve what William B. Warner in Licensing Entertainment has called the ‘elevation’ of the novel might have encouraged customers to develop the skimming and browsing practices that the Clay records document. ⁵⁶ Leah Price, The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 156; see also Benedict’s earlier Making the Modern Reader with its consideration of readers’ wishes to ‘dip and skip’, 196. ⁵⁷ E. J. Clery, The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 97. ⁵⁸ Boswell, Life of Johnson, 942.

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I have treated the consuming practices of Clay and Stevens customers as if they exist apart from what the market makes available—St Clair’s focus—or what the market tells them to buy. Obviously, they do not. Nonetheless, the ways in which these customers behave do suggest some agency within the marketplace. They ignore most anonymous novels. Women show preference for novels and plays written by women. Men show the same preference for works by men. Rather than seeing novels as ephemeral productions, some customers choose to reread them; novel reading is not for them a ‘once and done’ activity. Similarly, some choose to borrow or buy very dated novels, in defiance of the ‘novelty’ that readers might be expected to value. Some of the Clays’ customers choose, when they share a library novel, to pay separately for reading it—scrupulous behaviour that is not easily accounted for in economic terms or even by common sense. And readers’ agency, their powers of choice among what the market supplies, and what an author supplies as well, is perhaps best illustrated by desultory reading practices, by the choice to browse within long works of fiction.

3 Schoolboy Readers: John Newbery’s Goody Two-Shoes and Licensed War Schoolboy customers of the Clays are central to my project; all arguments in this study as a result refer to them—as in the discussion of desultory reading in the previous chapter. This centrality has several causes. First, boys at Rugby School and the Daventry Dissenting Academy represent a large proportion of the audience for prose fiction: over one-third of the Clays’ customers for novels (110 boys against 197 adults). They also comprise the overwhelming majority of buyers of children’s books as well as chapbooks, a product very difficult to define (see the discussion in the next chapter). Boys’ appetite for fiction, especially in the 1770s, predicts an increased adult provincial audience for novels in the 1780s and later. Second, purchases at Rugby School are extremely well documented. Four Clay ledgers record such sales between 1744 and 1784, and these are supplemented by a few surviving day books as well. The ledgers have survived almost in entirety, and they are quite comprehensive.¹ They include accounts for 85 per cent of the 670 boys admitted to the school between 1742 and 1784, and for another 39 boys not listed in the extant school registers.² Third, and ¹ See the Bibliography for list of Rugby ledgers. The last, D10297, 1781–4+, was begun by Samuel Clay when he inherited the Rugby business. It has lost its first 20 leaves (40 pages) and, after p. 200, mildew stains make entries increasingly difficult to read. Although some entries as late as 1786 are decipherable, I have considered only those to the end of 1784, which can be documented to June 12 of that year in Day Book ML 478 also. The loss of the ledger’s first pages makes later records of some boys admitted after 1775 incomplete, as well as early records of those admitted after 1780. The relative representativeness of the records is best calculated, then, only up to and including 1780. ² The 1933 edition of the Rugby School Register lists 670 boys’ entrances to Rugby School during 1742–84, not including re-entrances; see Godfrey A. Solly (ed.), Rugby School Register, Volume 1, From April 1765 to October 1857, Revised and Annotated … (Rugby: George Over, 1933), hereafter cited as Solly Register 1933; Table 4.2 indicates yearly entries. The 461 Clay ledger accounts must be reduced by 39 (because 39 boys’ accounts do not appear in Solly Register 1933) and increased by 150 (because the

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most important, schoolboy purchases refute much received wisdom on reading, including Samuel Johnson’s notion, quoted by Hester Thrale, that children do not read works like Goody Two-Shoes: [Samuel Johnson] used to condemn me for putting Newbery’s books into [children’s] hands as too trifling to engage their attention. ‘Babies do not want (said he) to hear about babies; they like to be told of giants and castles, and of somewhat which can stretch and stimulate their little minds.’ When in answer I would urge the numerous editions and quick sale of Tommy Prudent or Goody Two-Shoes: ‘Remember always (said he) that the parents buy the books, and that the children never read them.³

Goody Two-Shoes was in fact one of the more popular children’s books among Rugby boys. The boys’ interest in this text suggests that their school lives did not forestall the crossing of gender boundaries in reading. Rugby boy readers ranged in age from 6 or 8 to 18. They included a few aristocrats, such as the fifth Lord Elgin (whose second son, the seventh earl, is known for having absconded with the Parthenon sculptures to England), but generally the school was populated by sons of the lesser Midlands gentry and the professional classes. In addition, boys who lived within ten miles of Rugby could obtain free tuition until they were 15; charges were £4 a year in 1790 and less earlier.⁴ As a result, some local boys seem always to have been in attendance, as well as a few from the trading classes also. John Clay’s nephew by marriage, Richard Watkins, entered Rugby in 1759 at age 9;⁵ his father was a Clays lumped brothers’ accounts together; 150 younger brothers’ purchases are thus represented), yielding 572 boys of Solly’s 670, or 85 per cent. The 39 boys not included in Solly Register 1933 but who appear in the Clay ledgers indicate some deficiencies in the Register itself, which is certainly incomplete: no entries were made, for instance, by Joseph Richmond, headmaster 1751–5, but the Clay records show that at least four boys entered then. The opposite case—i.e. boys not included in the Clay ledgers but who appear in Solly Register 1933—largely arises because they were sons of Rugby locals: local boys’ purchases were probably included in parents’ accounts in ledgers that have not survived. Solly Register 1933 identifies many boys’ parents and subsequent careers. ³ Piozzi, Anecdotes, 14. No eighteenth-century title containing the phrase ‘Tommy Prudent’ can be found in ESTC, nor does the phrase appear in Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO). ⁴ W. H. D. Rouse, A History of Rugby School (London: Duckworth, 1898), 130, 125. ⁵ Although the Clay references always spell the name ‘Watkin’, it appears in almost all other sources, including Solly Register 1933, as ‘Watkins’. Charles Watkins, Richard’s older brother, sent his own son Clarke to Rugby in 1781 when the boy was about 8, and Clarke eventually married Samuel Clay’s daughter Maria Ann, his second cousin.

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draper in Daventry. Even boys somewhat lower in status attended, such as William and John Clarke, the sons of an innkeeper at Daventry.⁶ All students could read when they began their studies at Rugby. In fact, by our standards reading began very early for gentry and professional children. Hester Thrale, herself a gentlewoman and the wife of a wealthy brewer, used children’s books to reinforce her teaching; she wrote in 1768 that her daughter Hester Maria (‘Queeney’), aged 4, could read ‘tolerably’ and knew some Latin grammar. Later, her son Harry read ‘smartly’ at 4 and knew more Latin at that age than his sister had.⁷ Probably most Rugby boys could already read some Latin when they were admitted—perhaps also tutored by their mothers, as were the Rugbeians John Plomer Clarke and his brother Richard, sons of a landed gentleman near Daventry; their careers at Rugby, revealed in their mother’s letters to them, will be examined later. All students at Rugby studied Latin; if they attended long enough, they began Greek; and many of them supplemented their rather strenuous classical education by buying or borrowing English novels, magazines, children’s books, and chapbooks. Even long English novels attracted these boys. One way to get a sense of who they were is to look at those who borrowed Frances Burney’s five-volume novel Cecilia once Samuel Clay made it available in 1784, two years after it was first published. No other novel was demanded so insistently at Rugby. Within six months, nine boys had paid to read it, and they happen to represent a cross-section of the (often upwardly mobile) genteel, professional, and plebeian classes that the school educated. Four borrowers whose ages cannot be determined were Thomas Johnson, probably the son of a local tradesman; John ⁶ Writing on the difficulties of travel to Rugby in the eighteenth century, Matthew Holbeche Bloxam notes that many boys arrived on ‘Welsh ponies’ in the 1770s and that ‘Ordinarily one postchaise only made its appearance in Rugby, at the commencement of each scholastic half year. This belonged to the landlord of the Wheat Sheaf, at Daventry, a noted inn on the London Road, and was employed to bring and take his two sons, William Clerk and John Clerk, to and from School…. With one of these I have transacted business, and entered into chat with him about his School days’ (Bloxam, Rugby: The School and the Neighbourhood, ed. W. H. Payne Smith (London: Whittaker; Rugby: A. J. Lawrence, 1889), 85, 86). Bloxam is wrong about the Wheat Sheaf: parish tax records indicate that it was operated by Sarah Brooke in the 1770s, but a William Clarke is listed as a ‘victualler’ in the 1777 Militia List for Daventry: Hatley, Militia Lists, 42. ⁷ Mary Hyde, The Thrales of Streatham Park (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 29, 44. William McCarthy notes Barbauld’s intention to start teaching her adopted son to read at age 2 in ‘Celebrated Academy’, 305.

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Walsingham, whose grandfather lived in Warwick, possibly also a tradesman; Thomas Wickins, a clergyman’s son from Kidderminster; and James Lloyd, son of a widow living in Worcester. Of the rest, the oldest reader was about 18, John Manners Kerr, a surgeon’s son who later became a general in the army. Matthew Wise of Leamington, about 16, and perhaps his brother John, 13, were the readers next in age. They were descended from the Henry Wise who, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, made a fortune of £200,000 during a career as gardener to William III, Anne, and George I; he bought the Priory, an estate then just outside Warwick where the Warwickshire County Record Office has been located. George Parker, the son of a gentleman in Shropshire, was approximately 13 when he borrowed Cecilia, while Francis Leighton, who became a quartermaster in the army, was about 12. The youngest of the boys whose age can be fixed, William Hill, entered Rugby in January 1783, at 9. He paid at age 10 to read Cecilia and in the same year obtained children’s versions of Tom Jones, Gil Blas, Joseph Andrews, and The English Hermit; most of the other borrowers of Cecilia were also buyers of children’s books at various ages. Hill was the second son of Noel Hill, Esq., of London and of Tern, near Shrewsbury, a Member of Parliament who was afterwards created Baron Berwick. Charles James Apperley asserts that ‘it was said that the Honourable William Hill … spent above a hundred pounds per annum at Rugby’, partly at a ‘beef-steak club’.⁸ William himself enjoyed a diplomatic career, represented Shrewsbury and later Marlborough in Parliament, and succeeded to the barony in 1832. His willingness to tackle such a long novel as Cecilia at 10 is striking, but equally so is his pleasure at the same time in children’s abridgements of novels, a pleasure shared by many other Rugbeians. Altogether, these boys’ demand for a novel by and about a woman is not exceptional. Rugby schoolboys were much less gender-bound in their reading than we might expect of boys at an all-male school today. Gender boundaries seem more fluid among them—as indeed they are among adult readers at this time as well. This fluidity may seem surprising at first, for the boys endured a harsh educational and social regime at Rugby as at other English public schools, wherein they bullied and tyrannized over one another. But that very harshness may account for the appeal of works associated with the feminine and for ⁸ Charles James Apperley, My Life and Times by Nimrod, Fraser’s Magazine 26 (August 1842), 173. Apperley’s memoir was continued in subsequent months also.

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the eagerness of Rugby boys to read texts that asked them to identify themselves with a female protagonist such as the heroine of Goody Two-Shoes or Burney’s heroine Cecilia. This chapter will explore why and how they might have read such texts. RU G B Y S C H O O L To understand why schoolboys might be attracted to works coded female, we have to consider how boys’ lives were scripted and constructed at a public school such as Rugby in the eighteenth century. I use these words advisedly, for although we always see history through the lens of our own present concerns, the history of childhood is particularly subject to distorting lenses. Letters and memoirs must be read critically. Another distortion may arise because most histories of the schools focus on the nineteenth century, not the eighteenth. Admittedly, the schools were remarkably resistant to change; elements of well-known twentiethcentury accounts such as George Orwell’s sound as if they were written a hundred years earlier.⁹ Still, by relying more heavily on the earlier sources, especially on Rugby materials, some part of the boys’ school life can be provisionally reconstructed. I will argue that this school culture, taken together with what the Clay records reveal about the popularity of fictional works, can suggest ways in which some fiction, especially children’s fiction, was read by Rugby boys. Their reading not only crosses gender boundaries but suggests that some modern scholars’ accounts of this period’s literature for children as simply bourgeois and didactic are too narrow. Although a majority of the boys at Rugby between 1744 and 1784, the period covered by the records, were from privileged backgrounds, Rugby itself did not yet enjoy the status it obtained later. Endowed by Lawrence Sheriffe’s will in 1567, it was one of the seven schools which, before 1840, met the definition of a public school ‘as a non-local endowed boardingschool for the upper classes’—the other six being Eton, Harrow, Westminster, Winchester, Shrewsbury, and Charterhouse. Edward C. Mack notes, however, that ‘before 1780 such schools as Rugby and Shrewsbury and even Harrow were of doubtful status’, adding that these ⁹ George Orwell, ‘Such, Such Were the Joys’, The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, 4 vols. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), iv. 330–69. Writing in 1947, Orwell describes customs of thirty years before, but they are very like those described in nineteenth-century memoirs.

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three were ‘often omitted’ in early nineteenth-century lists of public schools.¹⁰ Thus, Rugby from the 1740s up to and including the 1770s was primarily a respectable establishment for the lesser Midlands gentry, considerably cheaper than the more prestigious Eton. Sidney Selfe reports of William Makepeace Thackeray’s grandfather Thomas—who in fact had earlier sent at least four sons to Rugby—that he paid £80 for one son’s Eton charges in 1790, a sum equal to the official salary for a master at Rugby. By contrast, a surviving bill for Richard Clarke at Rugby in 1790 amounts to £23. 12s. 2d. for a half-year’s room, board, tuition, books, shoemaker, bathing, washing, haircutting, and so forth. The bookseller’s account alone comes to £7. 3s. 5d.¹¹ and includes a pair of bellows, seeds, cord, balls, a chisel, a knife, bats, mustard and cress, among other items—too late for Samuel Clay to profit by it, for as discussed in the Introduction, he had sold the Rugby bookselling business by this time, as well as the grocery and ironmongery shop. In 1766, as a boy of about 18 at Eton, the Thomas James who was appointed headmaster of Rugby in 1778, succeeding Stanley Burrough, produced a manuscript account of the Eton curriculum, published in part over a century later by H. C. Maxwell Lyte; it was James who eventually installed many Eton practices at Rugby School. Based on James’s manuscript, Lyte summarizes a week’s work for boys in the two most advanced groups, the fifth and sixth forms, generally aged 15 to 18. They would have amounted to about 120 boys by Lyte’s calculations, and their lessons were heard only by the headmaster: In a regular week, these two forms had to attend school seventeen times, ten times for construing, and seven times for repetition. The construing lessons were as follows:— Homer, twice, about 35 lines each time. Lucian, twice, about 40 lines each time. Virgil, twice, about 30 lines each time. Scriptores Romani, twice, about 40 lines each time. Poetae Graeci, about 35 lines. Horace (hexameters) about 60 lines.¹² ¹⁰ Edward C. Mack, Public Schools and British Opinion 1780 to 1860: An Examination of the Relationship Between Contemporary Ideas and the Evolution of an English Institution (London: Methuen, 1936), p. xiii. ¹¹ Sidney Selfe, Chapters from the History of Rugby School … (Rugby: A. J. Lawrence, 1910), 22–3. For Rugby salaries, see Rouse, History, 153. ¹² H. C. Maxwell Lyte, A History of Eton College (London: Macmillan, 1899), 319–20; for James’s account, see ch. 16, 316–34.

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Construing required translating as well as explaining the grammar rules that governed every word (and sometimes reciting rules of prosody); repetition involved memorizing the week’s work in Homer, Virgil, the Poetae Graeci, and others, and then reciting six or seven lines when called upon. Sixth-form boys had to translate Homer into Latin, not English; earlier, in the fourth form, exercises had included translating English texts into Latin, and at that time the boys began writing verse in Latin, some of which had to be produced extemporaneously. Even in the eighteenth century, the value of such exercises was frequently questioned. While a boy at Eton (aged 16), Lord Darnley replied firmly to such a comment from his mother in his letter of 12 February 1784; in doing so, he articulated the usual argument for the importance of these studies: As to the contemptuous manner in which you mention my present mode of education, I do not entirely agree with you. Merely making Verses, (N.B. not Rhymes) is certainly no Desirable accomplishment; but these Verses, in themselves so despicable, are the means by which we attain & perfect knowledge of the Latin Language, and acquire a refined Taste for the most elegant writings of the Classics, which is what no Gentleman should be without, & which I hope will be hereafter both a pleasure & entertainment to me.¹³

Although the Eton curriculum may seem not just narrow but impossibly difficult to moderns, it was standard. The Clay records indicate that even before James took over as headmaster at Rugby a very similar course of study was followed, or at least that substantially similar texts were required. And James’s 1798 account of Rugby’s curriculum during his tenure closely resembles that which he described at Eton thirty-two years earlier. If anything, demands at Rugby were heavier: more lines of construing required and no whole holiday on Tuesday, as at Eton, for (as James advises his former pupil Samuel Butler, about to assume the headmastership at Shrewsbury), ‘Avoid giving a whole holiday after five weeks completed as the worst of plagues. . . . If you are obliged to give a whole holiday, suffer it not to pass without a regular exercise, by way of rider to direct it and preserve it from wild schemes and excursions.’¹⁴ Nonetheless, Charles James Apperley (who entered 1789) has left an ¹³ Esm´e Wingfield-Stratford, The Lords of Cobham Hall (London: Cassell, 1959), 269. ¹⁴ Samuel Butler, The Life and Letters of Dr Samuel Butler…, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1896), i.29; for entire letter, 25–33.

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amusing account of scholastic life, indicating that at least for talented boys like Butler, it was far from strenuous: I slept four years in the same room with this learned man, when he was in the upper school and I in the lower; but how he became so learned I am unable to say, unless it were that he was what is called a heaven-born genius at Rugby . . . . I can only say this, that as far as school-reading or studying was concerned, an apparently idler fellow could scarcely be found at Rugby. In the first place he was a great fisherman and a great reader of novels and plays. How then did he acquire the reputation of being the best scholar in the school; and how was it that ‘Play for Butler’ (i.e. a whole holiday for the best exercise of the week) was oftener proclaimed for him than for any other boy? I cannot answer the question; but this I know, that awaking in the morning, he bid me or some other boy fetch him half a sheet of paper; and, taking a novel or a book of plays—often Shakespeare, of course—from under his pillow, he would write his exercise off-hand; and which, whether in prose or in verse, Greek, Latin, or English, was almost certain to be the best of the day. Then I was given to understand that his proceedings at lesson were much after this form:—He would ask the place, say a portion of a Greek play; look out a few words in the lexicon, shut the book, take a novel out of his pocket, and await the chance of his being called up. If he were called up, his author was beautifully displayed by him; and when others were ‘up’, James would often appeal to him for his interpretation of a passage.¹⁵

Although Butler was certainly exceptional, the Clay records show that other boys too had strong appetites for novels and plays during years in which they were translating and memorizing the classics. The records end before we can examine Butler’s purchasing and borrowing of novels and plays, but they do indicate that he charged two children’s books on 5 February 1784 just after his tenth birthday despite his family’s relative poverty: Tales of the Fairies and a Newbery edition of Charles Perrault’s Histories or Tales of Past Times, Told by Mother Goose (both 9d., J279).¹⁶ By Butler’s time, a much greater proportion of boys were buying such books than had done so earlier. The Clay records include thirty other boys who entered in 1783. Twenty-four bought children’s books before 1785, most of them more than Butler did, including Butler’s lifelong ¹⁵ Apperley, ‘Life and Times’, Fraser’s 26 (August 1842), 170. ¹⁶ See Sydney Roscoe, John Newbery and His Successors 1740–1814, a Bibliography (Wormley: Five Owls, 1973) for a bibliography of the Newbery publications; Roscoe’s numbers—all preceded by ‘J’, will be cited in parenthesis throughout, as here, to identify Newbery books. See NRO ML 478 for purchases.

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friend William Hill, who had four, or the poet Walter Savage Landor, who obtained eight. Were the boys at Rugby accordingly young, ignorant, and idle, to use Samuel Johnson’s terms for novel-readers from Rambler No. 4? Views differ on how difficult the work was. Clearly those who wished like Butler to read novels could do so. As Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet puts it of a very different home education, ‘Those who chose to be idle, certainly might’ (Pride and Prejudice ii. ch. 6). George Melly, writing a fictionalized account of his days at Rugby (approximately 1840), indicates that academic success was relatively easy. He asserted that if a boy spent, in addition to the five and a quarter hours in school on whole days and the two hours on half days, another two and a quarter hours more on whole days and three and quarter on half days doing lessons, ‘he could easily take a step each year, and leave the school without any unpleasant comment from the masters’.¹⁷ While at Rugby, could poorer boys such as Butler obtain books, especially fiction, from any other source than the Clays? Obviously, boys could bring books from home, though no contemporary source mentions this practice. During term at Rugby, schoolboys could not travel without special permission and thus could obtain books on credit only from the local Clay booksellers. They could, however, also purchase books from occasional booksellers who set up market stalls in the town, as Landor did: see the account of his youthful reading in the next chapter. Apart from a collection left by a former headmaster who died in 1731,¹⁸ the school itself also had an English-language library that was either begun or enlarged by Thomas James. It was very limited in scope, however. With his usual eye to economy, James advised Butler in 1798: ‘Make a library for your boys as I did—every boy giving something at coming to school, and also on going away; at least a crown coming, and perhaps double going away. Buy Knox’s Elegant Extracts in Poetry —in Prose —and of Epistles; L’Empri`ere’s Classical and Historical Dictionary; Johnson’s Dictionary (in 2 vols., 8vo); with Beauties of Pope (in 2 vols., 12mo, 7s); Beauties of Spectators, Tatlers, and Guardians (2 vols., 12mo, 7s); Beauties of Adventurer, Connoisseur, Rambler, and ¹⁷ George Melly, School Experiences of a Fag at a Private and a Public School (London: Smith, Elder, 1854), 122. ¹⁸ Rouse, History, 99–100.

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Idler (2 vols., 7s).’¹⁹ James’s library was minimal, and it is no wonder that Matthew Holbeche Bloxam’s editor reports that ‘If during the time he was at Rugby School [Bloxam entered in 1813], schoolboys could borrow an edition of Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Don Quixote, or the Arabian Nights, they considered themselves most fortunate’.²⁰

S C H O O L C U LT U R E : L I C E N S E D WA R On the whole, eighteenth-century boys’ printed recollections of their public school days are hostile. Walter Savage Landor (entered Rugby 1783) casually dismissed education away from home as a destructive ‘sink’. Recalling his Lanthony property in an 1811 letter to Robert Southey, he wrote, ‘I remember a little privet which I planted when I was about six years old, and which I considered the next of kin to me after my mother and elder sister. Whenever I returned from school or college,—for the attachment was not stifled in that sink,—I felt something like uneasiness till I had seen and measured it.’²¹ Southey’s own autobiographical recollections of boarding at Westminster speak ominously of the inevitability of ‘pollution’ and of ‘low pursuits and low vices’.²² William Spooner (entered 1788), later Archdeacon of Coventry, ‘retained throughout the whole of his life so strong an impression of the ¹⁹ Butler, Life and Letters, i. 29. James later repeats these titles and four others (including William Enfield’s The Speaker; or Miscellaneous Pieces, Selected from the Best English Writers) in a list of ‘Books of amusement for upper boys’ library’. Fiction titles, only in the ‘little boys’ library’ were: ‘Percival’s Moral Tales. About 3s…. [Arabian Nights 4 vol. 12s printed by Newbery,] Tales of the Castle. The Old English Baron. About 3s 6d. Sandford and Merton. (There is an abridgement of this.) Adelaide and Theodore. Marmontel’s Tales…. Telemachus … Robinson Crusoe. 1s…For writing school and little boys’ reading there are:— . . . History of Little Jack —which is full of goodness for little boys’ (i. 36–7; corrected in brackets by reference to BL Add. MS 34583, f101). Institutional approval of children’s fiction such as Thomas Day’s History of Little Jack and Sandford and Merton is remarkable, as is the preference for abridgements, epitomes, ‘Beauties’, and even ‘Flowers’ of literature, a preference quite typical of late eighteenth-century audiences: two boys actually borrowed Elegant Extracts in 1779 and 1780 from the Clays and one bought it (1778). ²⁰ Bloxam, Rugby, p. xix. ²¹ John Forster, Walter Savage Landor. A Biography (Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1869), 8. ²² The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, ed. Charles Cuthbert Southey, 6 vols. (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1849; repr. St Clair Shores, Mich.: Scholarly Press, 1969), i. 80, 149.

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wickedness of Rugby in his schooldays that he would not send any of his five sons there, and all his four brothers, three of whom were pupils of Dr. James and the fourth [Richard Spooner, MP] of his successor, Dr. Inglis, held the same opinion’.²³ Two of the Spooner brothers entered early enough to be represented in the Clay records but obtained only school texts and a copy of the Lady’s Magazine. Such terms as ‘wickedness’ and ‘pollution’, if used in the nineteenth century, connote sexuality—probably in a school context masturbatory or homosexual activity (subjects of anxious concern to many Victorians). Certainly sexual opportunity was rife at Rugby. Most boys had studies to themselves with locks, and they usually shared rooms and even beds; a single room cost an extra four guineas a term in 1792,²⁴ and John Chandos quotes a 1793 letter from a boy at Rugby to his mother ‘requesting her to pay for a study and a ‘‘single bed’’, if not a single room, at a cost of ‘‘six guineas’’ a year’. As Chandos concludes of schoolboys’ sexuality, at this time ‘boys were presumed to be as competent to regulate this element of their social lives as any other’.²⁵ Possibly Thomas James concerned himself more than Chandos’s statement suggests with boys’ sexual lives. He bought a copy of Samuel-August Tissot’s Onania for 4s., a work detailing the evils of masturbation, on 7 April 1784, after he had been at the school six years.²⁶ The Spooner boys’ notion of Rugby wickedness quite likely referred to alcohol, however, rather than to sex. Apperley, who began at Rugby in 1789, alleges that ‘Rugby was what may be called a loose place in my time, and especially so as to drinking, in which some boys indulged to a great excess, and I could name a few who laid the foundation of a drunken career in after life, greatly to its curtailment, by their bacchanalian practices at school.’²⁷ This tradition persisted. A Rugbeian who entered in 1832 wrote that ‘Drinking was the vice of the school’ even in Thomas Arnold’s day: ‘Arnold, I believe, suspected it, but he never gained sufficient knowledge to act on.’²⁸ Describing the ‘sort of Saturnalia’ that preceded the summer holidays in the eighteenth century, ²³ Selfe, Chapters, 17. ²⁴ School bill of John Plomer Clarke, Christmas recess, 1792; NRO C(W)X5438. ²⁵ John Chandos, Boys Together: English Public Schools 1800–1864 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984), 249 n., 294. ²⁶ NRO ML478. ²⁷ Charles James Apperley, My Life and Times by Nimrod, ed. E. D. Cuming (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1927), 147. ²⁸ W[illiam] Edward Oswell (ed.), William Cotton Oswell, Hunter and Explorer, 2 vols. (London: William Heinemann, 1900) ii. 143.

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Apperly continues, ‘The last few days of the half-year were spent in all kinds of riotous excesses; no lessons were expected to be done … and half the windows of the school were broken, to be paid for by the parents, for the benefit of the Rugby glaziers.’²⁹ Apperley’s are, in fact, among the most negative comments about Rugby. Not only does he assert that ‘the happiest day of my life was that on which I left it for good’, but he argues that not ‘one sincere and lasting friendship in a hundred, between man and man, can be traced to schoolboy days,—that is, to their having been at the same school, at the same time’. Why? He speculates that the severities of our public schools may cause us in some measure to be averse to any thing that brings our schoolboy days to our recollection. For my own part, I doubt whether, up to a certain place in it, the sufferings in a public school, to young boys tenderly brought up at home, are much short of those of the convict in a penal settlement, so terrified are they at the punishment that awaits their being incompetent to the tasks required of them.³⁰

Even though Apperley is exaggerating about friendship—Landor, among others, reports a lifelong friendship with Walter Birch, whom he met in 1786—the record of misery is chilling. No doubt eighteenthcentury Rugbeians enjoyed much at school, as did Landor, but as men they did not often memorialize their pleasures. What is unclear in the available accounts is where the blame for torment lies: with the public schools, the masters, or the boys themselves? Among all three, certainly, for they united in a system whereby a great number of boys aged 6 or 8 to 18 were boarded together, were deliberately left unsupervised by adults except during lessons, and were expected to train themselves in the manly virtues. As many as three hundred boys might be placed in the care of no more than ten masters or even fewer; at Rugby in August 1781, Thomas James had admitted at least 128 new boys since 1778 in addition to the 52 who had been at the school before his arrival, but he had just one assistant master, a writing master, and two ushers to cope with perhaps 150 boys, allowing for the departure of some.³¹ In practice, this arrangement in eighteenth-century public schools meant that older boys had power over younger ones, or ‘fags’, often tyrannical power if they chose to exercise it, and that adults—parents ²⁹ Apperley, Life and Times, 149. ³⁰ Apperley, ‘Life and Times’, Fraser’s (September 1842), 323, 322. ³¹ Rouse, History, 120, 130. He indicates that James may have slightly improved this ratio later: his ‘scale was six assistants for [200 boys], five for one hundred and sixty-five, and four for one hundred and thirty’ (151).

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and masters—approved this power. Mack argues that originally William of Wykeham at Winchester made senior boys ‘reporting policemen, not feudal administrators’; they acted as spies for masters: They had, as far as we know, no fags … as late as 1647. The later forms of the prefect system were the inevitable and unpremeditated result of social conditions in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When the schools were overrun by the upper classes, and when, partly as a result, formal discipline broke down, control passed insensibly into the hands of the strongest boys, who transformed Wykeham’s system of dependent advisors into an autonomous government. Similarly, when, during the same period, there was a scarcity of food and servants, the all-powerful older boys made up for this deficiency by employing the younger to procure eatables for them and to keep their rooms in order.³²

Fags were servants. Ideally, their servitude gave them protection from bullying by other boys. But this ideal was evidently honoured in the breach. James Milnes Gaskell at Eton in the 1820s had to ‘set the table, run down to ‘‘Crips’’ for ham, bacon, bread and chocolate and such delicacies, and then receive several blows on his return from the frightful ‘‘Morrell’’ because he had not been quick enough. He had to boil eggs for Taunton, fetch up the rolls, butter, etc., and then was generally employed in the servile offices of brushing Halifax’s clothes and cleaning his shoes.’³³ Nonetheless, the accepted and oft-repeated view was that without fagging, bullying would be worse. Roundell Palmer, who entered Rugby in 1823, was one of many who maintained that ‘a regulated system of fagging is the best security against tyranny by the strong and thoughtless idlers . . . . It was from this class of boys that all the bullying of which I ever had experience, either at Rugby or at Winchester (and it was sometimes trying enough), proceeded.’ What ‘regulated’ the system? Older boys. Palmer continues, ‘The system always worked well when the praefects had physical strength and moral courage, as was generally the case’, but not when he himself and his friends were prefects at Winchester in the late 1820s: ‘We were a weak set altogether—I do not mean intellectually, but physically,—and none of us had that skill or reputation in school games which among schoolboys goes further than intellect.’³⁴ ³² Mack, Public Schools, 41–2. ³³ Quoted by Chandos, Boys Together, 87. ³⁴ Roundell Palmer, Earl of Selborne, Memorials. Part I: Family and Personal, 1766–1865, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1896), i. 96–7.

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Games and sports were not as well organized in the eighteenth century as they later became, but even so they presented opportunities for brutality (fighting was common at Rugby) and for fagging. Tales of Landor offer examples of both. The nineteenth-century novelist Charles Reade wrote of his father that Landor, ‘a much bigger boy’, forced John Reade, aged 8 and newly arrived at Rugby, to ‘carry a casting-net’ on a fishing expedition, which resulted in poaching a ‘pike of really unusual size’. Landor also dated the commencement of his lifelong friendship with Walter Birch to the fight in which Birch ‘thrashed me well. He was a year older, and a better boxer: we were intimate ever afterwards, till his death.’³⁵ This fight may have arisen from a custom that still existed in 1805: ‘every new boy who entered the School, however young he might be . . . was invited to try his prowess with some other boy of the same size and age … and if he declined the combat enjoined for him by bigger boys, he was taunted as a coward, and had to submit to be crowed over by the boy he declined to fight’.³⁶ The torments of fagging and bullying were capped by the violent initiatory ceremonies at most public schools. Matthew Holbeche Bloxam, who entered Rugby as a foundationer in 1813 at age 8, describes some of them: When I first entered Rugby School a barbarous custom existed, which would hardly be permitted in these days…. It was that when a boy, in the course of his studies, removed from one form to that above, he had to undergo a species of brutality from the boys generally of the new form into which he moved. Thus, when a boy passed from the First into the Second Form, he was what was called ‘chaired’ by the boys of the Second Form; that is, he was hoisted up and pinched in the most sensitive part of his body till he shrieked aloud with pain. The many forms in which this, or some other species of torture equivalent to it, were experienced by novices till the noviciate passed from the Upper Fourth into the Upper Remove, I can hardly remember…. But the most barbarous practice of the kind was when one went from the Upper Remove into the Fifth Form. The noviciate or patient had then to undergo the operation of ‘clodding,’ as it was called. Clods of plastic soil were prepared by fags from the slimy banks of the square pool. These were kneeded [sic] into balls, and dried ready for action. The noviciates of the Fifth Form had then to run the gauntlet along the sheds, and were pelted at by their elders in the Fifth Form, according to custom.³⁷

And even these brutalities exclude flogging, which was performed only by the headmaster at Rugby during the period covered by the Clay ³⁵ For the Reade anecdote, see Rouse, History, 160; for Birch, see Forster, Landor, 15. ³⁶ Bloxam, Rugby, 72–3. ³⁷ Ibid. 71–2.

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records and, if we are to believe Apperley, with particular zeal by Dr James.³⁸ Although at Rugby in the eighteenth century, prefects or ‘praeposters’ did not have flogging powers, they had special privileges and, like all older boys, they ruled over fags. The notion that English manliness and independence could best develop under this sort of oligarchic tyranny was angrily rejected by Sidney Smith in an 1810 review. Asserting that ‘every boy is alternately tyrant or slave’, Smith concluded, ‘Boys, therefore, are left to their own crude conceptions, and ill-formed propensities; and this neglect is called a spirited and manly education.’³⁹ But his attack was unusual. The system was upheld even by those such as Edward Gibbon who had been miserable enough under it that he ‘secretly rejoiced in those infirmities, which delivered me from the exercises of the school [Westminster], and the society of my equals’: I shall always be ready to join in the common opinion, that our public schools, which have produced so many eminent characters, are the best adapted to the genius and constitution of the English people…. In a free intercourse with his equals, the habits of truth, fortitude, and prudence will insensibly be matured. Birth and riches are measured by the standard of personal merit; and the mimic scene of a rebellion has displayed, in their true colours, the ministers and patriots of the rising generation.⁴⁰

Clearly, for these alleged advantages to occur, boys had to be wrenched from families and virtually isolated at school. Evidences of the harshness of this exile at Rugby are offered by some surviving letters of a mother to her sons who entered at midsummer, 1788: John Plomer Clarke (nearly 12) and his brother Richard (10). John evidently saved the letters, dated from July to November; his to her do not survive. Mary Clarke of Welton Place, situated just outside Daventry—between eight and ten miles away from the School by her own reckoning—hopes that her sons are ‘reconciled’ to Rugby (17 October 1788)⁴¹ and refuses to let them come home or even to receive a visit from their father, himself a former Rugbeian (entered 1751). She writes, ‘we must not break our ³⁸ Apperley, ‘Life and Times’, Fraser’s (August 1842), 174. ³⁹ [Sidney Smith], review of Remarks on the System of Education in Public Schools, Edinburgh Review 16 (1810), 327, 332. Another well-known attack on public school education was made by William Cowper in his poem Tirocinium (1784); less well known is Henry Layng’s earlier poetic satire on flogging, The Rod (Oxford: Jackson, 1754). ⁴⁰ Gibbon, Memoirs, 71, 72–3. ⁴¹ NRO C(W) X5437. All further references in the text to Clarke of Welton letters will be to this source and will cite only dates.

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resolution of considering ourselves fifty or a hundred miles apart, only with this pleasing reflection (which I have mentioned in a former letter) that we can frequently hear of each other; & in case of illness, be with you, in little more than an hour’ (5 August 1788).⁴² Mary Clarke expresses pleasure that her son John has ‘got so good a Master to Fag for, as the Eldest Spooner, as we have heard him very highly spoken of indeed’—one of those very brothers who so despised the wickedness at Rugby that they would not send their own sons. Abraham Spooner, 17 or 18 years old, evidently advised John to fight back. Mary admonishes John, ‘We could wish to hear of your going out a little more among the Boys, & that you would associate with those of your own age, & fight your way through the little world you are in, as Dick does we don’t mean or wish you to be quarrelsome (which we know is not your disposition, any more than Richards) but be advised by Spooner, & dont take a blow’ (5 August 1788). His mother later congratulates John on having ‘fought a battle’ (25 October 1788). The school was, then, as Mary Clarke put it, a ‘little world’, a microcosm of society in which a boy tested himself by ‘making his way, unaided by privilege, in a society of his equals and superiors’.⁴³ Character was supposed to be formed by boys struggling, even fighting, among themselves, not by emulation of or exhortation by masters—the model usually associated with Thomas Arnold at Rugby in the next century. Roundell Palmer (at Rugby 1823–5) reports that his father advised him and his older brother to greet difficulty at school with stoicism and, in extremis, to consult not a master but an older boy: ‘If we spoke in our letters of anything disagreeable, he advised us to bear silently what we could not help, unless indeed it were of a corrupting as well as a tormenting kind; in which case we were to consult the elder boy to whom we had been recommended as a protector in case of emergency, and in whose good principles he placed confidence.’⁴⁴ Evidence exists that eighteenth-century schoolboys did consider themselves to be subject to self-surveillance; see especially the indignant letter from boys at Uxbridge to Lady Rockingham in the 1790s, a letter that also expresses these boys’ sense that they constituted a self-governing ‘civilized Society’: ⁴² The boys evidently did not return home till November. See n. 11, Fergus, ‘Solace in Books: Reading Trifling Adventures at Rugby School’, in Andrea Immel and Michael Witmore (eds.), Childhood and Children’s Books in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (New York: Routledge, 2006), 257–8. ⁴³ Chandos, Boys Together, 74. ⁴⁴ Palmer, Memorials, i. 78.

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My Lady, We have heard with Indignation from some of the Cottagers on Uxbridge Common that some Boy or Boys belonging to our School are suspected of having killed your Ladyship’s Swans. You may depend upon it nothing can be more false. Such an act could not have been concealed from all of us—and if any Boy in our Academy could be detected of such wanton Cruelty we would surrender him up to Justice as a Fellow unfit to live in any civilized Society.⁴⁵

Not surprisingly, these civilized societies enjoyed frequent uprisings, as Gibbon’s reference above to ‘the mimic scene of a rebellion’ suggests. Eighteenth-century public schools witnessed many student insurrections, in which boys would occupy buildings, bar teachers from schoolrooms, destroy property, and in general behave much like 1960s radicals except that their demands were not to change but to preserve the status quo. They were particularly jealous of traditional privileges accorded older boys. According to Lyte, the ‘most serious rebellion’ at Eton occurred in 1768, when praeposters’ assumption that their power to punish lower boys for being out of bounds meant that they themselves need not ‘shirk’ was challenged.⁴⁶ Rugby is distinguished by having had the only school rebellion at which the Riot Act was read—in 1797, the year when mutiny broke out at Spithead and the Nore during wartime. Rugbeians rebelled after a boy was flogged for having allegedly lied about where he had obtained gunpowder; actually, the shopkeeper Robert Rowell, Samuel Clay’s successor in the grocery and ironmongery business, had lied, having said that he had sold the boy tea. According to Bloxam, a passage door that the headmaster Ingles used to enter the School was ‘nailed up by the boys, who next proceeded to break the windows in every School, to burn the benches, desks, wainscoting, and books of the Headmaster in the playground’. A local banker gathered horsedealers and ‘a party of soldiers then recruiting in the town’, advanced to a makeshift fort on a little island where the boys had retreated, read the Riot Act and called for surrender; the military crossed the moat ‘and now no ⁴⁵ Quoted by Irina Stickland, The Voices of Children 1700–1914 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1973), 90–1. ⁴⁶ Lyte, History, 345, 347. James Brinsley-Richards describes the arcane rules for shirking at Eton: boys out of bounds in Windsor must ‘shirk’ masters, by stepping into a shop, for instance. He explains, ‘the master might see you but he was supposed not to see you; the shirking was accepted as tantamount to a recognition that you knew you were breaking rules, and this was enough to disarm magisterial resentment’ (Seven Years at Eton, 1857–1864, 3rd edn. (London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1883), 73).

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resistance was made’.⁴⁷ The mutinies or rebellions were unsuccessful, but they did not cease, and they generally defended school tradition. What they demanded, according to Chandos, was ‘not freedom of an individual to flout or evade the customs and exactions of his peers, but freedom of boys as a self-governing tribe, to live their lives and grow to manhood without prying surveillance and interference by their titular overlords’.⁴⁸ This system of education amounted, then, to a kind of licensed war, but a war in which victory was assured to any boy who could endure and survive. Simply by getting older, a boy triumphed. As Chandos puts it, boys would ‘go home as fags and return as masters’, and as a result, ‘the quality of their lives was changed beyond imagination’. In his view, they became ‘aware of having entered into possession of the School. The very air they breathed was charged with the scent of inheritance.’ Having experienced ‘honourable trial by ordeal, creditably endured’, they became the ‘giants’ in George Lyttleton’s 1832 description of how older boys seemed to younger ones: to a little boy, the whole world of school seems large; there are giants of 5 ft 9ins and super men of 6 ft; his feeling of awe and admiration is increased by receiving an occasional blow from these huge animals, as he creeps about among the few of his own diminutiveness, mightily impressed with the words and mightiness of the race of giants towering above him.⁴⁹

Lyttleton’s description is decidedly Gulliverian, and probably, like the adult Lyttleton, Rugby boys too interpreted their school experience in terms of their favourite children’s books and chapbooks, Newbery’s abridgement of Gulliver’s Travels being one. Certainly at least one boy did so in the nineteenth century. G. M. W. Berford attended Rugby with the explorer and hunter William Cotton Oswell, a magnificent athlete who had entered the school in 1832. In a letter of 1892, Berford recalled his own tribulations at Rugby and Oswell himself in terms of the old tale of Valentine and Orson (often reprinted through the nineteenth century in chapbook form), in which twins are born in a wood, Orson to be stolen and raised by a bear, Valentine taken by King Pepin and raised at court. This is one of the old romances that William St Clair supposes to have perished in a ‘mass extinction’ within a generation after 1774 (350). When the twins later meet, Valentine conquers Orson in combat then protects him: ⁴⁷ Bloxam, Rugby, 66 n. ⁴⁸ Chandos, Boys Together, 175. ⁴⁹ Ibid. 99; quoted by Chandos, 99–100.

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That I should remember you is not wonderful, but I am equally astonished and pleased to learn that you have any recollection of me. I can perfectly recall what a sickly, puny, timid, insignificant lad I was in those long-past days; I had never before been to any school, and I gratefully remember that you sometimes stood between me and the oppressor. In those days ‘all the current of my being set to thee.’ It was a case of uncouth Orson and splendid young Valentine.⁵⁰

For boys made orphans by being sent to school, where various forms of torture prevailed, stories of triumphant endurance, of survival and the reward of inheritance despite an inimical world, provided not merely means of escape but strategies for survival, modes of coping with extremity. Such tales were the most popular among Rugby boys and were abridged from adult fictions, such as the chapbook Valentine and Orson, bought by eleven boys aged 10 to 13. As Table 4.1 outlines, among the most frequently purchased children’s books was Robinson Crusoe (J98; 61 copies), followed in order by a number of other abridged novels. Interspersed among them are popular works such as fairy tales or the miscellanies that contained jests, stories, poems, and vignettes, in short, a wide variety of materials, such as Newbery’s Food for the Mind, a riddle book (J190b, 49 copies). The miscellanies offered assorted pleasures, among them the opportunity to create a safe space, perhaps shared with others, as an alternative to outside oppression.

READING CHILDREN’S BOOKS In discussing literature for children, Mitzi Myers has proposed that ‘cross-writing’—or the ‘dialogic mix of older and younger voices … in texts too often read as univocal’—produces texts that invite complex, multivocal readings.⁵¹ These include adult fictions abridged for children, romance tales abridged for adults (usually in chapbooks) and appropriated by children, fictions written for children with an eye to ⁵⁰ Oswell, Oswell, ii. 223–4. ⁵¹ Myers’s first use of the useful term ‘cross-writing’ occurred in a paper delivered at the Modern Language Association Convention, 1993, ‘Canonical ‘‘Orphans’’ and Critical Ennui: Rereading Edgeworth’s Cross-Writing’, published under the same title in U. C. Knoepflmacher and Mitzi Myers (eds.), Children’s Literature 25 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 116–36.

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adult readers. All were bought by Rugby boys. John Newbery’s children’s books in particular proclaim cross-writing even in titles such as A Collection of Pretty Poems For the Amusement of Children Six Foot High (J74). Such texts allowed boys to create an alternative home, a child’s space, where they could be children in a different way than a hostile, exacting school culture permitted. They could imagine a more attractive community, peopled by empowered children and adults perhaps more benevolent than those at school. I will argue for at least two ways for Rugby boys, living in a hostile, painful world of licensed war, to read their cross-written, crossgenre, plural texts. First, stories of survival and endurance can console, inspire, beguile. Second, the mixtures of elements in riddle books, fairy tales, and other fictions can be appropriated by children in various ways, as they construct how different parts work against each other. Although the texts may provide conventional maxims and moral saws at the surface, children can easily read them against the grain. My approach in offering some suggestions on how boys may have read these texts will be to ask what subject positions, what scripts, and what narrative pleasures they offer, or what coping mechanisms and strategies for survival they permit, rather than to look solely at their overt moralizing. Although the few extant accounts of youthful reading by Rugby boys omit mention of children’s books, as will be evident in Ch. 4, not all public schoolboys ignored their existence, as evidenced by Robert Southey. He was very young, years from his entrance at Westminster, at the time that he acquired the Newbery books he loved. Born in 1774, he probably received them at age 3 or 4. A friend of his aunt was married to Francis Newbery, the nephew ‘of that Francis Newberry [sic] who published Goody Two-shoes, Giles Gingerbread, and other such delectable histories in sixpenny books for children, splendidly bound in flowered and gilt Dutch paper of former days’; that is, his aunt’s friend had married a grandson of John Newbery, first publisher of these works. Southey’s memories of reading these Newbery books seem almost as golden as the gilt books themselves: As soon as I could read, which was very early, Mr. Newberry presented me with a whole set of these books, more than twenty in number: I dare say they were in Miss Tyler’s possession at her death, and in perfect preservation, for she taught me (and I thank her for it) never to spoil or injure anything. This was a rich present, and may have been more instrumental than I am aware of in giving me that love of books, and that decided determination to literature, as

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the one thing desirable, which manifested itself from my childhood, and which no circumstances in after life ever slackened or abated.⁵²

Southey’s willingness to consider that his love of literature may have sprung from children’s books is unusual in literary autobiography, even among the romantics; at least one later biographer visibly raises his eyebrow in reporting that Southey thus ‘gravely surmises’ the source of his ‘bent toward literature’.⁵³ Romantics more famous in our day than Southey also praised children’s books. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who ‘read incessantly’ as a child from ‘October 1775 to October 1778’ (ages 3 to 6), reported that he obtained ‘all the gilt-cover little books that could be had at that time’, that is, all available books for children by Newbery and other publishers.⁵⁴ Although he seems to have preferred the traditional chapbook ‘tales of Tom Hickathrift, Jack the Giant-killer, &c &c’ to the Newbery stories, Coleridge denounced ideas of child education that favoured didactic works ‘to the exclusion of Goody Two Shoes, as favouring superstition, by one party; and of Jack the Giant Killer, as a suspicious parody of David and Goliath, by the other’.⁵⁵ Charles Lamb’s well-known letter to Coleridge in 1802 lamenting the banishment of ‘all the old classics of the nursery’ expresses outrage that ‘Goody Two Shoes is almost out of print’ and explodes, ‘Damn them. I mean the cursed Barbauld Crew, those Blights & Blasts of all that is Human in man & child.’⁵⁶ The romantics’ disdain for later children’s works by such women as Anna Letitia Barbauld seems irreconcilable with a preference for Goody Two-Shoes to one scholar, Geoffrey Summerfield, who exclaims, ‘Goody Two-Shoes was a type of the very didacticism that Lamb is attacking!’⁵⁷ Somewhat less hostile, Samuel Johnson, quoted earlier, was certain that ⁵² Southey, Life, i. 37. Southey writes that Francis Newbery was the ‘son’ of the publisher of Goody Two-Shoes; in fact, the Francis Newbery he meant was John Newbery’s nephew. ⁵³ William Haller, The Early Life of Robert Southey (New York: Columbia University Press, 1917), 15. ⁵⁴ Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earle Leslie Griggs, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956), i. 347. ⁵⁵ Ibid. i. 347; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘The History and Gests of Maxilian’, Blackwood’s Magazine 11 ( January 1822), 6. ⁵⁶ Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb, ed. Edwin W. Marrs Jr., 3 vols. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976) ii. 81, 82. ⁵⁷ Geoffrey Summerfield, Fantasy and Reason: Children’s Literature in the Eighteenth Century (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984), 248. Summerfield is one of the more insistent among scholars who criticize didacticism in the Newbery tales.

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‘Babies do not want to hear about babies’ and that ‘parents buy [such] books . . . children never read them’. Yet Goody Two-Shoes was one of the more popular works among Rugby boys. Robert Darnton has suggested that the best way to approach earlier mentalit´es may be to ‘wander through the archives’, so that ‘by picking at the document where it is most opaque, we may be able to unravel an alien system of meaning’.⁵⁸ That is, by focusing on an unpredictable predilection for this book, we may enter into Rugby boys’ reading practices.

T H E C A S E O F G O O DY T W O - S H O E S The heroine of The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes; Otherwise called, Mrs. Margery Two-Shoes. With The Means by which she acquired her Learning and Wisdom . . . (1765; J167) is the only Newbery character to have obtained a place in the modern mental universe. In England, a pantomime Goody Two-Shoes was copyrighted as late as 1986, but it retains almost nothing of the original but the title.⁵⁹ Susan Sontag, reporting her youthful love for the ‘mild, good-natured, chaste Hans Castorp … simple, overearnest, docile, mediocre’ in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, cites her mother’s dismissal of such qualities: ‘What if Hans Castorp was a Goody Two-Shoes (appalling accusation that my mother had once let fly at me)?’⁶⁰ Although this accusation occurred in the 1940s, Sontag expects her 1980s readers to appreciate its venom. No doubt part of the heroine’s bad repute comes from the term ‘Goody’, actually a contraction of ‘good wife’ according to Johnson’s Dictionary, and a sign of lower-class status, not a moral tag. But otherwise, to identify Newbery’s character with a simple, earnest virtue is possible only by reading nineteenth-century redactions, not the 1765 original.⁶¹ ⁵⁸ Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 4–5. ⁵⁹ Robert Marlowe, Goody Two-Shoes (London: Noda Pantomimes, 1986). The only survivals from the eighteenth-century version are the heroine’s name and her shoes, which become red magic shoes awarded by fairies. I am grateful to Hazel Holt for information about the existence of this traditional pantomime and to Angus Mackay for procuring a copy. ⁶⁰ Susan Sontag, ‘Pilgrimage’, New Yorker (21 Dec. 1987), 38–54, 42. ⁶¹ e.g. the British Library has a drastically abridged version printed on six leaves: Little Goody Two-Shoes (London: Dean & Son, 1866); in it, Margery learns to read because she ‘noticed how happy it made the curate and his lady to read the Bible’, fo. 3.

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Boys’ demand for Goody Two-Shoes would astonish scholars such as Summerfield who have labelled this work didactic, thinking it likely to be bought only by parents and imposed on children. Costing sixpence, it was a solid seller, in seventeenth place (among 193 titles) thanks to twenty-six purchases between 1766 and 1784 as indicated in Table 4.1. Those familiar with the story may also be surprised at its appeal to Rugby boys: after all, it has no hero, but rather a heroine. Goody Two-Shoes charts the struggles of a very young girl to survive after evil landlords have twice left her destitute, first by dispossessing her parents (who shortly die) and then by threatening the adults who shelter her. Despite such powerful adult enemies, Margery Meanwell triumphs. Boy readers of Goody Two-Shoes, then, must to some extent identify themselves with this girl’s subject position. Who were these boys? Their class positions, like those of Cecilia’s readers, varied from the genteel and professional to the plebeian, and their ages ranged from 8 to 14 or 15.⁶² One of the youngest was the same John Reade who had entered the school aged 8 and had soon fagged for Walter Savage Landor in the pike-poaching expedition mentioned earlier; Reade bought Goody Two-Shoes within a month of his entry. Another buyer at age 8, Charles Stuart-Menteth, was the son of a clergyman in Lincolnshire and had entered Rugby at 7 in 1776; he was created a baronet in 1838. The oldest purchaser, William Bird, had lost his father three years before he entered Rugby in 1761, at about 10. He obtained Goody Two-Shoes on 15 February 1766, not long after it was first issued in 1765; Bird became a lieutenant-colonel of the Middlesex Militia and a justice of the peace for Middlesex. These boys were alone at the school, but many entered with at least one brother. John and George Lloyd, sons of a gentleman in Northumberland, arrived in 1776, the elder aged 8; one or the other bought Goody two years later. Other genteel buyers include one of four sons of Thomas Babington, whose estate lay in Leicestershire, and a scion of another gentry family, the Gregorys of Stivichall. Sons of the professional classes were most frequently buyers, taking up at least ten copies. A copy went to one of the two sons of the Revd Charles Wheler, the brother of a baronet; the elder of these sons eventually inherited the baronetcy. The Dowbiggin ⁶² See Solly Register 1933 for birth dates and other information about entrants. Whenever possible, I calculate a boy’s age based upon this source. Again, unless otherwise indicated, all boys whose age and purchasing I specify attended school alone; no older or younger brother’s acquisitions complicate the account.

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brothers, clergyman’s sons aged 11 and about a year younger, celebrated their entrance to the school at midsummer in 1784 by immediately buying two children’s books, Goody Two-Shoes along with Tommy Trip’s History of Birds and Beasts (J308). John and Robert Mansel, whose father was an old Rugbeian and a lieutenant-colonel in the army, bought two copies of Goody separately in 1781, when they were about 10 and 8; Robert Marriot and John Parker, jun., clergymen’s sons, were about 9, and Thomas Peers Newsam, also a clergyman’s son, was 11. Other children of professional men who bought copies were one of the brothers Hume (Abraham and Alexander, the eldest about 11), John Smith of Market Street, Robert Cumyns, aged 11, and Henry Pedley. Many of the other sales went to one of several brothers, so that no age approximation is possible: for instance, any one of four Thackeray brothers (sons of the surgeon in Cambridge who was the novelist’s grandfather) could have purchased a copy in 1781; the eldest was then 11. Five brothers Hunt entered in 1774 and 1778, but just one bought Goody in April 1780; the eldest was about 16 at that time. These were sons of ‘Mr. William Hunt’ of Stratford-upon-Avon, and in the Register a ‘Mr.’, along with a first name and the country town address, declares a plebeian background—probably trade. Other likely plebeian customers include Thomas Smith, son of an attorney in Claybrooke, near Lutterworth, Thomas Walker of Newbold (near Rugby), Ellis Lobb (whose father lived in Leicester), and William Holmes (Herefordshire). Among those whose age and class position remain unclear are the three buyers who hailed from overseas: two Brewster brothers from Barbados, whose father had himself attended Rugby earlier, and Robert Robertson, from the East Indies. The Brewsters were especially hungry for print; they purchased forty children’s books (their nearest rivals took twenty-nine), and twenty-two full-length books as well. (Their father too had bought twenty-two books after his entrance in 1742, though no children’s books.) Overall, Goody Two-Shoes buyers were between 9 and 10 on average, based on the eleven whose age is fairly certain. Although it is possible that some bought the work for their sisters or brothers at home, the dates of purchase generally occurred after holidays at midsummer and Christmas rather than a month or two before them, when obtaining presents would be likeliest. This tendency shifted slightly when Samuel Clay inherited the Rugby business in mid-1781: after that, the sales history of Goody Two-Shoes, like most of the Newbery books, peaked. He or his assistant took almost daily orders at the school, and he seems to have obtained

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some books in quantity to offer to the boys. For example, it is likely that the six copies of Francis Newbery’s edition of Gil Blas at 1s. sold on 1 September 1781 were impulse buys prompted when Clay or his assistant brought copies to the school with him. Samuel Clay possibly did the same with Goody Two-Shoes on 20 October 1781, when he sold the book to three boys one after another (John Smith, a clergyman’s son, one of the Gregorys, and one of the Mansel brothers)—a sizeable proportion of the ten copies he sold between 1781–4. Yet with sixteen earlier sales, it had certainly appealed to Rugby students before his possibly more vigorous marketing. Many of the buyers, like the youngest and oldest (Stuart-Menteth and Bird), were born or rose to the privileged status enjoyed by little Margery, the heroine, when at the end of her tale she becomes Lady Jones. What then appealed to these boys in this tale? That is, how did upwardly mobile or elite boys from 8 to 14 read Goody Two-Shoes, and why did they? Such questions cannot be answered directly. But some possible replies can be hazarded, in part by looking first at modern readings of the work. Isaac Kramnick has read Goody Two-Shoes as ‘designed to serve ideological objectives’, like other eighteenth-century children’s books; ‘this literature self-consciously expressed the values of [the] middle class and served as an important vehicle for the socialization of children to these values’. Goody Two-Shoes, according to Kramnick, indoctrinates children with bourgeois ideology: ‘success comes to the self-reliant, hardworking, independent individual’.⁶³ In response, Ronald Paulson has argued that the work operates in a far more complex way, like Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield and other literary and satirical texts of the 1740s to 1760s. It ‘blurs the lines between the worlds of adult and child’, as The Vicar does, and it thus offers child readers multiple subject positions: ⁶³ Isaac Kramnick, ‘Children’s Literature and Bourgeois Ideology: Observations on Culture and Industrial Capitalism in the Later Eighteenth Century’, in Perez Zagorin (ed.), Culture and Politics From Puritanism to the Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 204, 211, 217. Kramnick is at a great disadvantage interpreting Goody Two-Shoes, however, because he does not consult the original edition. He cites a London, 1965, edition in his notes; I have not been able to find any such edition in the British Library, in the New York Public Library, or in any electronic list. The edition Kramnick used could not have been a facsimile or reprint of the original, for he refers to ‘John Newberry’ (216) and, in his plot summary, Margery marries not Sir Charles Jones but ‘Mr. Jones’, and she confesses ‘to her young readers that after she had married she had in fact been tempted to live a life of idle luxury with all her riches’ (219)—not in the original.

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The structure of the book Goody Two-Shoes is itself jumbled, additive, and reassembled like the alphabet games . . . The parts are collected randomly (including inserted epistles and verses) and an ‘adult’ part is added (at beginning and end) to the children’s; the book fragments into exemplary episodes, songs, and stories which have to be reassembled by the reader after the model of Two-Shoes’ teaching method and to serve roughly the same purpose for the child with his ‘wandering’ mind.⁶⁴

Most recently, Patricia Crain has compellingly shown that Goody Two-Shoes elaborates the connection between literacy acquisition and property that will by the end of the nineteenth century permit literacy to supplant property as a source of not only virtue but subjectivity.⁶⁵ The fragmented text of Goody Two-Shoes can evidently be construed in various ways by readers then and now, who may adopt multiple subject positions not merely within this text, but in many other eighteenth-century children’s books as well. Constructing the text as simply didactic and bourgeois, as Kramnick does, ignores its discontinuities and complexities. These are particularly marked just after the introduction has denounced the laws that favour the rich, permitting the ‘wicked Persecutions of Sir Timothy Gripe, and an over-grown Farmer called Graspall’ to dispossess hardworking, upstanding, and morally courageous Farmer Meanwell and his family, including Margery. The ‘Editor’ then, digressing like Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, halts the tale in order to ventriloquize a reader addressing the publisher Newbery. This ventriloquized reader is repeatedly gendered male: But what, says the Reader, can occasion all this? Do you intend this for Children, Mr. Newbery? Why, do you suppose this is written by Mr. Newbery, Sir? This may come from another Hand. This is not the Book, Sir, mentioned in the Title, but the Introduction to that Book; and it is intended, Sir, not for those Sort of Children, but for Children of six Feet high, of which, as my Friend has justly observed, there are many Millions in the Kingdom; and these Reflections, Sir, have been rendered necessary, by the unaccountable and diabolical Scheme which many Gentlemen now give into, of laying a Number of Farms into one, ⁶⁴ Ronald Paulson, ‘The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes as a Children’s Book’, in Joseph P. Strelka (ed.), Literary Theory and Criticism: Festschrift Presented to Ren´e Wellek in Honor of his Eightieth Birthday. Part II: Criticism (Bern: Peter Lang, 1985), 1075, 1078, 1084. See also Paulson’s later version of this essay, ‘The Strange, Trivial, and Infantile: Books for Children’, The Beautiful, Novel, and Strange: Aesthetics and Heterdoxy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 176–97. ⁶⁵ Patricia Crain, ‘Spectral Literacy: The Case of Goody Two-Shoes’, in Andrea Immel and Michael Witmore (eds.), Childhood and Children’s Books in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (New York: Routledge, 2006), 213–42.

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and very often of a whole Parish into one Farm; which in the End must reduce the common People to a State of Vassalage, worse than that under the Barons of old, or of the Clans in Scotland ; and will in Time depopulate the Kingdom. But as you are tired of the Subject, I shall take myself away, and you may visit Little Margery. So, Sir, your Servant, The Editor.⁶⁶

The introduction, ending with this focus on engrossing land as a cause of depopulation, is usually offered as evidence for Oliver Goldsmith’s authorship, for his The Deserted Village (1770) emphasizes that theme. Certainly the protean narrator here is also like Charles Primrose, the narrator of The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), in his concern for the poor and in his ability to adopt the rhetorical tricks of not merely the pulpit but the law courts or Parliament: the reference here to an anonymous and justly observing ‘Friend’, like the repeated ‘Sir’, reminds us of both venues. But this sort of slippery, polymorphic narration, an eighteenth-century specialty not at all confined to Goldsmith or Sterne, warns us against monolithic readings and against the easy assumption that Goldsmith is the author. The narrator provides a scrambled alphabet for child readers at the same time that he adopts the persona of ‘the Man in the Moon’ to argue that accidents like that to Mrs Margery’s College (the roof fell in) would be avoided if ‘Mankind’ would have ‘a public Survey, occasionally made of all the Houses in every Parish (especially of those, which are old and decayed)’: ‘Why, it was but Yesterday, that a whole House fell down in Gracechurch-street, and another in Queen’s-street, and an hundred more are to tumble, before this Time twelve Months; so Friends, take Care of yourselves, and tell the Legislature, they ought to take Care for you’ (100). Such first-person importations of law as well as a purported ‘real world’ abound in Goody Two-Shoes, as does the marvellous (a talking raven and a mute pigeon that spell and read). Because Goody Two-Shoes is not often read now, a lengthy summary of its incidents will emphasize the astonishing mixture and multiplicity of this story as well as its satiric content. What Mitzi Myers has called ‘cross-writing’ is rife here.⁶⁷ Just as the narrator assumes a child and adult audience and employs child and adult language at various points, so the heroine is child and adult in the story, growing up and even dying in the second part. ⁶⁶ John Newbery, The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, pref. Michael H. Platt, printed with John Newbery, The Fairing, pref. Brian Alderson (New York: Garland, 1977), 5, 6–7. All further citations will refer to this facsimile edition and will appear in parenthesis in the text. The cited passage prints ‘Newbery’ in capitals. ⁶⁷ U. C. Knoepflmacher and Mitzi Myers, ‘ ‘‘Cross-Writing’’ and the Reconceptualizing of Children’s Literary Studies’, Children’s Literature 25 (1997), p. vii.

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T H E E PI S O D E S O F G O O DY T W O - S H O E S Margery’s parents, ousted from their farm, die; the children’s relatives will not help because ‘our Friends seldom take notice of us when we are poor; but as we grow rich they grow fond’ (16). Orphan Tom, her brother, is sent away to India by a benevolent rich man who also orders a pair of shoes for Margery; until then, she had only one shoe. Her two shoes help to comfort her for her brother’s loss and to account for the title—not as saccharine as moderns may suppose. But Margery is quickly ejected from her shelter in the parsonage by Farmer Graspall and Sir Timothy. She decides to acquire learning, borrows other children’s books, and learns to teach them by making reading a game, with cut-out letters. Becoming a ‘trotting Tutoress’ (28), she takes the letters to her scholars’ homes (here alphabets are inserted) and has children spell words important to them (what they ate for dinner), then syllables, sentences, prayers, and finally prudential and satirical maxims (‘When a Man talks much, believe but half what he says’ (41) ). Margery gives good advice on health to a sick rich man (‘get up with [the rooks] in the Morning; earn, as they do, every Day what you eat, and eat and drink no more than you earn’ (44) ), finds herself locked up over night in a church after the expensive interment of Lady Ducklington there (‘the Money they squandered away, would have been better laid out in little Books for Children, or in Meat, Drink, and Cloaths for the Poor’ (46) ), and frightens the parish into thinking a ghost is in the church when she rings the bell to get out. Once the people discover her, the narrative shifts to Margery’s first-person recital of adventures, a technique that allows suspense, for: It was dismal dark, and I could see nothing; but while I was standing in the Pew, something jumped up upon me behind, and laid, as I thought, its Hands over my Shoulders.—I own, I was a little afraid at first; however, I considered that I had always been constant at Prayers and at Church, and that I had done nobody any Harm, but had endeavoured to do what Good I could; and then, thought I, what have I to fear? (52)

Her narrative continues to relate how ‘something very cold, as cold as Marble, ay, as cold as Ice, touched my Neck’ and how she heard ‘something, pit pat, pit pat, pit pat, come after me, and something touched my Hand, which seemed as cold as a Marble Monument’ until finally the reader learns that this was no ghost or corpse of Lady Ducklington but

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a dog (52–3). Ghosts, fairies, and witches are denounced as ‘Frolicks of a distempered Brain’ (56). Shortly thereafter, Margery overhears thieves plan to rob Sir William Dove’s house and Sir Timothy Gripe’s; she warns both, but Sir Timothy pays no attention. Lady Gripe listens when Margery approaches her, however, for she ‘had more Sense than her Husband, which indeed is not a singular Case’, and takes steps to arrest the robbers. But Sir Timothy does not repent, ‘so true it is, that a proud Man seldom forgives those he has injured ’ (61). Margery’s story takes a new turn, for the grateful Sir William Dove becomes her patron, and Mrs Williams, ‘of whom I have given a particular Account in my New Year’s Gift’, now ready to retire from her A. B. C. College, recommends that Margery be placed in charge (61). This intertextual note⁶⁸ ends the first part of Margery’s history; ‘the Second Part of this Work, in which an Account of the Remainder of her Life, her Marriage, and Death are set forth at large, according to Act of Parliament’ follows (64). She takes on a raven (Ralph) and a pigeon (Tom), both of which she rescues from boy tormentors, as helpers in her school; both can spell and read, the pigeon like ‘the famous Bird, that was some Time since advertised in the Haymarket, and visited by most of the great People in the Kingdom’ (72). These birds enforce the lesson that cruelty to animals is wrong, and are joined at the school by a skylark (Tippy), a lamb (Will), and a dog (Jumper). When a student hears that her father is dying after a fall from a horse, Margery sends ‘Tom Pidgeon’ (79) for news, but conceals this action when the children worry at the absence of Tom, for she ‘knew the great Use and Necessity of teaching Children to submit chearfully to the Will of Providence’ (81). To teach this submission further, Margery tells the Job-like story of Mr Lovewell, who rises from apprentice to servant to the counting house to a wealthy marriage and three children only to lose all his money and two of his children. But the pigeon arrives with good news of the student’s father just as Margery finishes the Lovewell tale with ⁶⁸ References to other Newbery works are frequent in these books; the Brewster brothers from Barbados who entered in 1765 (sons of a former Rugbeian) may have heeded this advertisement, for on 22 July 1769 they bought both Goody Two-Shoes and the New Year’s Gift ( J270); at least one of them had earlier bought Goody on 26 September 1766 and possibly recalled the connection. Only four other copies of New Year’s Gift were sold, one to the Mansels on 2 November 1781; they had bought Goody some months earlier, 12 May 1781.

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the restoration of the lost daughter and son, both rich, the daughter also having successfully resisted pirates’ attempts on her virtue. The care of providence is further demonstrated when the dog Jumper signals danger by pulling Margery and then another child from the school; Margery orders everyone out before it collapses. A disquisition on the higher senses of animals follows: a migrating nightingale knows better than humans how to find ‘the Longitude’, again reinforcing the lesson that cruelty to animals is wrong. Her school temporarily relocates, and Margery settles differences between quarrelling families by advice to repeat the alphabet before replying to an angry word; a dormouse dies and is buried with an epitaph ‘really written by a little Boy’ (112). Margery then invents a ‘Considering Cap’, again to make people think before they quarrel, and helps farmers to get in their hay by predicting the weather. She is consequently taken up before the justices for a witch but produces a barometer in explanation, at which Sir William Dove, one of the justices, tells the story of another suspected witch, Goody Giles, whom the country people do not want to let into church and blame for every murrain. The moral is that the ‘true Source from whence Witchcraft springs is Poverty, Age, and Ignorance; and that it is impossible for a Woman to pass for a Witch, unless she is very poor, very old, and lives in a Neighbourhood where the People are void of common sense’ (125). Once Goody Giles inherits money, her name changes like Margery’s: ‘She was no longer Jane, alias Joan Giles, the ugly old Witch, but Madam Giles’ (126), never suspected of mischief and so generous that the parson, who ‘had the Art of making even Satire agreeable’, averred that ‘if ever Jane deserved the Character of a Witch, it was after this Money was left her; for that with her five thousand Pounds, she did more Acts of Charity and friendly Offices, than all the People of Fortune within fifty Miles of the Place’ (126–7). The final careers of this other Goody and the Job figure Lovewell foreshadow Margery’s: one of the justices, Sir Charles Jones, wants her to educate his daughter, a position that she refuses. But she does assist him in illness, he proposes marriage, and she agrees once his daughter is settled in marriage, for ‘Power was a dangerous Thing to be trusted with’ (128). The marriage ceremony is interrupted by the arrival of Margery’s brother Tom, just as Lovewell’s son had arrived to interrupt the reunion with his daughter; Tom Meanwell wishes ‘to see that a proper Settlement was made on [Margery]; which he thought she was now intitled to, as he himself was both able and willing to give her an ample Fortune’

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(131). The marriage nonetheless follows immediately; Tom’s ‘Life and Adventures … will soon be published.’ Lady Jones encourages the poor by gifts to attend church and, when made a widow after six years, begins a career that reverses all earlier wrongs. She distributes useful largesse to the poor (‘and to all the Children little Books and Plumb-cakes’ (133) ) instead of indulging in a funeral of costly show for her husband like Lady Ducklington’s. She assists the parson who originally housed her in a legal case against Sir Timothy Gripe. The parson wins, Sir Timothy is struck off the list of justices, and a relation with an ‘undoubted right to the Mouldwell estate, finding that it was possible to get the better at Law of a rich Man’ (134) lays claim to and wins the estate, which he lets Margery purchase ‘in Consideration of the aid Lady Margery had lent him during his Distress’ (135). She ‘threw it into different Farms, that the Poor might be no longer under the Dominion of two over-grown Men’, thus reversing Farmer Graspall’s and Sir Timothy Gripe’s initial engrossing of the land (135). When Sir Timothy’s family seek parish assistance, Lady Margery wants his children to be treated with ‘Care and Tenderness’ (135). When she dies, ‘as will be seen among other charitable Donations when we publish her Will, which we may do in some future Volume’, she leaves acres to be planted with potatoes for all the poor to gather for their families (137). The stone to her memory, without inscription, is ‘ever bathed’ in the tears of the poor (138). Finally, a purported letter from the printer is appended with the story of two sagacious dogs, one that gets his master away from a tree about to be struck by lightning, and another dog that will not touch drink after alcohol leads to disaster—an example that humans are not wise enough to follow. M A K I N G S E N S E O F G O O DY T W O - S H O E S This tale of a child heroine who is permitted to grow up and die is full of general satire on human behaviour as well as specific satire against legal chicanery and land enclosure, ironic references to other texts (the offer to publish Margery’s will surely glances at Richardson’s Clarissa), and religious and prudential teaching, not to mention fables and vignettes that underscore human perversity, recommendations to improve parish government, animal rights arguments, precepts and examples on how to be charitable to the poor . . . bricolage, in short. Paulson is certainly right to speak of an ‘additive’ structure, a connection with ‘the tradition

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of satiric fiction for adults’, and ‘a genuine fairy tale quality’. He is also right in emphasizing the way that linguistic structures compensate for ‘affliction in adversity’ and in seeing Margery Two-Shoes as a heroine of subversion, a ‘prophet of how to overcome or order a hard life’. Her story ‘recapitulates the Robinson Crusoe plot of a man isolated in a precarious situation who builds up a world of his own as a substitute for the world he has lost’.⁶⁹ The comparison to Crusoe is apt. Margery’s story is one of endurance and survival, ingenuity and adaptability, like his. Paulson points out that her nature is as multiple as her name, though he gives just three versions of it.⁷⁰ In fact, she has at least seventeen names, from the Little Goody Two-Shoes of the title and Old Goody Two Shoes of the half-title and elsewhere, to Margery Meanwell, Little Margery (or Margery), Goody Two Shoes, Little Two Shoes, Little Goody, Two Shoes, Madge, Mrs Goody Two Shoes, and Little Madge; and once she is given charge of the A. B. C. College, Mrs Margery, Mrs Margery Two Shoes, and Mrs Two Shoes. Two Shoes in all these permutations is sometimes hyphenated, sometimes not. After she marries, the heroine is Lady Jones or Lady Margery. The play here with ‘identity’ seems outrageous and points not just to the protean nature of status and identity (and of the narrative) in this work but to the various strategies that Margery employs to survive and then flourish—among them, student, teacher, adviser, ghostbuster, informer, storyteller, talker to animals, scientist, nurse, parish patroness. Like her alter ego Goody or Jane or Joan or Madam Giles, she is a witch turned benefactor. She is almost an icon of female power and possibility. How would boys from 8 to 14 at Rugby School construe this multifarious story? Obviously, we cannot know. But as a Crusoe-like or Job-like tale of adversity, in which surviving until you grow older results in triumph, it reflected and solaced their own condition: dispossessed of their homes, orphaned in effect, exiled to a harsh world with incomprehensible and arbitrary laws that afford no protection to the weak, and subject to the tyranny of the strong and powerful. If Goody Two-Shoes was read in this way, as a solace and a coping strategy for young boys who were subjected to the tyranny of the strong, then it was more effective than a tactic that many resorted to, running away. That is, boys who stayed might have found in such stories lessons about endurance eventually leading to power. ⁶⁹ Paulson, ‘The History’, 1084, 1080, 1086, 1083, 1088, 1082. ⁷⁰ Ibid. 1088.

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But I would make one other argument about how boys read Newbery books. I suggest that they enjoyed in Two-Shoes and in other children’s tales the pleasures of adopting fluid identities. At a liminal period of their own lives, before taking on the ‘mastery’ that their class and educational privileges afford them, they might especially enjoy the fluidity of Margery’s names and subject positions. Such fluidity might assist them to adopt more resistant readings not simply of texts but of their lives as well. And in addition to allowing boys to try on other identities, Goody Two-Shoes may, through its female heroine, have reintroduced the feminine into their lives. She was of course a good teacher—probably better than the ones they had—and they may have wished to have one like her. In fact, she may well have reminded boys of their mothers’ instruction, such as Mary Clarke’s, who taught her sons Latin before they entered Rugby (27 August 1788). More important, gender lines do not seem as policed in the eighteenth century as they are now. Boys’ willingness to cross these lines at Rugby, at least, is suggested by purchases of Ladies Pocket Books (seventeen copies) or Ladies Memorandum Books (six copies at 1s.), a Ladies Diary (one at 6d., another at 9d.); such works might contain recipes and addresses to ladies as well as less gendered contents.⁷¹ The Newbery version of the Mother Goose tales—often associated with girls—was one of the ten most popular children’s books at the school. Four Rugby boys bought Newbery’s The Little Female Orators (J222) and at least two tutors at the Daventry Dissenting Academy bought Sarah Fielding’s The Governess, or the Little Female Academy (Noah Hill and Thomas Belsham, 18 January 1765; D2930, 7 January 1771). Thomas Gibbs of Barbados, who entered Rugby in 1742, subscribed to the serialized Female Spectator, and much later, three Rugbeians purchased copies of the Lady’s Magazine. Thomas and Samuel Hunt, who entered in 1778, bought the first two issues of the Ladies Poetical Magazine on 10 February 1781 (D3400).⁷² Finally, women wrote at least twenty of the seventy different novels that Rugby boys bought or borrowed (see Apps. 1.1 and 2.1), and, again, the novel that was borrowed by the most boys in the shortest time was Frances Burney’s Cecilia, as earlier discussed. ⁷¹ Before his death in December 1767, John Newbery published a Ladies Complete Pocket Book for 1768, price 1s. It contained recipes, a ‘Serious Address’ to the ladies of Great Britain, notes on a good country wife, a ‘Character’ of ‘Samandra, a Town Lady’, as well as a table to calculate wages and a marketing table; a copy that belonged to Frances Sneyd is deposited in WCRO CR 136/A (555). ⁷² For tutors, NRO ML 692, 18 Jan. 1765; D2930, 7 Jan. 1771; for Gibbs, D3412/44–5; for Hunts, D3400.

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The boys’ eagerness to import female perspectives and experiences into their all-male enclave is striking. Perhaps public schoolboys’ frequent rebellions imply that they saw themselves as unfairly disempowered, thus to some extent feminized—placed in a subordinate position comparable to that of women. Evidence for this implication is present in a short-lived periodical published in 1792 at Westminster, titled The Flagellant, and conducted by Robert Southey and three friends. The nine numbers contain—apart from some conventional material that explains the title, invites correspondents, and satirizes fashionable male and female follies—Southey’s vigorous denunciation of flogging in the fifth number (for which he was expelled) and a surprising vignette that focuses on disempowered women. The fourth number, dated Thursday, 22 March 1792, reflects, ‘It has often given me pain to see an advertisement from an elderly lady for some young woman of genteel appearance and good connections … fair victim to ill-humour’, who will ‘undergo—a lower place at the table, a silent voice in conversations, and an unconsulted inclination’ (56). The writer continues, ‘how very irksome to the meanest, most insensible, and most indolent mind, dependence is’ (57), as if he is reading his own situation into the advertisement.⁷³ The Flagellant’s contents were miscellaneous, like those of eighteenthcentury magazines, and Goody Two-Shoes was also a miscellany, offering (like magazines) poetry, vignettes, letters from readers (genuine or otherwise), reflections on conduct, satire, and so forth. In addition, Goody Two-Shoes provided an overarching plot not present in essay periodicals. Its juxtapositions of various materials allow for what Paulson has called ‘both/and’ readings. ‘The order Two-Shoes gives to experience, alphabetizing it and using reading as a child’s defense against hardship, is followed by the dual explanations—supernatural and prudential, of witchcraft and wisdom—that ask for a sense of both/and instead of either/or, a kind of randomness that includes the irrational and is far outside the order of Two-Shoes’ alphabet.’⁷⁴ Margery is liminal, both witch (talking to animals, who talk back) and no witch (mastering nature with science: a barometer, not magic). Her first-person tale of being locked up in the church is both ghost story, with several encounters that ask to be read as ghostly, and rational account, like ⁷³ Robert Southey et al., The Flagellant (London: T. & J. Egerton, 1792), 56, 57. I consulted the copy at the Houghton Library, *46–2066. ⁷⁴ Paulson, ‘History’, 1090.

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Ann Radcliffe’s novels. Coleridge had evidently read the tale both ways: his argument, cited earlier, that Goody Two-Shoes is excluded from the nursery ‘as favouring superstition’ suggests that for him the experience of reading it includes imagining at least temporarily a ghostly presence. Surely Coleridge is right, and Geoffrey Summerfield wrong to castigate him for ‘his carelessness in thinking that Goody Two-Shoes could ever be exposed to suspicion on the grounds of superstition, when that is precisely and explicitly what it speaks out against’.⁷⁵ Newbery’s tale has it both ways, here and elsewhere. Margery’s teaching, once it passes beyond the alphabet, is scientific and magical. She assists farmers to better crops through a barometer and promotes consideration for others by inventing the ‘Considering Cap’, inscribed with such maxims as ‘I may be wrong’ as well as ‘odd Characters, as unintelligible as the Writings of the old Egyptians’ (113–14). The Cap is, after all, a way to reconcile families, to defuse personal anger. The book’s values, then, are not simply the bourgeois, individualist ones that Kramnick detects or the commercial ones that Newbery books often incorporate. Much more strongly, Goody Two-Shoes values cooperation, mutual help, and community in an inimical world, in which those in power may be evil or good, but generally are best avoided until adulthood. Although I agree with Mary V. Jackson that Newbery allows ‘the harsh facts of life’ a place in his children’s books, I would argue that his remedy is less the ‘laughter’ that she detects than evocations of community and of collective agency—evocations that include children.⁷⁶ A child such as Margery creates her own safe space, in the parish as a teacher, and even in the darkened church where religious consolations as well as good sense come to her aid and allow her to deal with fear and a corpse; she extends that space to the community. She presents an example of how children might also create safe spaces—individually or communally—despite powerful oppression, turn some tasks into play, and take various pleasures in the multiple offerings of this complex text. One such pleasure might be a particular spectacle of child agency, indeed female agency, within a community (a spectacle apart from the remarkable career of Margery ⁷⁵ Summerfield, Fantasy and Reason, 58. ⁷⁶ Mary V. Jackson, Engines of Instruction, Mischief, and Magic: Children’s Literature in England from Its Beginnings to 1839 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 99.

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herself ): the moment when a girl alludes to the Considering Cap to get the better of an angry father. The narrator notes, ‘I was particularly pleased, at Sir Humphry Hussum’s, to hear a little Girl, when her father was out of Humour, ask her Mamma, if she should reach down the Cap?’ (116). No one would now disagree with Kramnick that children’s literature is ideological, but it is important to read the ideology of Goody TwoShoes in a more nuanced way than he does—closer, I would argue, to the way eighteenth-century boys at Rugby read it. Most of the popular Newbery books offered the pleasures of satire on the adult world as well as humour. Perhaps a few examples of just one pleasure, a varied and sometimes even witty style, will suffice. The Twelfth-Day Gift (1766; J336, 1s.) sold ten copies and begins, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Vainlove were people of independent Fortune, and so Useless in the World, that they cared for Nobody, nor did anybody care for them…. They were one Twelfth-Day in the Morning at Matrimonial Shuttlecock, and throwing hard Words at each other.’⁷⁷ The sentence nicely undercuts adult pretension and wittily substitutes the throwing of ‘hard words’ for other imaginable weapons. An amusing pastiche of Johnsonese is offered in the Lilliputian Magazine (J219, thirty-one copies) when Kolan-mi Dolan, a king in India who saves Polly Meanwell from the pirate Angria, is himself overcome by Polly’s ‘superior sense and virtue’ after he attempts to force her into concubinage: ‘he resolved in his soul the instability of human grandeur, the majesty of the deity, the dignity of virtue, and the power and persuasive force of kneeling artless innocence’ and marries her.⁷⁸ The inflated language suggests a kind of distended vanity, ready to be exploded by youthful agency—by forces that appear to be less powerful but in fact are more so. The preface to The Fairing: or, A Golden Toy; for Children (J110, thirty-four copies) is addressed to ‘the Critics of the Eighteenth Century’ and begins ‘Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Who do I laugh at? Why at you, Mr. Critic, who should I laugh at?’ This apostrophe allows a child reader to laugh at the adult Critic and to be a wittier child Critic himself. Then the narrator becomes self-reflexive: ‘as this Book is a Metaphor, or Simile, or Description, or Picture of a Fair, it must be ⁷⁷ Twelfth-Day-Gift, 2nd edn. (London: Carnan & Newbery, 1770), 1–2; British Library Ch 770/9. ⁷⁸ Lilliputian Magazine (London: J. Newbery, 1765), 120, 119.

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like a Fair, and like nothing else; that is, it must be one entire Whole, but a whole Heap of Confusion’.⁷⁹ These Newbery miscellanies, perhaps appearing to adults like heaps of confusion, offered varied and complex pleasures to children, among them the freedom to think about and rearrange or resolve dissonant elements as they wished. I think that such pleasures largely account for the Newbery books’ remarkable popularity among Rugby boys living in a world where older boys were in charge, and where violence was licensed, indeed, institutionalized. ⁷⁹ Newbery, The Fairing, pp. iv, v–vi.

4 Schoolboy Practices: Novels, Children’s Books, Chapbooks, and Magazines Newbery books, discussed in the previous chapter, were not the sole form of fiction that appealed to schoolboys. The Clay records allow us to examine boys’ acquisitions of other fictional forms as well—children’s books by other publishers, chapbooks, novels, and magazines—and for the latter two we can look at the behaviour of schoolboys at the Daventry Dissenting Academy also. Schoolboys’ interest in longer fiction as well as in stories purveyed by the Newberys and other publishers of children’s books shows some of the same surprising choices, the same willingness to cross gender lines. These records confirm too that children make their own choices about what they read, that they have individual tastes as adults do (tastes that may cross gender boundaries), that they do not always prefer what others may expect of them, and that they sometimes read material that does not seem to suit their chronological age—in other words, they may read what seems above or below their comprehension. The boys’ strong interest in various forms of fiction may also anticipate the increased rate of consumption among Stevens’s adult customers for fictional forms that occurs after the Clay records end. Additionally, a number of boys seem to exhibit anxiety about borrowing some fiction. They pay cash for borrowing certain novels, thus ensuring that these transactions will not appear in the ledger accounts that adults will see. That is, like the male readers of novels discussed at the end of Ch. 1, they may remain invisible to certain adults as consumers of particular novels, as if cultural prescriptions against novel reading have had some effect. A section in this chapter on ‘Secret Novel Reading at Rugby?’ will explore this phenomenon. Although I have not tried systematically to unearth them, a few other instances of possible concealment have emerged—but none among the eightpenny chapbooks or the 1,401 children’s books bought by Rugby boys, whether

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produced by Newbery or other publishers. Boys seem to have been willing to permit those who overlooked and paid their bills to know about such purchases.

AC C O U N TS O F S C H O O L B OY R E A D I N G I have argued in Ch. 3 that children’s books offered boys consolation and strategies for survival rather than simply the overt moralizing that some critics have emphasized. But certainly, boys were unlikely to admit or even recognize that children’s books—or books read as children—had consoling or strategic power. Perhaps if some schoolboys’ reading journals were extant, such recognitions would emerge, as they do by implication in the journals of Marjory Fleming, who died aged 8 in 1811.¹ Mitzi Myers has called attention to the variety of her reading.² By contrast, only one of the three Rugby boys who were Clay customers and whose brief allusions to youthful reading have survived mentions a child’s tale, Sandford and Merton, though each memoir cites adult books. One, William Bray, who entered in 1746, age 9 or 10, and who was articled to an attorney after leaving Rugby, eventually obtained a ‘situation in the Board of Green Cloth, which he continued to hold for near 50 years’.³ This Dickensian-sounding position was in fact a place at court, in the financial office of the Royal Household.⁴ Bray’s antiquarian and editorial efforts (for example, a three-volume History of Surrey) earned him a place in the Dictionary of National Biography. An account in the various twentieth-century printed editions of the DNB (but not the shorter, altered online version, 2004) rephrases an 1833 obituary composed largely from Bray’s own memoranda. Both ¹ See Marjorie Fleming, The Complete Marjory Fleming; Her Journals, Letters & Verses, ed. Frank Sidgwick (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1934), p. xiii. ² Mitzi Myers, ‘The Erotics of Pedagogy: Historical Intervention, Literary Representation, the ‘‘Gift of Education’’, and the Agency of Children’, Children’s Literature 23 (1995), 7. ³ Gentleman’s Magazine 103 (1833), 88; all future quotations concerning Bray derive from this page. The obituary was probably written by the Rugby School historian Matthew Holbeche Bloxam. A lengthy editorial note signed ‘B’ containing a thirdperson account of the anecdote quoted below appears in the 1886 edition of the Rugby School Register (Rugby: A. J. Lawrence), ii. 34; these notes were supplied by Bloxam. ⁴ From the Wharton Law Lexicon, cited by Dean King, with John B. Hattendorf and J. Worth Estes, A Sea of Words: A Lexicon & Companion for Patrick O’Brian’s Seafaring Tales, 2nd edn. (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 111.

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include an anecdote in his own words of having been nearly ‘ruined’ as a schoolboy by John Clay’s mistake in ordering for him at Rugby: A book was my great and indeed my only delight, for I seldom engaged in any play with my schoolfellows. The Rambler was then publishing in weekly numbers, and had nearly ruined me. A number having fallen into my hands I gave an order for the purchase to the itinerant bookseller, who came from Daventry on market days, and he supposing that I wanted all the numbers which had been published, brought me so many as amounted to 9s. and completely exhausted my little savings.

Bray’s order of Samuel Johnson’s Rambler does not appear in the ledger account, which covers only 1744–50 (to 21 July), includes his two older brothers’ purchases, and records no buying at all other than school texts. It appears under Mrs Bray’s name, however, which may explain the absence of other charges. The Rambler began publication on 20 March 1750; Bray’s 9s. would have bought fifty-four numbers at 2d., and the fifty-fourth number was published on 22 September 1750. His tale of near ruin, doubtless oft-repeated, suggests that for bookish men such as Bray, who ‘was short-sighted and used a glass from boyhood’, schoolboy reading was a heroic effort, pursued at some cost and affectionately remembered. His words argue for the importance of self-chosen books to schoolboys. Ralph Abercromby, a general in the Napoleonic Wars honoured for his victory at Aboukir (1801) and his death subsequent to a battle shortly afterwards, entered Rugby in 1748. His son, author of a memoir, noted that Abercromby did well in the army in part because his liberal education attracted the notice of a superior officer.⁵ At Rugby, he bought a copy of Fielding’s Tom Jones for 12s. on 28 October 1749 and liked it so well that his very next purchase, made when school resumed after the Christmas holidays, was the anonymous purported sequel, The History of Tom Jones, the Foundling, in his Married State (1749).⁶ Its plot depends on Lady Bellaston’s enmity for Jones: she attempts to estrange Sophia from him, using Honour, Sophia’s suborned maidservant. The imitation fails. The characters, for instance, tend to deliver long moralizing monologues as they rarely do in Tom Jones. Apart from these two novels, Abercromby obtained only three works that were neither school texts ⁵ James Abercromby, Lord Dunfermline, Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby, K.B. 1793–1801, a Memoir by His Son (Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1861), 19. ⁶ NRO D3412/78, 99; 20 January 1750, 3s.

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nor a Book of Common Prayer: a Whole Duty of Man (7 January 1748; 3s. in calf ); a life of Peter the Great (10 June 1749; 3s.) and a sixpenny edition of Joseph Addison’s tragedy Cato (10 April 1750). His son notes the importance of education to his father, despite his being ‘at all times rather a profound thinker than an extensive reader’, for he established a ‘reading school, under his inspection’ at his paternal estate. In addition, Abercromby taught his son, despite not having ‘kept up the knowledge of Greek which he had acquired at school, but Cicero, Horace, Caesar, Tacitus, and Livy, were authors with whom he was familiar, whose merits he tasted, and always read with pleasure. His efforts as a teacher were mainly directed to the perusal and study of these Latin authors whom he so much admired, and to the formation of a simple, clear, and nervous style in English composition.’⁷ That Abercromby chose to educate his son at home suggests some dissatisfaction with public school education. According to his son, General Abercromby admired George Washington and the religious and civil freedom established by the American revolution: ‘Sir Ralph was always pleased when he heard young men expressing sentiments favourable to freedom, and he used to say that unless the opinions of a young man of twenty had a tinge of republicanism, he would be sure to be a corrupt man at forty.’⁸ This comment glosses not only Abercromby’s admiration for the character of Tom Jones (powerful enough to lead him to a sequel) and his choice of Addison’s republican play but also his Latin studies. Republicanism refers in part to the Roman republic, and students such as Abercromby, imbued in some of the republic’s literature, might well be eager to rebel against authority although no school rebellion occurred during Abercromby’s time at Rugby. His comment suggests not merely the clich´e that youth is a time for impractical and even rebellious idealism, a clich´e quite compatible with a successful army career, but the corollary, that youth or possibly school itself is to be passed through, put behind, not viewed with nostalgia. Neither Bray’s nor Abercromby’s comments directly address childhood reading. Walter Savage Landor’s do so rather more straightforwardly. In an 1811 letter to Robert Southey, Landor wrote: The two first books I ever bought were at the stall of an old woman at Rugby. They happened to be Baker’s Chronicle and Drayton’s Polyolbion. I was very fond of both because they were bought by me. They were my own; and if I ⁷ Abercromby, Memoir, 27, 28, 29.

⁸ Ibid. 39.

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did not read them attentively, my money would have been thrown away, and I must have thought and confessed myself injudicious. I have read neither since, and I never shall possess either again.⁹

Possession is the issue here: the sense of property and ownership that comes from Landor’s having spent his own money for the books leading to ‘attentive’ and ‘fond’ reading. He may have felt such fondness for some Newbery books, like the one he bought three separate times, but they apparently do not live in memory as his first purchases, possibly because his father paid the bill, not he himself. The eight children’s books charged to Landor’s account with the Clays in 1783 and 1784 (when he was 8 and 9 years old) evidently were not really ‘books’, as were Richard Baker’s A Chronicle of the Kings of England, from the Time of the Romans [sic] Government, to the Death of King James the First (1630) and Michael Drayton’s Polyolbion (1612). His purchases included the same two books that Samuel Butler had bought two months earlier (fairy tales and Newbery’s Tales … Told by Mother Goose, 1768; J279 in Sydney Roscoe’s bibliography) in addition to six other Newbery works, History of England (1759; J258), History of the Enchanted Castle (1770; J48), The Fairing: or, A Golden Toy for Children (1764; J110), and three copies of Newbery’s abridgement of Gil Blas (1774; J213), charged on 14 March 1783, 22 July 1783, and 4 February 1784. Such multiple purchases of one title occur even when, as in Landor’s case, no brothers yet share the account. Landor’s copy was probably lost, destroyed, or given away and in any event replaced twice in a year, certainly arguing that the text had some value for him. Although, unlike the antiquarian books, the child’s Gil Blas has either escaped memory or been repressed, along with whatever other children’s books Landor obtained later, this fact certainly does not mean that such books had no power. Landor’s second comment on youthful reading occurs in a letter to his sister Elizabeth in 1831: ‘I have been reading a book which I was laughed at for reading when at Rugby, and which I believe I then threw aside, Sandford and Merton. I find it one of the most sensible books that ever was written for the education of children.’¹⁰ That Rugby boys’ reading was under their own surveillance and was policed by ridicule is unsurprising. What may surprise is that buying children’s books was not subject to the scorn that caused Landor to put aside Thomas Day’s ⁹ Forster, Landor, 13. ¹⁰ Ibid. 9 n. See NRO D10297/214 for Landor’s purchases.

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Sandford and Merton.¹¹ After all, in the first six years of Thomas James’s headmastership, Rugby boys purchased 966 of the 1,401 chapbooks and children’s books that they obtained overall in forty-one years. If buying of children’s books was widely ridiculed, certainly the record would be skimpier. Landor may have obtained Day’s novel from James’s library, which stocked it. The third part of Sandford and Merton was published in 1789, when Landor was 15, parts one and two in 1783 and 1786. If Landor had recourse to a library copy, possibly some of the laughter was provoked by reading anything that had official approval—which most children’s books did not quite have. The one other eighteenth-century Rugby boy who has left remarks on early reading entered after the Clay records cease and, like the other Rugbeians, omits children’s books. Charles James Apperley, who wrote on sport under the pseudonym Nimrod, attributes his professional success as a writer to the ‘accidental circumstance’ of his ‘having, very early in my teens, perused Fielding’s novel of Tom Jones, the very book of all others, it was my father’s opinion I should not read’. He continues by tracing his love of the classics not to his classical education but to two novelists: ‘had I not dropped upon Tom Jones, and the other novels of Fielding and Smollett, at the time I did, a volume of Virgil, Horace, Cicero, or of some other of the classics, would not have been found, as it has been during the last thirty years, in my portmanteau, when absent from home on hunting expeditions. Some three-and-sixpenny novel from a library might have supplied their place.’ Acknowledging that Tom Jones may not be ‘altogether a proper book to put into the hands of a boy in his thirteenth year’, Apperley nevertheless praises ‘the thorough knowledge of the great book of human life that so riveted my attention to all Fielding’s works as I advanced in years’. Detailed commendations of Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews, and The Vicar of Wakefield follow, as well as Cumberland’s Observer, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, Scott, Byron (heavily qualified), Addison, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Pliny, Cicero, the Iliad, and of course Shakespeare. Like some other eighteenthcentury admirers of Fielding, Apperley ‘tried Richardson, but did not comprehend him’.¹² ¹¹ For a brilliant analysis of this text, see Mitzi Myers, ‘My Art Belongs to Daddy? Thomas Day, Maria Edgeworth, and the Pre-Texts of Belinda: Women Writers and Patriarchal Authority’, in Paula Backscheider (ed.), Revising Women: Eighteenth-Century ‘Women’s Fiction’ And Social Engagement (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 104–46. ¹² Apperley, ‘Life and Times’, Fraser’s 26 (October 1842), 423, 423–4, 424–36, 426.

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L I T T L E B O O K S — A B R I D G E M E N TS I N C H A P B O O K S VERSUS CHILDREN’S BOOKS Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s well-known praise of certain books for children, quoted in the previous chapter, conflates eighteenth-century children’s books such as Goody Two-Shoes with traditional chapbook literature such as Thomas Hickathrift, available in the seventeenth century. Rugby boys bought both chapbooks and children’s books, forms that I will eventually distinguish rather arbitrarily here. At first the distinction between them seems simple. Although children’s books were written with a young audience in mind, chapbooks—cheap little books originally sold by chapmen—were traditionally aimed at adult readers who were less affluent and less literate than other purchasers of print. Such works would suit young readers as well, however, and probably were read by them from the start. And of course, affluent customers could buy chapbooks, as did John Ashley, a member of the gentry, who bought four ‘chap: Books’ for 2s. on 31 January 1747, or the Revd Dr Spier of Crick, who obtained ‘Chap Book’ versions of Joseph Andrews and Peregrine Pickle for ninepence each on 14 September 1774. These two purchases point, however, to some of the difficulties in defining chapbooks and in determining their readership. Even though the Oxford English Dictionary locates the first appearance of ‘chapbook’ in the nineteenth century, clearly the word as well as the thing flourished much earlier. From the 1740s John Clay used ‘Chap: Book’ or ‘Chap-Book’ to refer to cheap books, but particularly to those that he sold for eightpence,¹³ often those with traditional romance titles such as ¹³ In the bespoke section of NRO D64, 1746–8, John Clay ordered ‘25 Chap: Books’ (8r ); when he charged Mr Ashley with ‘4 chap: Books’ he inserted ‘chap:’ above the line. Typically, however, John Clay used the term to refer to eightpenny titles as in Mr Biddulph’s order of ‘Robinson Cruso Chap. Bk ’ for 8d. on 18 March 1769 (NRO D2925) or his note on 24 Sept. 1765 that he received 8d. ‘of Mary Howard of Welton for a Chap-Book’ (NRO ML 692). Possibly these notations are abbreviations for ‘chapmen’s books’, so that John Clay never actually uttered ‘chapbook’ as a word himself. But certainly his son Thomas, born 1 November 1758, did not use any punctuation to indicate abbreviation in 1773 when he wrote that Mr Frost of Weedon paid 1s. for ‘Art of Destruction a chap Book’ (NRO ML 699/7r ) or in 1777 when he wrote ‘Cinthia a Chap Book’ (NRO ML 88/1r ) or ordered ‘Academy Compliments A Chap Book’ for Mr Ward of Badby (13r ) and ‘Aristotles Mastr Piece Chap Book’ (17r ). Clearly, the term ‘chapbook’ was in use by 1773 among booksellers and could refer to printed works that cost more than a penny or two. Barry McKay has found that Richard Snagg, a London publisher, advertised ‘New Chap Books’ for 9d. each—mostly abridgements of novels

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Guy, Earl of Warwick, first printed before 1500.¹⁴ Some scholars would be unwilling to consider anything sold at that price a chapbook, but how to delimit chapbooks remains a vexed question. M. O. Grenby, addressing the problem, has isolated four ‘defining characteristics’ of chapbooks—their having plebeian content and being small and short, cheap, and sold by chapmen—but he emphasizes that these characteristics, singly and in different combinations, produce very different printed works, all of which can be considered chapbooks.¹⁵ For Margaret Spufford, whose Small Books and Pleasant Histories focuses on the seventeenth century, ‘little books’ are chapbooks if published by the Ballad Partners in London, if distributed by chapmen among others, and if priced from a penny to threepence or even sixpence. She distinguishes between two ‘main groups of the chapbooks that originally had very different audiences. They were the burlesques and bawdy stories written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with ‘‘heroes’’ drawn specifically from both the urban and the rural poor. These were invariably printed as octavos or duodecimos priced at 2d in the 1680s. The second group was the cut-down chivalric romances of the middle ages, which were more commonly printed as quartos, and as a rule cost at least 1d more.’ These abridged romances or ‘histories’ as well as ‘godly books’ and ‘merry books’ (the burlesques and bawdy stories) were originally intended to provide inexpensive reading material for adults. But as Spufford notes, children appropriated them, especially the romances. She points to schoolboys as the ‘ ‘‘mediators’’ between the two cultures’ of the ‘fully-educated and the just literate’; schoolboys’ interest in chapbooks meant that the ‘English elite’ was not ‘ignorant of the chapbook culture, and therefore of the old chivalric stories’.¹⁶ Jonathan Barry has offered perhaps the strongest statement of the now generally accepted position that audiences cannot be defined according such as Pamela—in 1774 in the Cumberland Pacquet: see An Introduction to Chapbooks (Oldham: Incline Press, 2003), 5. I am very grateful to Dr M. O. Grenby for calling this discovery to my attention in email correspondence; I suspect that Dr Spier’s 1774 order responded to one of Snagg’s advertisements. ¹⁴ See Robert S. Crane, ‘The Vogue of Guy of Warwick from the Close of the Middle Ages to the Romantic Revival’, PMLA 30 (1915), 128. ¹⁵ M. O. Grenby, ‘From Chapbooks to Children’s Literature’, forthcoming. I am very grateful to Dr Grenby for letting me read this article before publication. ¹⁶ Margaret Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981), 50, 72.

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to an ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ binary, particularly child audiences. He writes, speaking of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: For the upper classes, indeed, if there was a world of private reading, it may have been in large part that of ‘popular literature’. Certainly ballads, romances and the like were treasured by elite children as an enthralling alternative world of print to the authoritative texts they endured at school. The same may have applied further down the social scale. Yet for all children the boundary between the myths of Greece, Rome and Israel on the one hand, and the stories of popular literature on the other, may have been a fluid one.¹⁷

The traditional seventeenth-century chapbook tales that Spufford studies met competition from a new form by the mid-eighteenth century: the children’s book, written especially for children and essentially dating from the 1740s despite some earlier examples. Both chapbooks and most children’s books were above all, inexpensive little books, and this general phrase ‘little books’—applied by John Newbery and others to his own publications—will refer to both forms when considered together, not simply to the chapbook literature (as Spufford employs it). Little books are all thinner and smaller than other publications, are decorated with woodcuts or other illustrations, and enjoy a wide variety of contents. They are also often abridged from longer works—the chapbooks from traditional romance literature and the children’s books from eighteenth-century novels. Conflation of chapbooks with children’s books as little books is clear in the Clay records when Mrs Mary Warner, a customer of Thomas Clay and probably an itinerant seller, orders in 1778 ballads and godly books by the ream, and later ‘2 Ream part Godly books & part Children’s Books’ followed soon by five quires more of godly books.¹⁸ As here, chapbooks and children’s books are not easily separable in the records. The Clays abbreviated titles, and shortened titles of both forms can boast a didactic and moralizing strain; both can offer pure entertainment; and both include abridgements of longer popular genres—histories, romances, voyages, and novels. The simplest way to discriminate between them, though arbitrary, is by price. Chapbook ¹⁷ Jonathan Barry, ‘Literacy and Literature in Popular Culture: Reading and Writing in Historical Perspective’, in Tim Harris (ed.), Popular Culture in England, c. 1500–1850 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995), 84. See also Raven, ‘New Reading Histories’, for a statement of how recent cultural history ‘has continued to break down polarities between the popular and the elite’ and other binaries, 287. ¹⁸ NRO D2928/48v , 61v , 65v .

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titles appear as sales in the Clay records usually at 8d., possibly because as a rule any cheaper versions stocked were sold for cash, not credit. Many such cheaper versions were printed by John Marshall, from whom John Clay ordered ‘2000 Histories’ for £2. 10s. 0d. in July 1775.¹⁹ These would probably bear the London Aldermary Churchyard, Bow Lane imprint and sell for a penny or even a halfpenny each, having been acquired at about three for a penny. Although I have not located any traditional chapbook titles with eightpence as a selling price on the title page, I suspect that some of those stocked by the Clays and sold at this price to Rugby schoolboys were published by Henry Kent, located at the ‘Printing Office’ near the ‘Royal Exchange, Finch Lane’ in John Clay’s accounts.²⁰ See the list in App. 3.3 of eightpenny books sold to boys at Rugby. Because chapbooks and children’s books were originally intended for different audiences, the Rugby schoolboys’ interest in both forms—and in both kinds of abridgement—becomes particularly compelling for students of the reading public. We can actually see what happens when a specialized fictional form, new to the eighteenth century and addressed to a particular audience, is marketed to that audience in competition with an established but less specialized older form. Predictably, the new form supplants the earlier one, yet the relation is slightly more complex than this commonplace result suggests. All little books increased in popularity for several reasons. ¹⁹ NRO ML 689/279. ²⁰ Clay ordered ‘100 Chap Books’ from Kent for £1. 12s.0d in 1743, thus paying 4d. each for ninety-six copies; he would have received the other four gratis, the usual wholesale allowance of one in twenty-five copies (NRO ML 689/26). The ESTC contains only one title printed by Kent that might have formed part of Clay’s chapbook order, a 115-page duodecimo: The life and surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, mariner … . Carefully epitomiz’d from the three volumes … . (London: H. Kent, [1750?]). Such a work might have sold for 8d., a price never charged for Newbery books, which usually cost 6d., though some titles sold at 1d., 2d., 1s., and so forth. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that an 8d. Crusoe is a chapbook version whereas a 6d. Crusoe is almost certainly a Newbery book, first sold by John Clay in 1765. Possible publishers other than Kent of the Clays’ 8d. chapbooks include two of their regular suppliers, James Hodges or Charles Hitch and L. Hawes; Hodges’s accounts with Clay appear in NRO ML 689, fos. 5–7. The imprints of these publishers can be found on short duodecimo versions (100+ pages) published in mid-century of traditional titles like Guy, Earl of Warwick (Hitch with Bettesworth, 1733, 156 pp.), History of Seven Wise Masters (Hodges with J. Johnson, 144 pp., 1740?), Valentine and Orson (Hitch and Hodges with R. Ware, 1751, 128 pp.), and so forth. Since none of the 8d. books sold to Rugby schoolboys can be identified as books aimed only at children, and since all have titles consistent with what is known of the titles and content of traditional chapbook literature, I have classified these works as chapbooks.

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First, the Clays made obtaining books very convenient for Rugbeians. Some sales of chapbooks and children’s books occur throughout the records, but they are most frequent in the four Rugby ledgers. John and then Thomas Clay offered credit to every schoolboy. Both took orders at least once a week from 1744 through July 1781, during visits to their shop in Rugby; afterwards, a shop was open every day under Samuel Clay. The ledgers are consequently full of very small transactions—a few pence here and there for paper, pens, ink, and cheap books. Such transactions would not normally have been recorded because adults would pay cash and poorer customers would not establish credit—except when they ‘bespoke’ a work not in stock. For example, John Smith, a shoemaker, ordered, appropriately enough, the chapbook version of History of the Gentle Craft, or Crispin and Crispianus sometime in 1758.²¹ But no record of this purchase appears among the daily transactions; if Smith obtained it, he paid cash. Artisans such as Smith as well as labourers were perhaps more likely to obtain chapbooks from the chapmen who circulated in the area than from the Clay shops; indeed, the Clays’ best customers for chapbooks after the schoolboys were such customers as Mary Warner who bought the cheapest ones in bulk. Thus, members of the prosperous classes account for almost all the Clays’ recorded sales of chapbooks as well as children’s books—even the one recorded sale of three penny histories (‘P. Hist.’) to Thomas Freeman, a substantial citizen of Daventry (11 December 1758). And among these customers, children’s books were far more popular than chapbooks. Parents bought them, as did clergymen and schoolteachers, often in multiple copies, presumably for distribution to boys and girls under their care. Like Goody Two-Shoes, other children’s books offered various narrative pleasures, and they could also be used to teach moral lessons or to reinforce reading already learned through traditional sources such as hornbooks and primers. The majority of the Clays’ recorded buyers for children’s books, like the chapbooks, however, were the schoolchildren themselves. The thirteen Rugby boys (three of them alone at the school, the other ten purchasing as sets of brothers) who each bought twenty or more eightpenny chapbooks and various children’s books altogether—about a quarter of all the little books bought by all the Rugby boys (349 of 1,401)—display in miniature the marketing triumph of the Newbery books over chapbook literature. The first chronologically was William ²¹ NRO D2931/14r ; John Clay wrote ‘Crispanus’.

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Bird, who entered in 1761 at about age 10 and was the oldest buyer of Goody Two-Shoes when 14 or 15. Although he spent nearly nine years at school, he bought his twenty-three little books within just three years (1766–8). These included three other Newbery books, fifteen chapbooks (among them the popular Guy, Earl of Warwick as well as Fortunatus), and four other children’s works. Charles and Robert Bathurst arrived at the school in 1763 when the elder was about 10, stayed for four years, and like Bird took fifteen chapbooks, even fewer Newberys (three altogether), and eleven other little books, primarily those written by W. H. Dilworth. The Brewster brothers of Barbados, who entered in 1765 and bought two copies of Goody, obtained the greatest number of little books among all the Rugby boys, forty altogether. They began buying in 1766 and completed most of their purchases of little books by 1771, taking only three in their remaining two years at the school. The tendency to prefer Newbery publications to the chapbooks begins with them: they chose twenty-five by Newbery compared to twelve chapbooks (and three other little books), and no changes in John Clay’s marketing practices seem to account for this shift. Many of their purchases were double—not just of Goody Two-Shoes but also of the chapbook Seven Champions of Christendom, Food for the Mind (J190b), a popular Newbery riddle book, and Philosophy for Children (J321). After the Brewster brothers, the next major purchasers entered nearly a decade later, in 1774. From that time, the remaining ten buyers or sets of buyers obtained just one chapbook or none at all, with the exception of the Bartlam brothers, younger sons who entered in 1779 aged about 9 and 10 and purchased twenty-three Newbery books as well as two of the most popular chapbooks (Guy, Earl of Warwick and The Seven Champions), along with a 1s. little book called Wisdom in Miniature. Like the Brewsters, Robert and John Bartlam often purchased multiple copies—of the Newbery Crusoe (J98) and Gil Blas (J213), for instance, as well as Tom Thumb’s Exhibition (J355). After the eldest Bartlam son Thomas arrived in 1782, however, at about age 14, the sole little book taken for the boys’ remaining two years at school was a third copy of Gil Blas. At the same time that these frequent buyers increased their Newbery purchases and decreased those of chapbooks, they also increased their holdings of other little books, a tendency seen among other boys as well. Table 4.2 followed by Fig. 4.1 can supply a quick overview of the four decades covered by the records. During this period the numbers of boys admitted to Rugby School and therefore likely to appear in

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Table 4.1. Most popular chapbooks and children’s books, Rugby School, 1744–84 Copies

Title, date of publication∗

106 61

Newbery’s History of England, 6d. (1759; J258) Newbery’s Robinson Crusoe (1768?; J98; 2 may not be Newbery’s) plus 9 chapbook versions, 6d. and 8d. Newbery’s Gil Blas, 1s. (1774?; J213) Newbery’s Food for the Mind, Riddle Book, 6d. (1757; J190b) Newbery’s Gulliver’s Travels, 6d. (1773; J5) Newbery’s History of the World in Miniature, 2 vols., 1s. 6d. (1763; J77) Newbery’s Tommy Trip’s History of Birds and Beasts, 6d. (1752; J308) Newbery’s Tom Jones, 1s. (1768; J132) Newbery’s Mother Goose’s Tales, 9d. (1768?; J279) English Hermit, 1s. (abridgement of novel imitating Crusoe) plus 10 versions @ 6d. Newbery’s Museum, 1s. (1753; J253) Newbery’s Fairing, or Golden Toy, 6d. (1764; J110) Newbery’s Lilliputian Magazine, 1s. (1751; J219) Unfortunate Englishman, 1s. History Book, 8d. (chapbook) Newbery’s Joseph Andrews, 1s. (1769; J131) Newbery’s Goody Two-Shoes, 6d. (1765; J167) History of Guy, Earl of Warwick, 8d. (chapbook) Newbery’s Be Merry and Wise, 6d. (riddles and jests) (1753; J358) Newbery’s Tom Thumb’s Exhibition, 2d. (1774; J355) Newbery’s Pilgrim’s Progress, vol. i, 9d. (1787?; J47) History Book, 6d. Newbery’s Curiosities of London, 6d. (1770; J88) Newbery’s Sixpennyworth of Wit, 6d. (1767; J336) Newbery’s Pilgrim’s Progress, vol. ii, 9d. (1787?; J47a) Newbery’s Juvenile Sports, 6d. (1773; J16) Newbery’s Aesop’s Fables in Verse, 6d. (1757; J7a) History of the Seven Champions of Christendom, 8d. (chapbook) Newbery’s Poems for Children Six Foot High, 1s. (1757; J74) 29 (23 Newbery titles, 6 others)

50 49 48 42 38 38 35 35 34 34 31 30 30 27 26 25 24 22 20 19 18 17 16 16 16 15 15 Total ∗

For the Newbery books, dates of publication precede identifying numbers, both from Sydney Roscoe’s bibliography. When the Clay records show that a particular title was obtained before the earliest edition by Roscoe’s determination, a question mark appears after the date. One copy of Robinson Crusoe (‘Cruso in Gilt Paper’ ML691/16) at 6d. was sold to Charles Harbourne, age just short of 13, on 7 Sept. 1765, and another ‘Cruso’ to Thomas Knightley, age about 10, on 20 Sept. 1766 (ML691/26); ‘Gilt Paper’ seems to be an identifying mark of Newbery books to child readers, as the reminiscences of Robert Southey and perhaps Samuel Taylor Coleridge suggest. The earliest copies of Pilgrim’s Progress vol. i were sold to two boys on 6 March 1779, vol. ii to two different boys on 13 March 1779. One copy of Gil Blas at 1s. was bought by Thomas Knightley on 12 July 1766 (ML691/26), but very likely that was a quite different edition, though it is included among the totals for the Newbery version that Roscoe dates 1774: the next sale doesn’t occur until 29 Mar. 1777. Six boys bought a ninepenny edition of ‘Goosey’s Tales’ in 1764, the earliest in July; Roscoe notes that a fourth edition was advertised as printed for Hodges in 1752 but lists 1768 as the first date advertised for Newbery.

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Sales 1744–9 1750–4 1755–9 1760–4 1765–9 1770–4 1755–9 1780–4 Newbery 1 — — 20 46 109 262 551 Other 2 8 — 25 23 16 8 159 children’s books Chapbooks — 20 3 19 82 14 — 32

Sales Newbery Books, Other Children's Books, Chapbooks 1744–84 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 44–9

50–3

54–9

60–4

65–9

70–4

75–9

80–4

Newbery Other children's books Chapbook

Figure 4.1. Total sales of Newbery books, other children’s books, and chapbooks in 5-year segments:

the Clays’ ledgers underwent some drastic shifts—shifts which seem to depend entirely on who was headmaster at each period. Initially high admissions by Thomas Crossfield in the early 1740s were followed by lean years under William Knail and Joseph Richmond in the late 1740s and 1750s, some growth under Stanley Burrough in the 1760s and early 1770s, then an enormous spurt when Thomas James took over in 1778. The buying of little books during the period follows a simpler, purely expansive pattern: purchases increase enormously over the four decades, exploding from 1778 (Fig. 4.1). Overall, the boys’ 461 accounts represent a total of 611 customers because a number of accounts record brothers’ purchases. Over a third record just sales of school texts and supplies—from the Accidence for elementary study of Latin to Homer’s Iliad in Greek and even Dryden’s poems, perhaps

Table 4.2. Rugby boys’ buying of children’s books, chapbooks; buying and borrowing of novels, other books Entries (RSR 33)

Entries (Clays† — John, Thomas, Samuel)

1742 (C) 1743 1744 (K) 1745 1746 1747 1748 1749 1750 1751 1752 (R) 1753 1754 1755 (B) 1756 1757

48 28 11 (5,6) 11 5 6 10 8 22 6

John 28 15 9 10 4 3 6 7 17 6 (1)‡ (3)‡

1 3 6

1 2 4

Newbery books bought

Other children’s books bought

Chapbooks bought

Other books bought— totals

(Novels bought— totals)

Borrow books— totals

(Borrow novels— totals)

n/a n/a

n/a n/a

n/a n/a

n/a n/a 9 7 12 5 9 17 4 5 5 9 13 4 4 4

n/a n/a 2

n/a n/a 2 1 1

n/a n/a

3

3

1

1 1 5

2 1

1 4 5 9 1

3 2 3 1 1

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Year & (Headm.)∗

2

(continued overleaf )

169

170

Table 4.2 (continued ) Year & (Headm.)∗

2 11 13 7 10 12 9 12 6 7 20 15 23 7 15 18 20 12 16

Entries (Clays† — John, Thomas, Samuel) 2 9 13 7 8 12 5 12 5 7 19 13 22 7 15 16 19 Thos. 12 16

Newbery books bought

1 5 14 9 8 9 9 11 26 34 10 7 31 8 4

Other children’s books bought

1 2 2 12 8 3 13 3 1 3 3 3 3 7 2

Chapbooks bought

Other books bought— totals

2

1 1

1 4 3 11 9 36 16 15 6 2 2 6 2 2

1 1 2 4 4 9 5 8 4 10 23 27 25 14 19 13

(Novels bought— totals)

Borrow books— totals

4

(Borrow novels— totals)

2

1 1 2 1

1

1

1 4 3 1 3 0

4

4

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1758 1759 1760 1761 1762 1763 1764 1765 1766 1767 1768 1769 1770 1771 1772 1773 1774 1775 1776

Entries (RSR 33)

1777 1778 ( J) 1779 1780 1781 1782 1783 1784

7 13 42 35 35 37 47 54

7 13 42 33 Saml. 35 37 39 35

31 53 166 100 196 62 104 89

1 3 2 17 28 21 65 28

totals

670

572 (+39)‡

990

241

170

8 2 5 2 7 11 8 2

3 2 16 12 3 4 10 57

3 2 16 11 3 3 9 6

506

75

124

113

Headmasters = C or Thomas Crossfield (1742–44); K or William Knail (1744–51); R or Joseph Richmond (1752–4); B or Stanley Burrough (1755–77); J or Thomas James (1778–94). Clays = John Clay (1744–75); Thomas Clay (1775–81); Samuel Clay (1781–4+).Yearly entries of Rugby boys are calculated from Solly’s 1933 edition of the Rugby School Register. ‡ The Clay ledgers include 39 boys not listed in the 1933 Register; these boys do not appear in the totals below except in parenthetic entries under Richmond, who kept no registers, and as (+39) in the totals. †

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∗

2 9 18 3

26 4 21 24 43 53 36 21

171

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for translation. Children’s books or chapbooks appear in less than half the accounts. Overall, Rugby boys acquired 1,401 little books on 228 accounts (and over 70 of these accounts included brothers). Of these, 988 were Newbery books purchased between 1761 and 1784; only one other, Newbery’s A Little Pretty Pocket Book (1744; J225), was bought earlier, by Charles Palmer shortly after he entered the school in 1748. Chapbooks amount to 12 per cent of the little books sold to the boys, 171 of 1,401. Table 4.1 lists the most popular titles, App. 3 all Newbery, chapbook, and other children’s book titles. The boys obtained 630 adult books in addition to school texts (487 bought, 19 bound, and 124 borrowed).²² Fiction was favoured, amounting to 30 per cent of their total acquisitions apart from school texts and little books. Rugby boys’ purchases and borrowings of novels amount to about one-quarter of the total that can be documented in all the Clay records—and the 78 boys who obtained novels also made up a quarter of the total of 307 Clay customers for longer prose fiction (see Table 1.1.2). The twenty-nine most popular titles of little books sold to boys at Rugby, titles that sold at least fifteen copies, as listed in Table 4.1, include twenty-three that were published by John Newbery or his nephew Francis (or Francis’s widow Elizabeth). The head of the list, books selling over thirty copies, represents an even greater tribute to the Newberys’ success: they published twelve of those thirteen titles. Chapbook sales, on the other hand, were greatest in the 1760s, reaching a high point of thirty-five in 1766, but they declined sharply afterward. By 1775, children’s books virtually drove the chapbooks off this market, though there was a slight revival in 1782, prompted by nine sales of Guy, Earl of Warwick in March of that year. Generally children’s books produced by publishers other than the Newberys sold less well than either chapbooks or Newbery books in the 1750s and 1760s, but from 1780 their sales too greatly increased, leaving the chapbooks far behind, in part because seventy-five copies were taken then of abridged versions of The English Hermit and The Unfortunate Englishman.²³ What is ²² Boys at Rugby bought, borrowed, and had bound full-length books in ten genres; the numbers bought precede the genre title, borrowed and bound (in parenthesis) follow: 36 books bought in history, philosophy, 1 borrowed (1 bound); 26 divinity (1); 46 plays, 2 (3); 72 novels, 113 (4); 174 belles lettres, 4 (9); 10 medicine, science, 1; 2 guides, manuals; 1 pedagogy; 22 travel, voyages, 3; 3 legal; 95 unclassified (1); totals 487 books bought, 124 borrowed, 19 bound, grand total of 630 books altogether. ²³ The English Hermit imitated Crusoe and was abridged from Peter Longueville’s 1727 The Hermit, or, the Unparalleled Sufferings and Surprising Adventures of Mr. Philip Quarll,

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happening here seems to lend support to what William St Clair called the ‘mass extinction’ of the old romances in chapbook form in the generation after 1774.²⁴ If so, however, we should note the survival of some into the nineteenth century (such as Valentine and Orson, remarked in the previous chapter), and we should remember, contrary to St Clair’s emphasis, that price is not the issue here. Children’s books that abridged novels cost 1s., more than the eightpenny chapbook romances. Decidedly some of the increased sales of all little books occurred because the Clays made more efforts to market them. Eventually, all the Clays seem to have made it their business at various points to offer books to boys on speculation. The sole example I can find for John Clay occurred in August 1763 when he retailed ten of the twelve children’s books (other than Newbery’s) that he sold in the entire year. They included nine different titles at 1s. each by W. H. Dilworth; seven boys snapped up eight of these on 13 August, and then Charles Harbourne, who had bought Dilworth’s life of Peter the Great, Czar of Muscovy (1760), obtained his History of England (not in ESTC) also a week later. Possibly boys shared the different titles; most likely the Bathurst brothers shared with each other their single copies of Dilworth’s History of Francis-Eugene, Prince of Savoy (1760?) and his Life of Cromwell (not in ESTC).²⁵ John Clay must have brought these books to Rugby on horseback with him—a successful venture in this case. His son Thomas took advantage of Dr James’s arrival at midsummer 1778 to market more little books. In August 1778 he sold five copies of Newbery’s Gulliver’s Travels (J5) and three of Newbery’s Robinson Crusoe (J98); four sales of Gulliver’s Travels occurred on 21 August alone. A sudden rise in purchases of Newbery’s History of England (J258) began in that month with four copies; September saw a further fourteen sales. Later, Thomas Clay retailed all eleven copies of the sixpenny English Hermit on 20 May 1780. I conjecture that like his father, Thomas Clay brought the books with him on his weekly visits to the Rugby shop to take an Englishman … ; John Cockburn’s The Unfortunate Englishmen, or, A Faithful Narrative of the Distresses and Adventures of John Cockburn and five other English Mariners … was printed in 1740 by the ‘Booksellers of London and Westminster’. ²⁴ St Clair, Reading Nation, 350. ²⁵ Other Dilworth titles bought at this time were: The Life and Heroic Actions of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough (1758), The Life and Military History of the Celebrated Marshal Saxe (1760?), Lord Anson’s Voyage Round the World (1758), and an edition of Don Quixote.

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orders and to deliver books at Rugby School; the children’s books were probably bought on impulse by the boys. Samuel Clay continued these marketing practices, as was evident in the case of Goody Two-Shoes. In fact, he seems to have been responsible for briefly reviving the boys’ interest in eightpenny chapbooks: he sold three copies each of The Seven Champions of Christendom and Valentine and Orson on 24 November 1781, just a few months after he inherited the business. Further sales of these titles as well as an eightpenny History Book, and the nine purchases of Guy, Earl of Warwick in March 1782, swelled chapbook sales to eighteen in that year, but the last copy (of Seven Champions) was retailed in July 1783. Meantime, Newbery purchases increased exponentially: 159 of the 195 Newbery book sales in 1781 occurred during the last five months, under Samuel Clay. Greater numbers of students certainly accounted for much of the increase, but something surely is owing to Samuel Clay’s more energetic marketing as well as to his more constant presence in Rugby. Little books, then, increased in popularity for several reasons. First, the school expanded, and second, the Clays marketed these works more energetically. Third, more titles appeared, particularly Newbery’s. Roscoe’s dates of publication as shown in App. 3 indicate that Newbery books first published in the 1740s sold a total of fifteen copies to Rugby boys overall; those published first in the 1750s, 347; in the 1760s, 360; and 1770s, 231. (The five ‘Newbery’ books that cannot be identified are not included.) Fourth, boys’ parents may have provided more spending money and thus may have increased sales of little books overall. Thomas James doled out allowances, presumably from his accession to the headmastership in 1778; a shilling or so a week was thus potentially available for books,²⁶ even if such sums would only appear in the records when boys paid cash for book borrowings (otherwise ledgers record only credit transactions). Though such behaviour was evident earlier, from about this time siblings more frequently obtained their own copies of the same work—and some boys successively bought the same works, as in the case of Walter Savage Landor’s purchases of three copies of the Newbery Gil Blas within one year. Parents may have become more willing to approve such purchases than they had been earlier. ²⁶ The shilling allowance is noted on the 1792 Christmas recess bill for John Plomer Clarke: 12s. over the term. In addition, selected boys received what James called ‘merit money’, a shilling at a time; John received 4s. in this category, NRO C(W)X5438.

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Whatever the causes for their increasing popularity, abridged adult fictions or ‘histories’ unquestionably were the best sellers overall among little books, as Table 4.1 illustrates (see App. 3 for totals of all titles sold). Possibly as early as 1765, but certainly shortly after John Newbery’s death late in 1767, his son Francis Newbery in partnership with Thomas Carnan published an abridged Robinson Crusoe at sixpence (J98; sixty-one copies). Their rival, another Francis Newbery, John’s nephew, published 1s. abridgements of several novels that had achieved almost classic status. Three of nephew Francis’s abridgements were among the most popular little books sold to the Rugby boys: Gil Blas (produced by Francis Newbery in 1774), Tom Jones (1768), and Joseph Andrews (1769). This Francis Newbery also abridged Richardson’s novels, although they were much less popular: Sir Charles Grandison (J317; eight copies), Pamela (J316; four copies), and Clarissa (J315; one copy). What was omitted from these abridgements varied. Richardson suffered most, for both his epistolarity and first-person narration were excised. Sexuality is surprisingly evident, however, in abridgements of both Richardson’s and Fielding’s novels. Tom’s escapade with Mrs Waters and Sophia’s discovery are thus rendered: ‘This lady [Mrs Waters] who was not distinguished for her modesty, being struck with the person of Jones, was no sooner alone with him, that [sic] she made such advances, as let him know she had no favours in her power which she would not scruple to bestow in her deliverer, and actually tempted him to come to her bed.’²⁷ Fielding’s authorial voice is lost in all the children’s abridgements, but a certain sexual tease is preserved by the illustrations. In Joseph Andrews (J131), one plate shows Lady Booby in bed, ‘neck’ exposed, with Joseph sitting beside her. The scene in which Lovelace gains entrance to Clarissa’s bedroom by faking an alarm of fire is illustrated perhaps more provocatively (Lovelace sits on the bed in his nightcap, Clarissa kneels on the floor before him in a loose gown, arms raised in entreaty) and is quite vividly described: Lovelace entreated her to be pacified, and hear him speak, protesting that he had not the least intention inconsistent with her honour, and then having seized the scissors, threw them into the chimney; but she still earnestly insisting ²⁷ Pierpont Morgan Library (PML) 081793, 122–3; not recorded in Roscoe under J132. Alexandra Goldmacher has analysed this abridgement and that of Richardson’s Pamela as well, showing the ways in which the abridger’s versions diligently remove moral ambiguity present in the originals; her paper was read at the East-Central Eighteenth-Century Studies conference in Cape May, New Jersey, in November 2004.

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on his keeping at a distance, he permitted her to take a chair. While her eyes overflowed, he clasped her once more to his bosom. Her strength, considering the delicacy of her frame, was at this instant amazing, and shewed the sincerity of her indignation and resentment; for he was scarce able to hold her; nor could he prevent her sliding through his arms to fall upon her knees at his feet, and there, in the anguish of her soul, she lift up her streaming eyes to his face with supplicating fondness; her hands were folded, and her hair dishevelled; for her night-cap falling off in the struggle, her fine locks fell down in natural shining ringlets, as if officious to conceal the dazzling beauties of her neck and shoulders, while her lovely bosom heaved with sighs, as if to aid her trembling lips, in pleading for compassion.²⁸

Altogether, shortly after the novel became a genre with some popularity among adults, the form was abridged for children and appropriated by them with an avidity that adult customers of both the Clays and Timothy Stevens, the Cirencester bookseller, do not show. A comparison of Table 4.1 with Table 2.2 shows that Rugby boys took far more abridged versions of the canonical novels than adults and schoolboys together bought of their originals. The full-length Robinson Crusoe makes the most impressive showing, with twenty-three purchases in more than sixty years against the sixty-one abridged copies, but Gil Blas and Tom Jones achieved just nine and seven unabridged sales compared to fifty and thirty-eight children’s versions. Furthermore, abridgements and full-length novels jostled each other in boys’ reading, as in the case of the 10-year-old William Hill who withdrew Francis Burney’s five-volume Cecilia from the circulating library within the same one-year period that he bought the Newbery Tom Jones, Gil Blas, and Joseph Andrews (plus a non-Newbery abridgement of The English Hermit). Newbery and his successors clearly found a solid market among Rugby schoolboys for their new product: the combination of two new forms, the children’s book and the novel, into an abridgement intended for children. Curiously, the most sought-after work was not a fictitious history but Newbery’s sixpenny A New History of England (J258), first published in 1759. Its apparent popularity may be misleading, however, for the book was probably assigned in class, perhaps for translation into Latin. Such an explanation can account for the odd fact that 87 of 106 copies sold were purchased in the first eighteen months of James’s headmastership, ²⁸ PML 082282 c.1780, J315.2, 56–7. The abridged Gil Blas, however, unlike the Richardson redactions, maintains its first-person narration. Newbery’s Crusoe, like most other abridgements of that novel, retains the opening sequence, in which Crusoe defies his father’s advice.

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between July 1778 and December 1779—far more than any other nonschoolbook in the forty-one years that the records cover. No other little book shows a similar pattern of extremely concentrated and widespread sale. The advent in 1778 of Dr James as headmaster is almost certainly responsible for what appears to be the use of this children’s book in the school. The boys’ preferences, as shown in Table 4.1, for abridged fictions and for riddle books are especially interesting because they were buying books for themselves. Although the very respectable showing of Goody Two-Shoes indicates that this work actually appealed to boys, Samuel Johnson was right that parents were usually the buyers. For example, when Samuel Clay opened his short-lived bookshop in Warwick in 1770, he stocked it with over five hundred children’s books and chapbooks, representing over fifty titles. Goody Two-Shoes was the only one of these titles that Clay reordered twice during a nineteen-month period, and he had begun with thirteen copies. By contrast, his seven initial copies of Francis Newbery’s abridged Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews sufficed; he did not restock these works.²⁹ In other words, when parents and other adults controlled the market, Goody Two-Shoes was pre-eminent; when well-educated boys chose their own books, they also bought Two-Shoes but tended to prefer adult fictions abridged for them. This preference may account in part both for the initial appeal of the chapbooks and for their subsequent decline in popularity, in favour of the children’s books. Chapbooks had the (possible) advantage of being known as works for adults, and because so many of their titles had been familiar for longer than a century, they may have been invested with almost classic status. Yet this advantage, if it was one, must have become to some extent a limitation: the canon was fixed, while titles and kinds of children’s books were proliferating. And we have clear evidence that when the content was similar, the boys preferred to buy a children’s version. Robinson Crusoe, the most popular fiction, offers an important case study of this preference. It was bought sporadically as an eightpenny chapbook in 1752, 1756, and 1758 (one copy each). In 1765, Charles Harbourne (almost 13) bought a copy of what may have been John Newbery’s first abridged edition of Crusoe for sixpence. During the next year, another possible Newbery version and four chapbook editions were sold, suggesting that the appearance of the sixpenny edition by Newbery or another publisher stimulated chapbook sales. One boy, Thomas ²⁹ Fergus, ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers’, 164.

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Knightley of Offchurch, bought the eightpenny chapbook version in March 1766, then the sixpenny book in September.³⁰ Afterwards, however, the Newbery book decidedly prevailed, with fifty-nine sales in the next seventeen years, compared to only one sale of the chapbook. Curiously, two of the six boys who bought a full-sized version of the novel also bought the Newbery sixpenny books: Thomas Peers Newsam, one of the best customers for children’s books (obtaining twenty-one in eight years at the school, among them Goody Two-Shoes) bought a 2s. duodecimo Crusoe on 1 March 1777 when he was about 11 years old and a year later the abridged sixpenny version (14 February 1778). Samuel Satchell’s purchases were more predictable, progressing from the Newbery version on 13 September 1774 to a complete edition for 2s. 6d. on 25 February 1775. ³¹ Certainly the Newbery Crusoe is easier to read as well as much shorter than the full-length novel and much more coherent than any chapbook version that I have seen; it may have served as a kind of textual aid. In any case, the boys’ appetites for several versions of Crusoe confirm its status as a popular icon, not unlike Star Wars in our own time. Nonetheless, their overall preference for Newbery’s abridgement over the chapbook editions is easy to understand. Although shorter than the eightpenny chapbooks, the Newbery edition was cheaper and probably better printed and more professionally illustrated. The boys showed a similar preference for Newbery’s version of the Mother Goose tales (J279; thirty-five copies) at 9d. over a larger, more expensive collection for 18d. (2 copies). In general, the Rugby schoolboys’ enthusiastic responses to Newbery books whenever a rival version existed help to substantiate the reputation of the Newberys as successful marketers of books to children.³² By the end of the period covered by the ledgers, children’s books were the schoolboys’ most frequent purchases apart from school texts. Purchases of chapbooks and children’s books were overall far more widespread than buying novels or even borrowing them. Their appeal ³⁰ NRO ML 691/16, 26. ³¹ NRO ML 691/74, 109; D2932/1. Two other boys bought both the chapbook and children’s version of Robinson Crusoe: John or Thomas Brewster obtained the chapbook in August 1766 then the Newbery edition in September 1770 (ML 691/40,105), whereas Theophilus Biddulph bought the Newbery version first (3 September 1768, when he was 11) and the chapbook on 18 March 1769 (NRO ML 691/45, 89). ³² Among many others, Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb cite the Newberys’ marketing success in The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London: Europa, 1982), 272–3, 302–4.

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was, however, particularly strong among the forty boys (sometimes with their brothers) who bought full-length novels: these boys obtained 344 little books in addition to their seventy-five novels. The buyers of novels on average purchased about 8.7 little books each, some 60 per cent more than the other buyers of little books (5.4 each). Some questions raised by this cultural intersection involve gender and reading, as discussed earlier. Other questions that Rugby schoolboys’ practices raise include: what cultural stereotypes did chapbooks, children’s books, and novels share? What common themes and literary conventions informed them? What cultural work did they do? What relations existed between various abridgements of canonical novels and their originals, and can those relations tell us anything about how those novels were read and appropriated by eighteenth-century audiences? How far did the abridgements themselves contribute to the canonical status of certain novels? How much did the audience for abridgements and for originals coincide? Did the children’s book change in techniques or sophistication with changes in the novel during the later eighteenth century? The success of children’s books, probably initially intended for more prosperous readers, certainly influenced the content of the cheapest chapbooks; cheaper imitations of Newbery’s books were published in the provinces by the end of the century. Conversely, buying patterns of the chapbooks among Rugby schoolboys confirm that an ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ binary does not obtain among child audiences. S C H O O L B OY S R E A D N OV E L S : RU G B Y S C H O O L The demand for longer prose fiction, particularly novels, follows a somewhat different trajectory among Rugby boys than the explosive expansion that occurs in sales of little books. Both purchasing and borrowing varied considerably over the years; see Table 4.2. The ledgers’ continuity makes clear that demand for novels as purchases within this limited audience was concentrated first in the 1740s and then (more strongly) in the 1770s and afterwards. That is, the boys seem to have responded to increases in production of novels as outlined by J. A. Downie.³³ Although I will argue in Ch. 5 that adults’ greater interest during the 1770s in magazines (which usually contained fiction) did not accompany any increased demand for novels, schoolboys’ acquisitions of ³³ Downie, ‘Making of the English Novel’, 249–66.

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all fictional forms multiplied in the 1770s. Not just Rugby boys but also scholars at the Daventry Dissenting Academy obtained more fictional works as the decade progressed. It is even possible that their behaviour anticipates that of adults in subsequent decades—i.e. that the small adult provincial audience for fiction that the Clays served substantially enlarged in the 1780s and 1790s. Such an expansion is corroborated by the Stevens records: as noted in Ch. 1, and as Table 1.1.2 can show, although Clay consumers of fiction amounted overall to over 11 per cent of their customers for print, nearly 19 per cent of Stevens’s credit customers bought or borrowed novels. For novels to be in demand during the 1740s is predictable. During that decade, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, among others, published their first novels, and adult Clay customers bought some thirty copies of these and other novelists’ works during 1746–8. Although Rugby School did not match this consumption, boys bought eleven novels in the last six years of the 1740s—more than in the next twentytwo years. From 1772, however, novel buying began to increase steadily, as did borrowing from 1775. Increases in borrowing during this time depended very much on which of the Clays was in charge. John Clay evidently did not seek to lend books to boys. Up to and including 1775, during the slightly more than thirty years that he operated in Rugby, Rugbeians borrowed novels just six times from him, though he sold thirty. His successor Thomas Clay sold eighteen but lent novels thirty-six times in less than six years. And when Thomas’s brother Samuel took over after August 1781, he also made a larger lending library available to the boys.³⁴ Profiting from the increasing enrolment at the school and from his own larger library, Samuel Clay lent novels seventy-one times and sold or bound twenty-eight in less than three and a half years between 1781 and 1784 (see Table 4.2). Rugby boys who bought books other than school texts or children’s books were most interested in novels and belles lettres, though they obtained a variety of genres. All but one of the eleven novels purchased in the 1740s were in print in the year 2000. They were: Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Pamela, Sarah Fielding’s David Simple, Fielding’s ³⁴ Samuel Clay added at least fourteen fiction titles to his lending library at Rugby in 1781 and afterwards, including not just newer novels like Cecilia but the seventeenthcentury Cassandra as well. Formerly, three of these titles had circulated in his Warwick library but never in Daventry: Emily Montague, Letters from Felicia to Charlotte, and Millennium Hall; see App. 1. Again, I suspect that most of these novels came from his wife’s library.

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Tom Jones, Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Persiles and Sigismunda (2 vols.), and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, plus two copies each of Smollett’s Roderick Random and Lesage’s Gil Blas (still available in French). The Brewster brothers from the West Indies who entered in 1742 were the most determined buyers. They purchased Don Quixote, Persiles and Sigismunda, Roderick Random, and David Simple, which they returned, being charged 1s. 4d. for reading it. They also obtained all four of the titles that John Clay lent to boys in that decade, none of them novels—a volume of plays, The Sham Wedding (a play), James Keill’s Anatomy of the Human Body Abridged (1698; 1s. 6d. was charged for borrowing this book), and ‘Civil Wars of England’. Their ages are unknown, but the next most serious buyer, the Hon. James Bruce, was the youngest to purchase novels, aged about 11 when he acquired Gulliver, 12 for Gil Blas, and 13 for Roderick Random. Richard Nichol was about 13 when he bought Robinson Crusoe and 14 for Pamela. These or younger ages are quite common. Public schoolboys could and did tackle long, complex works of fiction quite early. Not until the 1770s and afterward did Rugbeians buy novels with an avidity matching that of the 1740s. In the first six years of the 1770s, under John Clay, boys bought twelve novels, nearly all quite dated ones. The most unusual titles fell to George and Charles Parkhurst, who obtained Jane Collier’s 1753 The Art of Ingeniously Tormenting (2 May 1772), and to the Brewster brothers of Barbados, sons of one of the novel-buying Brewsters of thirty years before, who purchased Hippolito and Aminta (1718), Agenor and Imena (1759), and a collection of Jane Barker’s novels (1719)—suggesting an almost antiquarian interest in fiction. John Fisher, aged 15 or 16, took a 1771 translation of Voltaire’s The Pupil of Nature about a year after it was issued; William Loggin a French and English version of F´enelon’s Telemachus; Samuel Satchell Robinson Crusoe; Richard Walker The Arabian Nights, Theophilus Biddulph Persian Tales (age 14), Gulliver’s Travels (age 16), and Devil upon Two Sticks (age 17); and Richard Lickorish the Persian Tales also. No more novels at all were lent until John Clay’s successors Thomas and then Samuel Clay made more books available after John died in 1775. With just four exceptions, from December 1775 borrowings from their libraries were of novels only (total 107; the four exceptions were two borrowings of Elegant Extracts, one of the Theatrical Magazine, and one of John Barrow’s Collection of Authentic, Useful, and Entertaining Voyages (3 vols.) ).

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Lickorish and William Boultbee Sleath were the Clays’ very best schoolboy customers for books. Both entered the school in 1773. Lickorish was 13³⁵ and Sleath could not have been much younger, for he was appointed tutor and assistant master at Rugby by 1778,³⁶ eventually securing the headmastership of St Paul’s School in London in 1814. Less successful, Lickorish became a self-declared unbeneficed clergyman, physician, and farmer in Warwickshire, obtaining his living from what was probably a family farm. His publications document contradictions between his plebeian status and thwarted elite aspirations (he briefly attended Lincoln College, Oxford, after Rugby): Lickorish published at least three books (of sermons and essays) only one of which has survived. They were generally savaged by the reviewers.³⁷ In 1773 and 1774, he bought two children’s books and Sleath seven; Lickorish’s acquisitions were a 1s. World Turned Upside Down and an eightpenny chapbook Book of Knowledge at ages 13 and 14. Between 1774 and 1783, he obtained or bound forty-eight other works apart from schoolbooks, including five ³⁵ Lickorish was baptized on 28 December 1759, and was married as a minor on 1 September 1780; he was therefore born between 2 September and 28 December 1759 (WCRO DR 507/2). ³⁶ See entry in J. A. Venn (comp.), Alumni Cantabridgienses, Part II, 1752–1900, 5 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). ³⁷ These publications include The Study of the Scriptures Recommended. An Attempt to Illustrate the Beauty of some Parts of Scripture … , produced anonymously and reviewed by the Critical in June 1782 with bland praise (53 (1782), 475); the Monthly, however, was ‘at a loss to conjecture what should have induced this writer to publish his lucubrations’ (66 (1782), 478). Lickorish bought a copy of the June 1782 edition of the Critical, and Samuel Clay notes in D10297/145 that he ‘recd 11 of his Books, to Acct for 9 & to send Dr Clare one & one for myself Gratis’. A subsequent note reveals a slow sale: ‘NB Pd him for one when we settled & I was to keep the rest.’ Second, Lickorish published An Appeal to the Public, on the Subject of Politics (1793). The sole surviving publication is the 333-page Sermons; and Tracts upon various Subjects; Literary, Critical, and Political (1793), i, printed by N. Rollason in Coventry for the author and reviewed by the Monthly Review in December 1795 along with the Appeal (ns 18 (1795), 467–9). A second volume did not appear. The Critical noticed the Appeal and dated it 1793 in June 1794, 10 (1794), 427–8. The Sermons espoused revolutionary principles; the Appeal retracted them. The preface to the Sermons; and Tracts makes rather sad reading, as Lickorish shifts into the third person to regret his lack of preferment and his plebeian position: ‘After having spent a fortune in his education, and after passing his life in hard and diligent study to fit and qualify him for the Church, a profession which he entered into from a very early and strong predilection for it, and for science:—After having done this, the author is compelled to prosecute a business, which as every one acknowledges to be highly useful, so it is likewise equally honourable,—he means the business of agriculture, for the purpose of bringing up an increasing family. This however foreign to the profession of a Clergyman, the author would by no means regret, was he qualified for it by previous habits’ (5–6).

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novels bought and one bound, and he borrowed three; over the eleven years of his expenditures that the ledgers cover, he spent almost sixty pounds for books, paper, supplies, prints, songs, music, and so forth. During the same period, Sleath acquired thirty-seven works, including seven purchases of novels, and borrowed five; he also bound a Don Quixote. Both Sleath and Lickorish apparently read Tom Jones and part of Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison (at separate times). Sleath took out Sir William Harrington and the anonymous Morning Ramble (2 vols.) in addition. But the two bought different novels, perhaps in order to share them. Moreover, both purchased recent works of fiction, a phenomenon not really seen at Rugby since the 1740s. Lickorish acquired, along with the Persian Tales, three volumes of Elizabeth Griffith’s Collection of Novels in 1777 (counted as three separate purchases),³⁸ and Mackenzie’s The Man of the World. He also had bound Robert Bage’s Mount Henneth in October 1783, a year after it was issued. Sleath bought Frances Burney’s Evelina and Cecilia (and was the only purchaser—as opposed to the nine boys who borrowed it), Henry Mackenzie’s Julia de Roubign´e and The Man of Feeling, Frances Brooke’s History of Julia Mandeville, Robert Graves’s Columella, and John Kidgell’s The Card. After Sleath married in 1784, he was, like Henry Bagshaw Harrison, no longer a buyer of expensive books—just serials and magazines. Sleath and Lickorish alone account for 28 per cent of the novels bought or bound at Rugby between 1774 and 1784 (14 of 50) and 32 per cent of all other books acquired or bound by Rugbeians during that time (72 of 228). Even without their acquisitions, however, Rugby boys’ interest in novels during this time greatly increased, as Table 4.2 demonstrates. S E C R E T N OV E L R E A D I N G AT RU G B Y ? One of the most interesting facts that the Clay records reveal about Rugby boys is their tendency to pay cash for reading certain novels—with the result that charges did not appear in their ledger accounts. ³⁸ The collection includes Eliza Haywood’s The Fruitless Enquiry, Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, the Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette, Penelope Aubin’s The History of Agnes de Castro and The Noble Slaves, Zayde, A Spanish History—like Princess of Cleves allegedly by Alain de Segrais but actually by Mme de La Fayette, and ‘The History of the Count de Belfor and Leonora de Cespedes’. Although the selections are primarily by female novelists, I have counted the work as male-authored in the tables because Griffith identified the works by La Fayette as written by de Segrais. I am grateful to Betty Rizzo for sharing with me this information on Griffith’s publication.

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None of the borrowers of Cecilia paid cash for their withdrawals, as some boys did of other texts; paying to read Cecilia was openly acknowledged in all nine boys’ ledger accounts. When boys paid cash for borrowing books, however, their withdrawals appeared in the day books but were either excised from or did not appear in the ledger accounts that were copied for presentation to housemasters and eventually to parents, who paid the bills. Parents may well have forbidden certain kinds of reading. Lady Darnley, we know, monitored her young son’s reading at Eton, and Charles James Apperley’s father did not wish him to read Tom Jones; Apperley implies that his father remained ignorant that he read the novel. Some of the boys’ actual borrowings can be detected only because Rugby day books happen to survive for 1779–84; Daventry Academy boys may have similarly paid in cash for (and thus hidden) their reading, but since only day books survive, without ledger accounts, such practices cannot readily be discovered, and no hints of them appear in the day books alone. Some boys at Rugby, however, managed to keep charges for certain novels from being transferred from day books to their ledger accounts either by paying in cash for their withdrawals or by persuading the Clays to accept postponed payments. Egerton Stafford, son of a clergyman in Staffordshire, entered Rugby in 1777 at age 12 and was most conspicuous in paying for borrowings, so that all the following appeared in the day book (NRO D3400) but none in his ledger account (NRO D2932/23, 136): Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle (vols. i, ii: 7 August, vols. iii, iv: 14 August 1779), Susannah and Margaret Minifie’s The Picture (vol. ii: 4 September 1779), Ann Emelinda Skinn’s The Old Maid (vols. i, ii: 11 September, vol. iii: 18 September 1779), The Modern Fine Gentleman (2 vols.: 18 September 1779), Henry Fielding’s Amelia (vols. i, ii: 25 September 1779, vols. iii, iv later, 16r ), Phebe Gibbes’s Friendship in a Nunnery, or the American Fugitive (2 vols.: 5 February 1780), Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (19 February 1780), and the anonymous Light Summer Reading for the Ladies, or the History of Lady Lucy Fenton (vols. i, ii: 15 April 1780). His consumption of at least twelve volumes in August and September 1779 when he was 14 is impressive, and perhaps equally so is his truncated reading of The Picture—although he took out all three volumes of the same novel a year later, in November 1780. (This desultory reading is considered in detail in Ch. 1.) Stafford engaged in another kind of reading later when he obtained a chapbook version of Tom Jones in February 1780 but returned it and elected to read the complete version instead.

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Stafford’s interest in Skinn’s 1771 novel may just possibly have been sparked by acquaintance with a pamphlet describing her divorce. It appears within a seven-volume set located at the British Library, with a title page dated 1779: Trials for Adultery: or, the History of Divorces. Being Select Trials at Doctors Common, for Adultery, Fornication, Cruelty, Impotence, &c. From the Year 1760, to the present Time (London: S. Bladon, 1779). In volume vi, the pamphlet containing the trial of Ann Skinn for adultery with Matthew Browne sets out the proceedings in great detail, with evidence from her maid Elizabeth Morris that on a night in April 1769 ‘by the light of a candle, which was kept burning in the room all night, [she] saw the said Matthew Browne in bed with the said Ann Skinn, at which the deponent was much frightened, and burst into tears’.³⁹ No Rugby boy purchased the Trials, but certainly there was a run on Skinn in the autumn of 1779, starting with Stafford. Susan Staves has discussed the heroine’s surprising outspokenness and spunk, her defiance of authority, qualities that may have appealed to boys who were very much under authority.⁴⁰ In addition, The Old Maid is slightly salacious. As the Monthly Review loftily noted in its one-sentenced dismissal, ‘Although there are defects in this work gross enough to disgust a critical reader, there are parts of it that will be far from disagreeable to a good-natured one, who is fond of novels, and not too nice in the choice of them.’⁴¹ Perhaps it is no wonder that this novel was the one that Rugby boys were most likely to pay cash for reading—thus leaving no trace of its consumption in their bills. Egerton Stafford seems to have held onto the last volume for a while, wherein one ‘old maid’—the heroine’s aunt—is found in bed with the butler. George Walker of London, aged 14, took special precautions to ensure that his reading of Skinn’s novel did not appear in his ledger account—and succeeded. He took out volumes i and ii on 16 October 1779 and paid immediately or soon after, for the entry includes this note: ‘N.B. have Recd the 6d of him for the Readg of them.’ When Walker took out the third volume on 13 November (after it was finally returned ³⁹ The 1779 edition of Trials for Adultery was reprinted in 1985 by the Garland Press; the Skinn case appears as the fifth in Trials for Adultery: or, the History of Divorces, 7 vols. (New York: Garland, 1985), iv. 6. ⁴⁰ Susan Staves, ‘Matrimonial Discord in Fiction and in Court: The Case of Ann Masterman’, in Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski (eds.), Fetter’d or Free? British Women Novelists, 1670–1815 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1986), 169–85. ⁴¹ Monthly Review 43 (December 1770), 500, quoted by Raven and Forster, English Novel 1771, 52; the version quoted by Staves, 183, incorrectly reads ‘in his choice’ for ‘in the choice’.

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by Egerton Stafford, who had withdrawn it 18 September), ‘Recd . 3d for Readg of it’ appears in the day book (NRO D7938). Unlike Stafford, who paid in cash for all his reading, Walker was willing to let charges for borrowing various other novels appear in his account: the complete Sir Charles Grandison, Humphry Clinker, and Peregrine Pickle before Skinn’s novel, and Sir Harry Harald afterward. Perhaps the notes in the day book concerning the money he paid for reading The Old Maid simply indicate a determination to be sure that Thomas Clay had a record of his payments so that he would not be doubly charged. But if so, why did he not do the same with the others? Just possibly the male-authored and largely ‘classic’ novels, though some with content as suggestive sexually as Skinn’s, were more likely to meet with Major Nathaniel Walker’s approval. (George Walker himself had a distinguished army career.) One or more of the Babington brothers also obtained the first two volumes of Skinn’s The Old Maid a week later than George Walker. On 30 October 1779, William Smith, the son of a Northampton attorney, was charged with reading the first two volumes. He was the only boy who did not pay in cash to read this novel. The four borrowers (out of five) of Skinn’s novel who did pay cash included also the Legge brothers (entered 1781 at about ages 14 and 8), sons of the pious Earl of Dartmouth. At least one of them borrowed The Old Maid on 3 March 1783 and Sir William Harrington on 13 March. But the charges, 9d. and 1s. respectively, are crossed out in the ledger; whenever Samuel Clay had a bill for January–May 1783 copied out for presentation to the boys’ housemaster, it would not include these charges.⁴² These sums are re-entered in June, crossed out again, and again not added into the total charges up to 20 August. Similarly, a line is drawn through a reading of the four volumes of Lesage’s picaresque Gil Blas on 16 August and the charge not included. Perhaps if the rest of the ledger survived, we would know whether the boys ever paid for all this reading or whether, finally, their father was billed for it—and the readings of Pamela and of Fatal Friendship, charged on 2 October 1783 (NRO ML 478). These attempts to pay in cash for borrowing may have begun with a withdrawal on 9 May 1782 of the first two volumes of Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison; although the title appears in the ledger, no charge is made, and a bill drawn from the ledger would omit it. Clearly, then, it was not just Skinn’s novel that boys chose to pay cash for borrowing, thus keeping their choices from appearing on their ledger ⁴² NRO D10297/172.

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accounts. This conduct simply did not occur with orders for textbooks, paper, ink, and other required purchases. Although occasionally a magazine or a book not required in the curriculum might be paid for in cash, in general I have found that only borrowings of novels appear in the day books but not in the ledger accounts. I have interpreted such cash payments for borrowed books as indicating secret reading—that is, as reading that is intentionally conducted so as to avoid official scrutiny. But whether or not I am right in drawing this inference, the behaviour is frequent and marked enough to deserve attention. The Babington brothers, for instance, seemed extremely eager to prevent their reading of Peregrine Pickle from appearing on their ledger account; Peregrine Pickle was second only to The Old Maid in being so treated. At least one of the Babingtons borrowed the first volume from Thomas Clay on 13 November 1779; on 27 November the day book reads ‘Peregrine Pickle vol. 3d and 4th . to Read to have the money in next week’ and ‘N.B. he will pay for the readg of them.’ Next week, on 4 December, these further notes appear: ‘to have the money in on Saturday N.B. he will pay for the Readg of them’ (NRO D7938).⁴³ Such notations are rare. With less apparent anxiety, a Babington also paid in cash for his reading of volumes iii and iv of The Fool of Quality (NRO ML 478, 26 July 1782), although two years later a reading of the whole work was entered in the ledger account. Matthew Wise, heir of Henry Wise of the Priory at Warwick (and a cousin to the Matthew Wise who borrowed Cecilia), entered in 1778 at about age 9 and seems to have paid cash for nothing until shortly after his brother John, aged 6 or 7, entered early in 1780. That is, Matthew’s withdrawals of Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle and Humphry Clinker in November 1779 and May 1780 were openly declared in the ledger. For whatever reason, however, Matthew paid in cash for the borrowing of the first two volumes each of The History of Christopher Crab and Lady Lucy Fenton in March and April 1780, along with Frances Brooke’s History of Emily Montague and the anonymous Sir William Harrington in November 1781. ⁴⁴ Possibly here and in the case of the two Legges, the presence of a much younger ⁴³ These entries are heavily crossed out in the day book and therefore difficult to decipher; a line through an entry meant that a debt was discharged. ⁴⁴ After John Wise’s arrival, he or his brother withdrew both volumes of Friendship in a Nunnery on 11 November 1780 (NRO D3400), but the twenty missing leaves at the start of NRO D10297, which included the Wise ledger account between 20 May 1779 and 8 September 1781, make it impossible to tell whether this withdrawal appeared there or not.

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brother dictated special discretion. Perhaps the most interesting case of such reading, however, lies in Arthur Miller’s borrowing of all four volumes of Peregrine Pickle, for it offers a slight hint of his experience of reading the novel. Miller was probably a local boy. Thomas Clay notes in the bespoke section of NRO D7938 that he had ‘Recd of Mr Miller Ry 6d for Readg Peregrine Pickle vol. first & 2d NB he has Retd the 2d vol. but the first he cant make out therefore must have it next week’ (88v ). I take it that Arthur had trouble understanding the first volume, which he withdrew on 13 May 1780, and was permitted to retain it another week after having paid for reading it, presumably so that he could refer back to it while reading the third volume (containing the history of Lady Vane). He evidently did not need to retain volume ii and took out the fourth volume on 27 May. One of the few instances of a boy’s paying in cash for something other than a borrowed novel is a purchase of Isaac Bickerstaff ’s farce The Padlock ‘with notes’ (which means that it came with musical notation). After John Parker, jun., admitted in 1763, charged this work at a price of 6s on 7 March 1772, he had the cost struck out of his ledger account, with this note: ‘not to be put in ye above Bill he will pay for it himself ’ (NRO ML 691/122). Because this purchase was expensive, his note may indicate a wish to keep within a prescribed budget, and some of the other boys’ cash payments may stem from such a motive. Parker never charged any novels to his school account but of course could have paid in cash for such purchases or borrowings (or postponed cash payment) in day books that have not survived. He did permit a purchase of a Companion to the Fireside in 1773 to stand scrutiny as well as a two-month subscription to the Westminster Magazine in that year, followed by six months of the Sentimental, which suggests that at least in magazine form, he was willing to acknowledge fiction reading to adult monitors. Whether or not boys kept some novel reading secret from parents and other monitors, we might expect that those who consumed narrative in various forms as children would continue to do so as adults. After all, boys who actually purchased novels bought more children’s books and chapbooks than the average, and they might retain the taste for fiction that they had earlier developed and indulged. But the records unfortunately do not often permit following boys’ purchasing after they left the school. Just one Rugby boy who purchased a novel went on to become an adult Clay customer. The three eldest Knightley brothers of Fawsley bought Don Quixote at Rugby in 1754, and much later one

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of them ordered Smollett’s Humphry Clinker and Frances Brooke’s The History of Emily Montague from John Clay in 1772, one year and three years after first publication. I suspect, however, that many boys who developed an interest in fiction at school did maintain that interest later. For instance, though John Parker, jun., did not seem to buy or borrow fiction except in magazine form at Rugby, he obtained novels as well as magazines later (see Ch. 5). And as an adult he showed more interest in drama than he had as a schoolboy, buying three plays by Hannah Cowley. M O R E S C H O O L B OY S R E A D EV E N M O R E N OV E L S : D AV E N T RY D I S S E N T I N G AC A D E M Y The Daventry Dissenting Academy, originally established by Philip Doddridge at Northampton, moved to Daventry in 1752 under Caleb Ashworth. Boys who attended bought magazines, novels, and a few chapbooks from the Clays, but they were older than students at Rugby and bought almost no children’s books. The Daventry records are sporadic, unlike those for Rugby, and the boys fewer. The accidents of manuscript survival mean that the Daventry day books cover about eight years and three months of buying and borrowing by students at the Academy,⁴⁵ largely between 1770–80, instead of more than forty years at Rugby. Thus, only seven of the seventy-eight students admitted to the Academy by Doddridge and Ashworth before 1764 appear in the Clay records, and these seven do not include the most famous among them: the authors Joseph Priestley (entered 1751) and William Enfield (1758). Afterwards, seventy-two of the ninety-six Academy boys (75 per cent) admitted between 1764 and 1780 are represented, often for only a year or so of their residence.⁴⁶ Some 79 boys, then, make purchases in the day books, as compared to the 611 Rugby students in the Clay ledgers. Despite deficiencies in the records, Academy students appear to be impressive customers for prose fiction. Their appetite for novels was proportionally much greater than that of the Rugby boys present in ⁴⁵ In 1758–9, 15 months; 1764–6, 15.5 months; 1770–2 about 18 months; 1773–4, 23 months; 1777, 10.5 months; 1779–80, 17.5 months; total 99.5 months or 8 years, 3.5 months. ⁴⁶ From 1764–74, the Clay records show purchases of forty-three of the sixtytwo boys admitted by Ashworth, and from 1775–80, twenty-nine of the thirty-four boys admitted by Ashworth’s successor, Thomas Robins; for information on Daventry schoolboys, see Thomas Belsham’s ‘A List’ of students admitted to the Daventry Academy under Ashworth and Robins, 1751–80.

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the ledgers—from one perspective, five times as great.⁴⁷ No doubt some of this huge difference occurs because Daventry boys were older than Rugby students when they arrived at school and may therefore have had more leisure and more spending money. But their thirst for fiction was so intense that not even individual buying and borrowing slaked it. With their tutors, they formed a book club sometime before 1765, called the ‘Academical Society’, which bought at least twenty novels among other works in 1765 and between 1771 and 1779 (with gaps); because teachers were members, I have included these purchases among those of Clays’ male customers, not among those of Academy boys. Although purchases of at least six other book clubs can be traced in the Clay records, only one of these clubs rivalled the Academical Society in novel buying: the Lutterworth Society bought twelve novels in less than four years. By contrast, the Daventry Society of Clergymen bought seven novels, the Rugby Society six, the Stanford Club five, and the Kilsby Society and the New Society of Clergymen just two each.⁴⁸ Many of the boys who had access to the Academical Society’s books in Daventry went on to become dissenting clergymen in England and elsewhere, and indeed at least half of those who borrowed or bought novels from the Clays entered the ministry. Young dissenters, at least according to the Clay records, appear to have been more fond of novels than Anglican clergymen and schoolboys, and perhaps older dissenters were also: Lutterworth was a centre of dissent. ⁴⁷ The 611 Rugby boys would have had to acquire 240 novels altogether, not 75, to equal the 79 Academy boys’ 31 purchases. Admittedly, if we compare just the forty novel buyers at Rugby to the eighteen at Daventry, then the disproportion nearly disappears, but the point is that a far higher proportion of Academy boys became purchasers of novels than did so at Rugby. And the Academy students’ interest in borrowing was even higher: only if Rugby boys had borrowed novels 650 times instead of 113 would they have shown dedication equivalent to the Academy students’ borrowing 84 times. Here a disproportion remains, though a lesser one, even if we consider the borrowers alone: 51 Rugby borrowers would have had to make 179 withdrawals, not 113, to equal the 24 Academy students’ 84. Finally, the Rugby boys had forty-one years to obtain prose fiction in the Clay records, the Daventry students only about eight, so that for comparison the Academy boys’ acquisitions should be multiplied by a factor of five. Altogether, a total of thirty-two boys of the seventy-nine obtained prose fiction directly from the Clays, borrowing novels eighty-four times and buying thirty-one. ⁴⁸ The Daventry Society, known from 1758 as the Society of Clergymen, was in existence at least between 1746–80, the New Society of Clergymen 1773–7, the Rugby Society 1758–80, the Stanford Club 1746–8, the Kilsby Society 1758–72, the Lutterworth Society 1776–80, and the Academical Society 1764–80. Gaps in the Clay records mean that only the Stanford Club and the Lutterworth Society are fully covered for the years given.

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The Academical Society’s library means that in all likelihood, the boys’ novel reading is under-represented in the records. Probably all the boys had access to the collection. For example, William Henley, who entered in 1762, took delivery of both the Society’s purchases for 1765: The History of Miss Indiana Danby, ‘By a Lady’, and a volume of Thomas Amory’s The Life of John Buncle. No Daventry boy borrowed these nor any of the eighteen other titles that the Society bought between 1771 and 1779 (these titles are given below). Possibly Henley had suggested that the library acquire the two delivered to him. He bought fiction in his own name for the first time from John Clay also in 1765: John Langhorne’s Letters Between Theodosius and Constantia (1764), a work that was later also purchased by the Academical Society. Appendix 1 confirms that the Clays did not make very many books available for Academy boys to borrow. They withdrew just twenty-two of at least forty-eight titles that circulated in Daventry, though certainly more might have been available. Henry Brooke’s The Fool of Quality was by far the most in request, with twelve borrowers and two purchasers, and respectable showings were made by Peregrine Pickle and Clarissa (six borrowers each), Sir Charles Grandison, Sir William Harrington, and The Arabian Nights Entertainments (five each), although many of these readings were truncated or desultory. The surprising second to Brooke’s novel is the anonymous Light Summer Reading for the Ladies, or the History of Lady Lucy Fenton, withdrawn eight times. Its strange circulation history is considered in Ch. 2 (under Desultory Reading). Although no copy survives, the title confidently prescribes not only readers’ sex but their reading practice as well: they are to consume it as light entertainment in summer evenings. No doubt the short title that appears in the Clay records, Lady Lucy Fenton, appeared also on the spine, but even so, its appeal—as argued in Ch. 3—suggests that Academy boys as well as Rugbeians may have suffered less anxiety over gender boundaries than modern adolescents do. Daventry boys seem to have been reasonably interested in women’s fiction, ultimately more so than Rugbeians. Although individual boys at the Academy bought women’s novels just under 20 per cent of the time (six of thirty-one) and borrowed them less often (11 per cent or nine of eighty-four), a quarter of the twenty novels bought by the Academical Society were written by women (Susannah Minifie’s Barford Abbey, Mme de La Fayette’s Princess of Cleves, the anonymous Indiana Danby, Miss A. Rogers’s History of Miss Temple, and Elizabeth Bonhote’s Rambles of Mr. Frankly). Novels written by men in the Academical Society

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library—apart from Amory’s John Buncle, already mentioned—were the fictionalized biography of Bampfylde Moore Carew (1745), John Langhorne’s Letters between Theodosius and Constantia (1764), Henry Brooke’s Juliet Grenville (1774), Henry Mackenzie’s Julia de Roubign´e (1777), Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Charles Johnstone’s Adventures of a Guinea (1760) and History of Arsaces (1774), Jean Franc¸ois Marmontel’s Tales and The Incas (1777), Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1763), James Rutledge’s Englishman’s Fortnight at Paris (1777), Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas (1759), James Ridley’s Tales of the Genii (1764), and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Sorrows of Werter (1779). At first glance, then, although Rugby boys seem to borrow more women’s fiction—29 per cent or 33 of 113 novels borrowed—in fact they bought less, 18 per cent or 14 of 75 novels purchased over a longer period, and they operated no book club. The 1777 Daventry Militia List offers a final sense of how very substantial the proportion of novel readers was at the Academy. It includes seventeen boys labelled ‘students at the Academy’, all 18 or older (since militia lists included all ‘men … between the ages of eighteen and forty five years’).⁴⁹Of these seventeen, eight—nearly half—bought or borrowed novels in 1777: among them, William Tattersall, who withdrew Tom Jones and Minifies’ The Picture; he bought in addition Mackenzie’s Julia de Roubign´e. Samuel Girle likewise borrowed Tom Jones; Barron French Tom Jones, Lady Lucy Fenton, The Old Maid, and Peregrine Pickle; Robert Slater Humphry Clinker and Lady Lucy Fenton; William Hawkes Tom Jones, three volumes of Peregrine Pickle, The Modern Fine Gentleman, and Morning Ramble; and Thomas Sweet Morning Ramble as well. Sweet also purchased Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, Mackenzie’s Man of the World and Julia de Roubign´e, Lady Dorothea Du Bois’s Theodora, Hawkesworth’s Almoran and Hamet, and two unidentified Newbery books that were delivered ‘per his boy’—a servant, perhaps. Thomas Belsham identifies this eager novel reader only as Thomas Sweet, Esq., which suggests a moneyed background.⁵⁰ In addition to these six boys on the Militia List, Richard Coles bought Sophia Briscoe’s Fine Lady and Joseph Bealey a cheap edition of Clarissa (4s.). Two other boys not on the Militia List, John Taylor and Benjamin Fawcett, borrowed in 1777 Clarissa and Pratt’s The Pupil of Pleasure, respectively. By contrast to these twenty-one novels, just eleven were bought and borrowed at Rugby in 1777, including three withdrawals ⁴⁹ Hatley, Militia Lists, 43, 37.

⁵⁰ Belsham, ‘A List’, 198.

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of Sir Charles Grandison, two purchases of Crusoe, and one of Man of the World. The borrowing does not overlap during the year between the two institutions; possibly Thomas Clay left a set of books in Rugby to lend there, to save hauling them from Daventry when called for. S C H O O L B OY S U B S C R I B E R S TO M AG A Z I N E S Rugby and Daventry boys represent a very small proportion of customers who subscribed to magazines: just thirty-one schoolboys established subscriptions in the Daventry day books compared to 700 adults, one of whom—John Parker, jun.—had also subscribed as a boy (see App. 4). Daventry boys subscribed more, both proportionally and actually, than boys at Rugby school, but both populations did so almost exclusively in the 1770s. All but two subscriptions occurred then. Perhaps because of this restriction to that important decade, all the behaviour visible to some extent among adult subscribers is far more pronounced among schoolboys, particularly the tendencies to maintain brief subscriptions and to change them frequently. More striking is the tendency of boys who subscribe to borrow and buy fiction. While only 10 per cent of adults who subscribe to magazines buy or borrow fiction, some 70 per cent of Academy boys who subscribe do so (fourteen of twenty), in addition to 37.5 per cent of Rugbeian subscribers (twelve of thirty-two). Boys’ great tendency to cancel subscriptions arises partly because they were in residence only during term time; most subscriptions are in force just between August and May. Nevertheless, within such limits boys could and did take several magazines sequentially, as did John Cox at the Daventry Academy: the Macaroni, Scavoir Vivre, and Theatrical Magazine in January and February 1774, the Whimsical in September and October of the same year, the Universal in December, and the Town and Country between October 1774 and the next January. His behaviour echoes that, for example, of an adult subscriber, Mr Jones, a turnpike keeper, who held fourteen different subscriptions between January and November 1770 (see Ch. 5). Like most schoolboy subscribers, John Cox borrowed several novels: Peregrine Pickle in January 1774, Sir William Harrington in February, Lady Lucy Fenton and Humphry Clinker in March, and finally Sir Charles Grandison as well as Visiting Day in the following December. This willingness to borrow (or buy) fiction in some quantity occurred with particular frequency among boys such as Cox who chose magazines that contained substantial selections of

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long prose fiction, according to Mayo’s ‘Register of Periodicals’: the Sentimental, Westminster, Town and Country, Court and City, Covent Garden, Matrimonial, Universal Museum, Universal Magazine, Oxford, and of course the Novelist’s Magazine and even the Lady’s Magazine. For both adult and schoolboy audiences, too, short subscriptions were common. Just eleven of the Academy boys’ forty-four subscriptions can be shown to have been maintained for four months or more. Fifteen were cancelled within three months or less—five within just one month. The Sentimental Magazine suffered two of these immediate cancellations: J. Larkcom in March 1773, the first month of issue, and Edward Johnstone in October of that year. Harry Hunt kept his subscription between March and May 1773. He and Larkcom were not the only boys to subscribe simultaneously to the same magazine. Both Nathaniel Bogle French and John Cooke began subscriptions to the Matrimonial Magazine, or Monthly Anecdotes of Love and Marriage, for The Court, the City, and the Country when it commenced publication in January 1775; by July of that year it had failed, though subscribers were advised within the last issue that for the future it would amalgamate with the Westminster. Generally, however, boys seem to have chosen different titles, perhaps in order to share some of them. The most popular titles at the Academy were the Town and Country with five subscribers, though three ended their subscriptions within three months or less; the Universal with five subscribers; and the Lady’s with three. All were remarkable for fictional content, although in fact nearly all the magazines taken by Academy boys can be so described. The three Academy subscribers to the Lady’s Magazine are perhaps the most interesting and will be considered in Ch. 5, as part of a section on men who read the Lady’s; the three Rugby boys who also acquired the Lady’s will be discussed in more detail there as well. Daventry boys who subscribed to the Lady’s were no more nor less interested in novels than their fellows. In fact, they are reasonably typical of the seventeen other Academy subscribers in their reading. Five of them resembled Lady’s subscriber Edward Johnstone and did not obtain any fiction apart from what they could read in their magazines, two, like John Coles, only bought novels, five just borrowed them, and the remaining five, like T. Withers, bought and borrowed fiction. These proportions—fourteen of twenty, or 70 per cent—are much higher than for adult magazine subscribers. Rugbeians were proportionally much less interested in subscribing to magazines than students at the Academy, but the magazines when obtained seemed to hold their interest rather better. Thirty-two Rugby

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subscribers sampled just seventeen magazines, fewer than the Daventry boys, who averaged about one title apiece, and generally Rugbeians maintained their subscriptions longer than a few months at a time. Purchasing magazines correlated at Rugby most strongly with buying fiction in the form of children’s books or chapbooks: some twenty-five of the thirty-two subscribers acquired about 11 per cent of the 1,401 copies bought overall. Twelve of these subscribers, or 37.5 per cent, also bought or borrowed novels. The most popular magazines among Rugby boys were the Westminster and the Town and Country (seven each), the Wit’s, London, and Gentleman’s (five each), and finally the Lady’s (three). Between them, the two most popular, the Westminster and the Town and Country, comprise among their thirteen subscribers (Robert Cumyns took both) all the boys who bought and borrowed most novels in the 1770s. These include William Boultbee Sleath, Richard Lickorish, Matthew Wise, Egerton Stafford, the Legge brothers, and William Smith, as well as Cumyns. Subscribers to the other magazines tended to be less devoted to fiction—even those three that took the Lady’s Magazine (see Ch. 5). Rugby boys’ willingness to cross gender lines in order to acquire more than children’s books, that is, in order to buy more ‘adult’ works whose titles suggest a female audience, from ladies’ pocket books to novels by women and the Lady’s Magazine, reinforces the conclusion that I have reached from several angles: we must query our assumptions about gendered reading in the eighteenth century, at least for provincial audiences. Chapter 1 argued, for instance, that provincial men consumed more fiction, including those novels that we now label domestic or sentimental and that we assign to female readers, than women did. Unfortunately, the Clay records cannot be used to investigate whether boys who bought fiction in various forms at Rugby School or the Daventry Dissenting Academy continued to do so as adults: except for the two I mentioned earlier, they were not usually Clay customers later on. I expect that many boys, like John Parker, jun., who subscribed to magazines at school would continue to subscribe as adults, and some would, like him, further develop an interest in fiction, even as he did in works labelled sentimental, such as The Man of Feeling. But if men read novels, especially novels by women and centred on women, they had to combat powerful cultural arguments against such reading as trivial and unmanly. If I am right to argue, at the end of Ch. 1, that anti-novel discourse helped to keep men’s reading of fiction invisible, then that

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discourse would allow men such as Parker to engage in somewhat transgressive, cross-gender reading, without seeming to do so, and without surrendering their privileged positions as elite male readers. It may be, too, that the harsh world of schoolboys, anticipating that of adult men, created and ultimately sustained elite male interest in works associated with the feminine. And some schoolboys may have avoided adult scrutiny of their novel-reading by paying in cash, thus making clear their identification of such reading as somehow suspect—and at the same time making such reading invisible to parents or other moral guardians.

5 Audiences for Magazines and Serialized Publications Magazine subscriptions can tell us something valuable about eighteenth-century provincial audiences that records of buying or borrowing novels, children’s books, or other fictional forms simply cannot. Only subscription records can measure sustained interest in a form. A purchase or borrowing of a novel tells us little about commitment to novelreading; even several purchases are not very informative unless they occur quickly. Magazine subscriptions that last for a few years or even longer, however, suggest that a subscriber is satisfied during that time with the purchase, and most magazines incorporated fiction, in serial form or otherwise. Short subscriptions of a few months or less can suggest dissatisfaction, a taste for variety, or even (as in the case of schoolboys) a temporary residence in the area. But magazine subscription records offer other important information about provincial consumers for prose fiction. First, magazines were fairly cheap and therefore accessible to a reasonably broad cross-section of the community. Accounts of who was subscribing can thus embrace a very mixed audience, from the gentry and aristocracy to artisans, apprentices, shop assistants, and the occasional servant or even labourer. Most issues cost sixpence between 1746 and 1780, with exceptions among review journals such as the Monthly and the Critical, charged at 1s. A year’s subscription usually came to 6s. 6d. (since most magazines produced a supplemental issue in January to round out the year); a two-volume novel cost nearly as much between 1740 and 1780. Subscriptions were printed bargains containing at least fifty-six closely printed pages per month in the 1760s and 1770s (and more later), material generally cribbed from newspapers and other printed sources. Second, subscription histories help to illustrate the workings of the market: as magazines increased, audiences expanded too—but how and where? Appendix 4 lists the 87 periodicals that Clay customers

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took, in almost 1,300 subscriptions; unfortunately, Stevens recorded magazine subscriptions in a ledger no longer extant but mentioned in one account.¹ Was the expansion in the Clay audience driven by the increasing supply of magazines or by greater consumer demand, or both? Subscription records can address these questions by showing how successfully any publication maintained the interest of customers over time. The existence of longstanding, loyal subscribers might sustain a periodical, but so might its success in attracting enough new subscribers to exceed or balance those who cancelled. Finally, late eighteenth-century periodical subscriptions offer some measure of the attraction of prose fiction to audiences, though an imperfect one. Many magazines of this period, as Robert B. Mayo showed long ago, almost became fictional forms: they incorporated large quantities of prose fiction. Mayo argued, in fact, that eighteenth-century readers obtained much of their fiction from magazines rather than from novels, and the Clay records strongly support him.² The records do not, however, support more recent arguments for what Clifford Siskin has called a ‘two-tier market’ for fiction, ‘one in which the popularity of one product supports rather than cannibalizes the sales of the other’.³ Although schoolboys may have behaved in this way, as argued in the previous chapter, among the Clays’ adult provincial customers, only about 10 per cent of those who acquired prose fiction in magazines also bought or borrowed novels—and the evidence suggests that they did so less and less often over time. Subscribers to serialized publications, on the other hand, most of which were not fictional, actually purchased and borrowed somewhat more fiction proportionally than did customers for magazines. These three topics, especially the absence of a ‘two-tier market’ through 1780, will be considered later in this chapter. After all, the existence of such a market appeals to common sense: surely those who buy fiction in one form are likely to buy in another, especially if both forms are increasing in circulation. But my purpose in this project is, in part, to remind us that we have to be wary of reading back into ¹ GRO B/399. ² Robert D. Mayo, The English Novel in the Magazines, 1740–1815, with a Catalogue of 1375 Magazine Novels and Novelettes (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1962), 1–2. This chapter would have been impossible to write without Mayo’s impressive and indispensable scholarship. Edward W. Pitcher has usefully added to Mayo’s work: see Bibliography. ³ Clifford Siskin, The Work of Writing: Literature and Social Change in Britain, 1700–1830 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 168.

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earlier periods our own assumptions and expectations about how people behave. Common sense is a no more safe guide to historical understanding of any period than is uncritical acceptance of statements made by contemporaries during that period, statements that may serve various interested motives, particular agendas. But equally important to my project is what subscription histories can tell us about intersection between the tastes of male and female readers, and I will address this issue first. While some magazines attempted to appeal to readers in various niche markets (with such titles as the Builder’s, the Farmer’s, the Medical), others embraced narrative and targeted larger groups of readers (the Town and Country, the Universal), as well as gender (Every Man’s, the Lady’s). If it is true, as I have argued, that schoolboys as well as adult audiences for fiction were willing to cross gender boundaries in their purchasing, presumably also in their reading, then adult magazine subscribers should do so as well. And indeed, eight women subscribed to the Gentleman’s Magazine (see App. 4). Works coded male or masculine usually have higher status than those coded female or else are deemed somehow universal. Thus for women to cross sex and gender boundaries in order to obtain such reading matter does not surprise us. We do not seek to explain their behaviour. We tend, however, to discount or disbelieve that men really interest themselves in reading print that is coded female or feminine. We look for alternative explanations if we see evidence of crossover: they are really ordering the material for wives or daughters or mothers, for instance, or the work itself has certain strong male or masculine content whatever its overall coding. These gendered assumptions about entertainment remain compelling now, even in the academy. Despite decades of theory emphasizing the constructedness of gender, we seem unwilling to accept that earlier periods might have been more flexible in their gender constructions than we are, less rigid in policing them. This reluctance is certain to be aggravated in this study of magazine audiences by the nature of the evidence. Booksellers’ records showing men’s buying of magazines coded female are inevitably less persuasive about the likelihood of their reading these works than are schoolboys’ recorded purchases of children’s books. And although schoolboys are the only male audience routinely isolated from family and especially from female relatives, so that it is easier to believe that what they buy they actually intend to read themselves, even their purchases of Goody Two-Shoes might be explained as purchases for sisters at home, as a scholarly audience mentioned in the Introduction

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tried to do. I will therefore begin this study of periodical subscribers with the one adult male Clay customer whose buying and reading and even enjoyment of the Lady’s Magazine can actually be documented: William Gough, employed at the Globe, most likely an inn or perhaps a large farm at Dodford, a few miles from Daventry.

M E N W H O R E A D T H E L A DY ’ S M AG A Z I N E Gough’s reading of the Lady’s can be addressed because, like most eighteenth-century magazines, it had a policy of printing readers’ (unpaid) submissions. Although often these submissions were anonymous, appearing under assumed names such as Clarinda or Lycidas, a number of men and a few women allowed their names to be affixed to their works. Gough was one. His contributions were poetic rebuses and answers. Rebuses offered poetical clues to the letters of a word or words, while the answer identified, usually in verse, the word(s). Gough may have shared his subscription to the Lady’s Magazine with a Mr Hewitt also located at ‘ye Globe’, possibly an innkeeper or one of several Hewitts who were husbandmen in Dodford according to the Northamptonshire militia lists of 1777.⁴ Hewitt subscribed to the Lady’s Magazine published by John Wheble in his own name sometime before July 1771, and maintained the subscription at least through January 1772.⁵ At this time, Gough had already begun publishing enigmas in the magazine. He was 32 years old, born in Southam, Warwickshire ⁴ Hatley, Militia Lists, 45. Hewitt is identified in the Clay subscription records for 1771 as ‘Hewitt at ye Globe’. The Globe at Dodford can be documented as both an inn and a farm. Wheble’s Lady’s Magazine for June 1772, 278, glosses a mention of the Globe in one of Gough’s poetical enigmas as ‘A large inn on the Chester road near Daventry, Northamptonshire’, and the 1777 Dodford Militia List describes Thomas Clewlon as ‘hostler at the Globe’ (45). I was unaware that there was a Globe Farm in Dodford large enough to be indicated on early nineteenth-century maps—A. Bryant’s Map of the County of Northampton, from Actual Survey in the Years 1824, 1925, & 1826, repr. Northampton: Northamptonshire Leisure and Libraries, 1988—when in 1986 I classified Gough as an employee at the inn. I supposed him a tapster since Gough wrote a lengthy poetical enigma on the word ‘tapster’ for the September 1771 issue (Wheble’s, 138), solved by ‘Clarinda’ in November (234), and I further speculated that Hewitt may have been his employer: Fergus, ‘Women, Class’, 48. Bryant’s map puts the Globe Inn in what looks like the next parish, Weedon Bec, however, even though Hatley’s Militia Lists clearly considers the hostler as a Dodford resident. All that can safely be said is that many Hewitts were farmers and Mr Hewitt was probably one. ⁵ Although I have generally conflated them in the tables and in my analysis, there were two Lady’s Magazines between April 1771 and December 1772. One was printed

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as one of his rebuses and its solution indicate.⁶ His wife of more than four years was Mary Freeman of Weedon Bec, an adjoining parish. She was 22, literate, and pregnant with what seems to have been their only child. By the time the Clay records resume in 1773, Gough had replaced Hewitt as the subscriber and had no choice but to substitute for Wheble’s magazine (which had ceased publication) the version of the Lady’s published by George Robinson and John Roberts. Gough remained a subscriber until the end of 1777, when the records are interrupted. At that time a William Gough appears in the Militia List as a ‘labourer’ in Weedon Bec—doubtless the same man since all male inhabitants in each parish who, like Gough, were between the ages of 18 and 45 had to be listed.⁷ As a family man and labourer or even employee at the Globe at Dodford, Gough’s ability to sustain a magazine subscription is remarkable. He died in March 1779; by that time, just when the records resume, Hewitt had taken up the subscription again.⁸ In September 1771, William Gough’s first work was published in Wheble’s magazine, an enigma and an answer to another reader’s enigma. In the next fifteen months, he published at least five more enigmas, four answers, the poetic rebus on his birthplace, and another poetic rebus in praise of Wheble’s magazine. In 1773, after Wheble had stopped publishing, Gough’s poetical enigmas appeared in Robinson and Roberts’s Lady’s Magazine. He there identified ‘thimble’ as the solution to W. Hurn’s enigma, addressing his own 12-line poetic answer to Hurn’s riddle in a poem to ‘Polly F∗∗∗∗∗ n’. ⁹ Gough probably sent in a modified earlier courtship poem to his wife (Polly was a by Wheble, the original publisher, the other by Robinson and Roberts in partnership; the partners had been sold the rights to the magazine by its originator, John Coote, in April 1771. Robinson and Roberts sued Wheble to stop publication, and won, but Wheble continued to publish none the less, printing an indignant account of and attack on the decision in his July 1771 issue: Wheble’s Lady’s Magazine 2 (1771), 41–52. The Birmingham Central Library contains a complete run of Wheble’s edition. Wheble’s was generally the more popular of the two among the Clay customers while both were in circulation. ⁶ Wheble’s Lady’s 3 (1772), 277, [3]34. In vol. 3 of Wheble’s Lady’s Magazine, the July issue is misnumbered throughout. Gough was baptized on 30 September 1739; see ‘Women, Class’, 48–50. ⁷ Hatley, Militia Lists, 51; William Goffe, a farmer at King’s Sutton, a parish some twenty miles south of Daventry that the Clays did not serve, is also listed (121). The surname was unusual. The only other listed is John Gaufe of Slapton, about twelve miles south-east of Daventry—yet another parish that the Clays did not serve as it was almost adjacent to Towcester where another bookseller was located (57). ⁸ See NRO parish registers for Dodford (106p/1–4) and Weedon (344p/3). ⁹ For Hurn’s enigma and Gough’s answer, see Lady’s (1773), 215, 273.

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common nickname for Mary in this period): he begs her ‘to your swain be kind,|And condescend to be my bride,|The argent Thimble lay aside’, but they had been married for five years at the time of publication. Gough’s earlier work for Wheble is more interesting, however, for his friends submitted answers to his enigmas, and exchanges developed that suggest a sense of community among the audience, in which distinctions between writers and readers tended to disappear. Most notably, William Gough’s declaration of his delight in the Lady’s occurs in lengthy poetical form in the issue for October 1772: each successive letter of the title, ‘Whebles Ladies Magazine’, is the subject of a one- or two-line rebus. The first line, for example, ‘A Grain well known all England round’, refers to wheat and supplies the first letter, ‘W’. Gough concluded with four remarkable lines that must have applied to some other male readers of the magazine: Join these initials, and with ease, You’ll find what doth my fancy please. Altho’, ye wits, I must declare, ’Tis chiefly to amuse the fair.¹⁰

These lines perform a good deal of work in gendering pleasures and ultimately create for the speaker a liminal position between female and male readers, between masculine and feminine amusements. The male speaker first feminizes himself and his pleasures by setting himself as a reader in contrast to ‘ye wits’, gendered male in opposition to the ‘fair’—yet of course these men whom he addresses are reading the magazine as well, just as he is. ‘Chiefly’ in the last line implies that the magazine accommodates men’s pleasures too, even if women’s are paramount. And after all, most of Gough’s poetical exchanges seem to be with other men. An ‘R.F.’ of Daventry answered one of Gough’s enigmas, for instance, in terms that suggest male comradeship, especially the phrase ‘my friend Gough’: ‘When I read your aenigma,|I laugh’d at the joke,|To think my friend Gough|Had meant nought but a yoke.’¹¹ Thus Gough’s speaker is aligned with male readers or wits on one side and yet shares pleasures and amusements with female ones. This alignment with ‘the fair’ is accompanied by some anxiety, as ‘Altho’ and ‘I must declare’ imply. Yet what allows the speaker to address fellow male ‘wits’ on one side and the fair on the other is his ‘fancy’, ¹⁰ Wheble’s Lady’s Magazine 3 (1772), 432.

¹¹ Ibid. 576.

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a significant choice. His reading pleases neither his intelligence nor his taste but his imagination. His desires, his pleasures, in other words, allow him to position himself between the wits and the fair; his fancies, desires, and pleasures range between and among the gendered binary positions that his culture creates, towards what have been called by Alexander Doty and others ‘queer’ positions. That is, Gough adopts ‘reception positions that can be considered ‘‘queer’’ regardless of declared sex and gender alliances’.¹² Gough’s pleasures thus do not respect culturally imposed categories, but that lack of respect seems to go unpunished by culture, not just for readers like himself but for schoolboy buyers of Goody Two-Shoes as well. They too seem free to allow their fancies to range among gendered positions. Altogether, William Gough’s rebus works both to deprecate and yet also to uphold adult male delight in the Lady’s Magazine. His exchanges with apparently male writers such as R.F. and Hurn (who addresses his own enigma to ‘ye charming British fair’ as their ‘humble servant’¹³) suggest, again, that Gough was not the sole male among Clay customers who enjoyed the magazine. Certainly Jean Hunter, analysing contributors for four years in the 1770s, found that about 40 per cent of those submitters and contributors who could be identified by sex were male.¹⁴ And I have been able to identify only three contributors other than Gough to the Lady’s in the 1770s, all male: a schoolboy son of Henry Bromfield, who was a clergyman and schoolmaster in Dunchurch; William Jones, schoolmaster of Heyford; and Benjamin West, schoolmaster at Weedon Bec and very minor poet. West published a slim volume of Miscellaneous Poems in 1780; Thomas Clay took names of customers who wished to subscribe.¹⁵ Gough, West, and ¹² Alexander M. Doty, Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. xi. ¹³ Lady’s 4 (1773), 215. ¹⁴ Jean Hunter, ‘The Lady’s Magazine and the Study of Englishwomen in the Eighteenth Century’, in Donovan H. Bond and W. Reynolds (eds.), Newsletters to Newspapers: Eighteenth-Century Journalism (Morgantown: School of Journalism, West Virginia University, 1977), 109. ¹⁵ A fascinating sidelight on West and on provincial and plebeian attraction and access to publication (not to mention poetry) is provided by two pamphlets, Bodleian shelf mark 2799e416, in which William Billington, a stonecutter of Crick, attacks Benjamin West, whom Billington calls in his text a ‘tutor’ (16). See William Billington, Criticus Unmask’d; or, the poet turn’d grinder: a parody … (Northampton: T. Dicey & Co., 1786) and Benjamin West, The Pedantic Hypocrite Exposed … (Northampton, T. Dicey & Co., 1786).

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Jones¹⁶ actually saw their works in print within the Lady’s, not simply acknowledged in the ‘Observations on our Correspondents’ or ‘To our Correspondents’ columns. Neither Jones nor West was ever a subscriber to the Lady’s through the Clays, although Jones took three other publications for short periods: see the later discussion of his purchases among the case studies of Novelist’s Magazine customers. Like many readers, he must have had access to someone else’s copies. All these would-be and actual male contributors to the magazine are of somewhat low status—children, masters of small schools in country towns, curates, a labourer. Their subordinate positions may have afforded them some sense of identification with women, as even more subordinate, and may thus have prompted them to submit their works. Or they may have felt a sense of superiority that equally encouraged their contributions. In any case, the Lady’s welcomed submissions, including enigmas and rebuses, more readily than any other contemporary magazine and seems to have printed them more often. Almost the only criticisms directed at readers’ submissions to the Lady’s concerned the presence of sentiments inappropriate or unflattering to women. Indeed, the editor explicitly states, ‘though we acknowledge the reception of many a piece, we are too delicate to say, ‘‘they are unworthy of publication’’ ’ (Lady’s (1781), 114), a delicacy not observed by the editor of the Town and Country, who did not scruple to call ‘W’s Poem on Writing … indeed a very trifling Essay on the Subject’, or to comment that ‘J. L. of Watford assures us his Epitaph, is an Original; we sincerely believe it, and that it never will be copied’.¹⁷ The soothing and flattering tone of the Lady’s must have encouraged amateur writers, for the editor constantly apologizes for having no space to include all the ‘favours’ received. Though the schoolmasters West and Jones who contributed to the Lady’s never subscribed in the extant Clay records, other schoolmasters comprise an interesting small subset of male subscribers. The Revd Henry Bromfield of Dunchurch subscribed in 1774 only, and it was in that year that his son attempted to publish. In August 1774, the magazine acknowledged receipt of ‘a Logogryphe by Mess. T. Mather ¹⁶ See Robinson and Roberts’s version, November 1772, 538, for two rebuses by William Jones. Subsequent contributions (April 1774 and May 1779) were merely acknowledged. ¹⁷ Town and Country Magazine, or Universal Repository of Knowledge, Instruction, and Entertainment 3 (1771), 226.

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and T. Bromfield, two youths at Dunchurch-School, Warwickshire’.¹⁸ Thomas Bromfield was then about 6 years old; he was born in 1768 and entered Rugby school five years after this attempt at publication, in 1779.¹⁹ Perhaps the other schoolmasters who briefly took the Lady’s also shared it with scholars or bought it for them: Mr Shelton, William Mitchell of Hilmorton, and John Warren, the Daventry schoolmaster. Certainly schoolmasters who subscribed to the Lady’s at any point tended to take more than the usual number of magazines over the years, though seldom more than one at a time: Warren subscribed to eleven including the Lady’s, Mitchell to eight, Shelton six, and Bromfield three. Generally, subscribers took one magazine, and not for long either—often for less than the full year that Bromfield had the Lady’s. But a solid majority of all the twenty schoolmasters whom I have been able to identify as subscribers took three or more periodicals (12 of 20), whereas generally less than 20 per cent of customers in general did so (144 of 730, including schoolboys). Warren and Mitchell, in fact, are two of only seven Clay customers altogether who subscribed at various times to eight or more, and it may be that their profession in some way accounts for their trying so many magazines, among them the Lady’s (Warren for about four years; Mitchell for seven months, but he resubscribed just before a two-year gap in the records; Shelton for at least sixteen months before a year’s gap). So far, I have been implying that subscribers and readers were identical, and that men who subscribed to or read magazines might be distinguished from women. Obviously, no such easy identification or separation is possible. No doubt Mary Freeman Gough read her husband’s copies of the Lady’s, for instance. Many readers could share one subscription, and some others besides Gough and Hewitt certainly did. At one point, two clergymen who were brothers shared a subscription with an unnamed third to the Monthly Review, and in at least four instances, women living in the same or adjoining parishes transferred from one to another a subscription to the Lady’s Magazine. The schoolmaster-poet Benjamin West probably had access in 1771 to the ¹⁸ Lady’s 5 (1774), 394. ¹⁹ In Wheble’s magazine, vol. 3 (1772), the ‘Observations on our Correspondents’ column mentions ‘The prose AEnigma of Tom Bromfield we unavoidably defaced when we broke the seal of his letter; and for this reason we cannot thoroughly decypher it’ (522). It is difficult but not impossible to believe that this was a work of the same boy, who would have been about 4 years old at this time.

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subscription of the vicar of Weedon Bec, Samuel Jemson, and in fact a notation indicates that one of Jemson’s copies was picked up by ‘Mrs. West’s man’, perhaps West’s mother’s or wife’s servant. Such instances certainly do not exhaust the possibilities for shared readership. All members of a household receiving a magazine, including servants, could have read it, not to mention friends, neighbours, and relatives. With these qualifications, we can look at some of those male subscribers to the Lady’s who can be identified. Particularly interesting are schoolboys who boarded at school and probably were subscribing for themselves. Three boys at Rugby bought copies of the Lady’s. Abraham Spooner or his brother ordered the Lady’s in April 1784 (and may have continued the subscription; the record ends there); these boys obtained no other print from the Clays except school texts. Abraham Spooner was about 14 and was the older boy who several years later advised John Plomer Clarke to fight back when struck by other boys, and who (along with his brothers) found Rugby so wicked that he would not send his own sons. At least one of the four Vaughan brothers, sons of a physician and aged from about 9 to 16, ordered the Lady’s in January 1781, noting that the sum would be paid in cash. Evidently the Vaughan buyer did not wish this purchase to be entered on the ledger accounts, whereas all four Vaughans were willing to allow purchases of nine children’s books and five other works to appear there. Finally, William and Christopher Smith, sons of an attorney in Northampton, took three magazines, the London, the Gentleman’s, and the Lady’s, at various times in the 1780s. William Smith, who entered Rugby in 1778, was the only boy who did not pay in cash for his reading of Ann Skinn’s The Old Maid; in addition, he charged his borrowing of Peregrine Pickle and his purchases of Don Quixote, Joseph Andrews, and Telemachus. All this consumption of fiction occurred before his brother entered the school in 1780. Boys at the Daventry Dissenting Academy tended to sample the Lady’s as the Smiths at Rugby did: it was one of a number of magazines they tried rather than a sole choice. Academy boys were generally older than Rugbeians and perhaps had more money to spend on magazines. John Coles, who was 18 by November 1777 according to the Militia List, was a subscriber when the records begin in January 1777, but cancelled in March. His subscription to the Magazin a` la mode, d´edi´e aux dames, begun with its first publication in January 1777, lasted until

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May.²⁰ When Coles returned in August, he subscribed to the Town and Country for at least four months, until the records end. Edward Johnstone, who became a physician, was similarly hard to please. He took the Town and Country for September 1773, the Sentimental for October, then the Lady’s between the following December and February; he finally began the Gentleman’s just when the records end in January 1775. T. Withers’s subscription to the Lady’s lasted for at least six months, from August 1774, until January 1775, and he added the Universal in January. (Johnstone and Withers had evidently left the school by 1777.) Certainly one other young man in Daventry also subscribed: David Prowett, the son of an innkeeper and himself a servant in Daventry, aged at least 18 by November 1777.²¹ He took the Magazin a` la mode, d´edi´e aux dames for two months in 1777 and then switched to the Lady’s in March. He apparently maintained this subscription beyond when the records end in 1780. Prowett lasted much longer as a subscriber than did the Daventry and Rugby schoolboys as well as the only other servants (two other men who took different magazines); short subscriptions were the rule for most Clay subscribers, not just for schoolboys. Prowett’s case is remarkable. As mentioned in the Introduction, his father, a Daventry innkeeper, bought three Latin textbooks for his son, perhaps with a view to sending him to school—like Clarke, the innkeeper at Daventry who sent his two sons to Rugby (see Ch. 3). David Prowett the elder took at least three years to pay for the Latin texts, if he ever did. By 1773, the younger David Prowett was employed by Mr Jeffcutt, a grocer, and had, like his father, obtained a book that he had not paid for: Cheats of London Exposed (price 1s.). When young David next appears in the Clay records, in 1777, the Militia List calls him a servant, probably to the draper William Hickman. In addition to the Lady’s, young Prowett—unlike William Gough—ordered a farce, a good deal of poetry, and a jest book. His interest in the poetry of James Thomson, Edward Young, and (perhaps) Jonathan Swift as published in John Bell’s British Poets series shows a desire to obtain literature that had achieved ‘classic’ status, along with more ephemeral works as printed in ²⁰ Hatley, Militia Lists, 43. According to Mayo, this magazine was published in Dublin from May 1777 to April 1778, but at least five other customers subscribed like Coles from January 1777. ²¹ Hatley, Militia Lists, 38.

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the Lady’s Magazine. His purchases and those of his father remind us again that Roger Chartier is right to observe that ‘To a greater extent than has been thought, widely distributed texts and books crossed social boundaries and drew readers from very different social and economic levels.’²² Apart from Prowett and William Gough, a servant and probably a labourer, I have not been able to single out any adult male subscribers to the Lady’s who can safely be identified as readers. And evidence even for Prowett’s reading is circumstantial, however persuasive: as a servant he was single, not living with female relatives at the time of his subscription, and presumably with little disposable income to squander monthly on print that he did not read. The remaining fifty-six adult men who were subscribers (including Hewitt) may or may not have read the magazine. I can, however, identify about half of them by class position, in addition to about half the fifty-eight women subscribers (by determining the class of their fathers, husbands, or even brothers). Thus, the ‘professional class’ noted in Table 5.1 includes the wives and daughters of members of the professions—clergymen, doctors, lawyers, and officers. Three of the male subscribers to the Lady’s were gentlemen, four (counting Hewitt) farmers, ten tradesmen, three turnpike-keepers, eleven (including Jemson and the four schoolmasters) professional men—primarily clergymen and even one lawyer’s clerk. The keepers included a Mr Jones who attended the turnpike at Hilmorton and subscribed to more magazines than any other customer except Henry Pepperell, a clergyman. The other keepers, Mr Goodman and Mr Walker, were employed at the West Haddon turnpike. William Gough was not the sole labouring subscriber, any more than Prowett was the sole servant.²³ John Line, a labourer in Drayton (a hamlet next to Daventry) who had three children in 1777,²⁴ took the Westminster Magazine for a period that cannot be determined before he cancelled it in March 1779, when the last surviving Daventry day book begins. ²² ‘General Introduction: Print Culture’, in Roger Chartier (ed.), The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, transl. Lydia G. Cochrane (Oxford: Polity, 1989), 4. ²³ Joseph Denman, Mrs Dennett’s servant, subscribed to the Court and City Magazine as soon as it was issued in 1770, but for just one month; five months later, he subscribed again, for two months this time. He made no other purchases. Mr Armstead’s servant began to take the Royal Magazine at the end of the 1759 day book; we do not hear of him again until 1770, when he subscribed for three months to the London Magazine, and (like Joseph Denman) took the first issue of the Court and City. ²⁴ Hatley, Militia Lists, 44.

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Table 5.1. Class and gender of magazine subscribers (women in parentheses) Decade in which first subscription begins Adult subscribers Subscribers identified by class Gentry Professionals Trades Farmers Turnpike keepers Servants Labourers (Schoolboys

1740s

1750s

1760s

1770s∗

Totals

47 (2) 17 (1)

103 (4) 38

124 (9) 45 (7)

426 (83) 168 (50)

700 (98) 268 (58)

8 (4) 24 (3) 9 4 1

16 (5) 79 (22) 49 (14) 16 (9) 3 2 2 29

32 (26) 141 (14) 64 (64) 22 (9) 4 3 2† 31)‡

2 13 (1) 2

6 25 4 2 1 1

1

∗

Includes all subscribers who began subscriptions in 1780. William Gough, contributor to the Lady’s Magazine, is counted as a labourer. ‡ A clergyman, John Parker, jun., subscribed both while at Rugby School and as an adult; he is included among schoolboys here and among professional adult subscribers as well. †

That farmers and tradesmen altogether surpass professional men as subscribers to the Lady’s is perhaps the most surprising result of this analysis, for as a rule professional men outnumber every other class of customer for print. Altogether, three farmers’ daughters and four farmers’ wives took the Lady’s, and in addition the farmers Hewitt, Samuel Boddington of Whilton, an overseer of the poor in 1777 according to the Militia List, and William or Thomas Pittom of Barby. It is possible that all these men were subscribing for wives or daughters or even sisters: Mr Pittom’s sister picked up his copy of the magazine at least once. The fourth farmer, a Mr Cowley of Kilsby (John senior, John, or Moses) who subscribed at some point before March 1773, and cancelled in May of that year, was almost certainly taking it for Mrs Cowley, for she was listed as the subscriber in April.

C O N C E A L E D WO M E N S U B S C R I B E R S Mrs Cowley is one of a number of what I have called ‘concealed’ women subscribers whose presence complicates any study of male and female audiences for magazines. These women’s subscriptions were recorded under someone else’s name, typically a husband’s or father’s. In one case, Dr Knowler, a clergyman, took the London Magazine for at least twenty-eight years until his death in 1774, at which time his wife

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assumed the subscription for another three and a half years. This case seems fairly easy to interpret; presumably, both husband and wife were reading the London Magazine. It is less easy to draw conclusions in the case of William Deacon, a surgeon in Daventry, who subscribed to the first issue of the Lady’s Magazine (dated August 1770). He was replaced as the subscriber by his wife Catherine for four months beginning in the following December. When the records resume after a three-month gap, however, Deacon was again the recorded subscriber and remained so for the life of the subscription, another six years. Both were still living when the subscription was cancelled. Thus, only because the records are fairly complete for this decade do we have any indication that Catherine Deacon ever was a subscriber—for a total of four months out of more than seven years. Altogether, about a quarter of all women subscribers at Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth were concealed at some point between 1764 and 1780 (twenty four of ninety-eight).²⁵ Most of them, like Catherine Deacon, were married women, but six were single women whose brothers or fathers were originally and primarily listed as subscribers. If more Clay records survived, no doubt further instances of concealed subscription would emerge. The causes and consequences of the phenomenon of concealed subscription have important implications for studies of magazine customers. For example, over half of the ninety-eight women who subscribed altogether to magazines were single (a total of fifty-two), and a significant segment were widowed, leaving a rather small group of married women as subscribers. Married women’s position as legally one with their spouses, so that their husbands would be likely to act for them in transactions, must have contributed in some degree to the phenomenon of concealed subscription. Susan Staves’s definitive study of married women’s property argues that ‘deeper patriarchal structures’ concerning the control of women and their property were ‘reimposed’ in the last half of the eighteenth century, so that women’s function was ‘to transmit wealth from one generation of men to the next generation of men’.²⁶ ²⁵ Much of this paragraph has been published earlier; discrepancies between the figures given here and the earlier one (27 of 110 in ‘Women, Class’, p. 44, published in 1986, and 28 of 111 in ‘Women Readers’ in Jones, Women and Literature, published in 2000, p. 159) derive from my choice to include the widest group of women subscribers in those studies. I therefore counted women who subscribed to magazines through the Warwick shop, extant only in 1770–2. ²⁶ Susan Staves, Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660–1833 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 4.

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No doubt the conventions of the Clay ledgers embody these deeper patriarchal structures as thoroughly as did interpretations of property law in the period. But if these conditions or the small disposable income available to many women sufficed to explain concealed subscription, then women who bought and borrowed books would be about as rare as those who subscribed to magazines, and most of them would be single—but such is not the case. Between September 1746 and March 1748, for example, while women constituted only 4.5 per cent of John Clay’s subscribers to magazines, they composed about 10 per cent of his buyers of print (28 of approximately 270) and 14 per cent of the fiction purchasers (3 of 21). In addition, less than a third of the women who obtained print at this period were single, eight of twenty-eight women, as opposed to more than half the total numbers of women who subscribed to magazines. Some further explanation for the small proportion of married women who subscribed to magazines must exist, and more important, the likelihood that many married men were subscribing for their wives must be remembered. For the present, however, we can assume that married women’s interest in magazines is under-represented in the records—and married men’s overstated. M AG A Z I N E S U B S C R I B E R S A N D T H E M A R K E T How representative the records are overall for a study of magazine subscribers in relation to the market is an even more vexed question, one that really cannot be answered. The Clays stocked a variety of printed material and seem to have been willing and readily able to procure at customers’ requests even obscure publications from London; their provincial customers had access to what the market offered. That is, their choices were not limited by the Clays’ marketing practices. That a majority of the Clays’ 700 adult magazine subscribers bought no other print at all from them suggests that they made subscribing at the very least convenient for most customers. To study adult magazine subscribers, I have investigated only the subscriptions recorded within the ten years of Daventry day books— covering fifty months before 1770 and seventy-three months during and after that year—for a number of reasons. Some magazine subscriptions are entered in other day books, including those for Rugby after 1780 and for the Warwick shop between 1770 and 1772, but these entries are very irregular. I therefore have used the Rugby records only to analyse

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schoolboys’ magazine subscriptions in Ch. 4; I entirely exclude the anomalous Warwick day book here in part because that shop competed with two established bookstores: many Warwick customers are likely to have subscribed through the rival stores. By contrast, the shops in Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth lasted for decades and had no competitors between 1746 and 1780. True, for the three decades before 1770, no records at all survive for Lutterworth, and those for Rugby include only the eighteen-month period just before 1770. But these omissions are less serious for a study of readership of magazines than they are for a study of any other part of the audience because monthly lists of all magazine subscribers, including those served by the Rugby and Lutterworth shops, are regularly maintained throughout the better-preserved Daventry records. As a result, we have at least a glimpse into the growth of magazine readership within this provincial area between the mid-1740s and the mid-1760s (1746–8, 1758–9, and 1764–6), along with a rather concentrated view of developments in the seventies, a decade especially important for magazines. And the numbers involved are not small. The 700 adult subscribers took a total of 87 different periodicals over this time, obtaining nearly 1,300 subscriptions altogether (see App. 4). Numbers of both Clay subscribers and magazines on offer grew in the second half of the eighteenth century. But this bald statement obscures the complexities of the process. Was the expansion driven by the market, by proliferating magazines, or by customers’ desires, already extant and finally tapped? That is, did increased numbers of magazines create or produce new audiences, or were the audiences just waiting to be appropriated? Some recent work in literary history and theory has argued that, before the 1790s, audiences for periodicals constituted a kind of ‘society of the text’, to use Jon P. Klancher’s term.²⁷ Such audiences, though not homogeneous, conceived of themselves as both readers and writers of the periodicals to which they subscribed. This conception has basis in fact, as Mayo has argued and as William Gough’s written exchanges with other readers of the Lady’s demonstrate.²⁸ Traditionally, English essayperiodicals and magazines from the Spectator to the Lady’s Magazine invited and printed readers’ submissions; readers could and did become writers, though unpaid. As a result, the eighteenth-century periodical ²⁷ Jon P. Klancher, The Making of English Reading Audiences, 1790–1832 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 23. ²⁸ Mayo, English Novel, 9.

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constituted a kind of coffee house in print, a technology that permitted the illusion of a ‘face-to-face’ exchange of views despite distances in time, space, and elsewhere—for instance, class. Klancher acknowledges that ‘the language and format of each journal must first be ‘‘adapted’’ to the specific readership being solicited’, but he considers that in seeking a specialized audience, a periodical editor thereby constructed a larger audience ‘in which all readerships find their place. Hence the differences between particular audiences do not imply discontinuous discourses…. The idea of a wide audience excites the eighteenth-century periodical writer because he still sees it framed within a general public style (however modified for a particular audience), through which he may organize an infinite number of readers.’ For Klancher and others, this wide audience, authorizing such large claims, ceases to exist in the politically charged 1790s; ‘readerships were no longer waiting to be discovered and acculturated; they could not be colonized. They must … be produced.’²⁹ That is, Klancher implies that at first magazines tapped readers’ desires; later they produced them. The Clay records of magazine subscriptions between 1746 and 1780 suggest, however, that only rarely were stable earlier audiences, with a constant demand as opposed to a transient one, waiting to be discovered. From the 1750s onward, new magazines, both specialized and general, sometimes did attract sizeable numbers of new subscribers—who generally did not continue to subscribe for long, and the magazines folded. Furthermore, the great majority of individual adult subscribers, over 60 per cent, took only one magazine during four decades (442 of 700). Just a fifth of those who took one magazine can be shown to subscribe to that magazine for a year or more (though gaps in the records mean that more certainly did so). Subscribers, especially loyal ones, probably always need to be ‘produced’ in Klancher’s sense. But the Clay records offer some support for the idea that in these earlier decades magazine editors could exploit or create a community of readers who were not as restricted in gender or socioeconomic class as such specialized magazine titles as the Lady’s Magazine or the Medical Magazine might imply. Not only did many men subscribe to the Lady’s, some not simply for wives or daughters, but at least one member of the gentry, Henry Toye Bridgeman, joined the apothecaries’ apprentices, surgeons, and one overseer of the poor who took the Medical. Some of these subscribers articulated a sense of community in other ways, by ²⁹ Klancher, English Reading Audiences, 26, 38.

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delivering magazines to one another and by sharing their subscriptions as earlier mentioned, or by ordering multiple copies of a magazine, presumably to deliver them to neighbours or relatives. For instance, the Mr Goodman who kept the West Haddon turnpike gate, and had three very short subscriptions at various times in the 1770s, subscribed to the Lady’s Magazine for four years between 1773 and 1777, and from April 1777 he took two copies of the magazine but cancelled both in September. A turnpike keeper might well be conveniently placed for a neighbour to call for his own copy of a periodical publication. Mr Jones of Hilmorton turnpike, who subscribed to fifteen magazines, also ordered two copies of the Lady’s Magazine in December 1770 after having started a subscription in October. Like Goodman’s, this double subscription was cancelled fairly soon, sometime before July 1771.³⁰ The Clay records do demonstrate that an increased supply of magazines on the market—along with greater literacy and disposable income—interacted with consumer demand to expand audiences between 1746 and 1780, and part of that expansion in class and gender came from men and women of the middling sort. But this expansion brought with it two problems, at least in the provinces. First, audiences did not grow as fast as magazines proliferated. And second, this expanded audience tended to be fickle. The expansion is evident. As Table 5.2 illustrates, the decades before the 1770s saw a large growth in provincial magazine readership, a growth that seems to be traceable in part to the emergence of new magazines during this period. During eighteen months from September 1746 up to and including March 1748, subscribers took only three titles: Cave’s Gentleman’s Magazine, established in 1731, and its first imitator, the London (1732), as well as the Universal Magazine, begun in June 1747. But titles quadrupled a decade later when the records resume, between July 1758 and September 1759: present in addition to the first three are the two review journals, the Monthly and the Critical, as well as Samuel Johnson’s short-lived Literary Magazine (two subscribers), more general magazines (Martin’s (sixteen), the New Universal Magazine (eight), the Grand (eight), and the Royal (fourteen) ), some compilations such as the Grand Magazine of Magazines (ten), as well as the newly launched Court Miscellany, or Ladies New Magazine, which attracted ³⁰ As in the case of multiple readings of novels, these multiple subscriptions are not counted in the totals. Jones appears as one subscriber to the Lady’s.

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Table 5.2. Magazine subscriptions, 1746-1780, Daventry, Rugby, Lutterworth Months covered, Daventry day books∗ Sept. 1746–Feb. 1748 June. 1758–Sept. 1759 Nov. 1764–Feb. 1766 Jan. 1770–Feb. 1771 July. 1771–Feb. 1772† Mar. 1773–Jan. 1775 Jan. 1777–Nov. 1777 Mar. 1779–Sept. 1780

Magazines Total Women’s Women’s subscribed to subscriptions subscriptions subscriptions as % total 3 12 20 18 16 29 31 21

60 149 201 283 221 352 261 239

2 4 12 27 28 37 35 35

3.3 2.7 6.0 9.5 12.7 10.5 13.4 14.6

Notes: Total number of individual subscriptions: 1296; subscriptions by women 133; total subscribers: 737 (including schoolboys); women 98; subscribers taking one magazine: 459, women = 72; subscribers taking two magazines: 136, women = 19; subscribers taking three magazines: 85, women = 6; subscribers taking four or more magazines: 57, women = 1. ∗

See Bibliography for actual dates covered by Daventry day books; dates given here show which months of issue for magazines are covered. A magazine dated January actually came out at the end of that month. † Day book D7719, from 28 July 1771 through 5 Feb. 1772, is missing many pages; figures obtained from this source are therefore incomplete.

one order by a woman, but the records end before her order could be translated into a subscription. The Clay customers’ interest peaked in 1773–5, as Table 5.2 shows, with subscriptions to twenty-nine magazines including such highly specialized ones as the Lawyer’s, the Builder’s, the Musical, and the Medical. But the 352 subscriptions achieved during these two years seem to represent a saturation point. In fact, by the end of day book NRO ML 89, covering magazines from January 1774 to January 1775, some 166 of these 352 subscriptions or nearly half had been cancelled, and only about 90 of the remaining 186—about a quarter of the original 352—were still extant when the records resume (January 1777). Although the number of magazines taken by the Clays’ customers nearly doubled in six years, subscriptions increased by just 18 per cent during the same period (from 221 subscriptions to sixteen magazines during the last six months of 1771 to 261 distributed among the thirty-one magazines available in the first eleven months of 1777). I suspect that financial constraints caused by the American war may have been responsible for this reduced growth, since it is not an isolated

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phenomenon among Clay customers nor in the book trade, where bankruptcies multiplied for three years after 1775.³¹ After the Lady’s Magazine and the Town and Country succeeded in enlarging the provincial audience in the early 1770s, in part by attracting new female subscribers, increasing numbers of magazines had to draw on virtually the same pool of fastidious provincial customers. Very few women who subscribed to the Lady’s Magazine, particularly farmers’ and tradesmen’s wives and daughters, held their subscriptions for more than two years. Overall, only eleven of the fifty-eight female subscribers appear to have done so.³² But this tendency to subscribe briefly is common to both men and women. Some subscribers may have cancelled because they arranged to read another’s magazine, as was probably the case when Miss Clarke of Drayton cancelled her subscription to the Lady’s at the end of 1779 and Miss Culcheth of Drayton began hers at the start of 1780. For such reasons, the Clays’ provincial magazine audience seems to have reached a kind of plateau in this decade. The tendency of magazines to proliferate much faster than audiences grew means that magazines succeeded best in this market if they were able to create their own audiences, that is, to attract subscribers who were uninterested in or dissatisfied by what the market already offered. Thus, one way to estimate how well any specific magazine produced an audience for itself is to determine how many subscribers took that magazine alone and, further, how many of those subscribers obtained no other print at all from the Clays. Since 63 per cent of adult customers, including 72 women, subscribed to only one magazine (442 of 700), and since a large majority of these customers in turn obtained no other printed material at all from the Clays (289 of 442), then certain magazines succeeded in attracting customers who did not otherwise pay the Clays to obtain reading matter. Wheble’s Lady’s Magazine, first issued in July 1770, and its rival and sequel issued by Robinson and Roberts, were most successful: together, they attracted a total of 57 subscribers (out of 116 adult subscribers in Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth) who took no other magazine. Furthermore, forty-one of these fifty-seven exclusive subscribers to the Lady’s bought no other ³¹ See table 14, ‘Bankrupts in the London book trades, 1772–1805’, in Maxted, p. xxxiii. The forty-two bankrupts between 1776–8 greatly outnumber those in the previous three years (14) and in the three following (14). See also Feather, Provincial Book Trade, 30. ³² See Fergus, ‘Women, Class’, table 3.

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print (including serialized publications) from the Clays, and women accounted for twenty-seven of them. Closely following the Lady’s in attracting exclusive subscribers was the Town and Country, first issued in 1769, offering ‘chronicles and scandals in high life’ as well as various kinds of fiction and other staples of the popular miscellanies.³³ Out of 141 adult subscribers,³⁴ 55 took it alone; 39 of these bought nothing else, including 5 women. The importance of the Lady’s in creating a female audience is evident. The fifty-eight women who subscribed to the Lady’s represent nearly three-fifths of all women who took magazines over the four decades covered by the Clay records. Further, twenty-seven women whose entire investment in print included only a subscription to some version of the Lady’s Magazine represent 28 per cent of all the Clays’ women subscribers in and around Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth. Furthermore, since without them just 230 women altogether obtained printed matter from the Clays in their Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth shops, these twenty-seven exclusive subscribers to the Lady’s enlarged the Clays’ entire female customer base for print by nearly 12 per cent. The Lady’s produced women subscribers. Socioeconomic class is harder to correlate with audience expansion than are particular magazines, but audiences do broaden in class somewhat over the period 1746–80. I can identify almost two-fifths of the men and women who first began subscribing in each of the four decades covered in the records (a total of 268 of 700 adult subscribers, about 38 per cent; see Table 5.1). Tradesmen’s rise is the most impressive: from about 10 per cent of identifiable subscribers in the 1740s and 1750s to about 20 per cent in the 1760s and 30 per cent in the 1770s. The professional classes decline over that time from three-quarters of identifiable subscribers to just under half; despite the proportional decline, then, they still dominated the market. Nonetheless, as new and more specialized magazines were issued from the 1760s on, subscribers were drawn from a wider range: not just tradesmen but farmers, apprentices, artisans, and other working men such as turnpike-keepers and even labourers increasingly subscribed, not to mention women. The turnpike ³³ Mayo, English Novel, 185. Cindy McCreery’s The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004) deals with a number of the sexual scandals of the magazine’s tˆete-`a-tˆete series, which ran, as she notes, for twenty-three years (159). ³⁴ Subscriber totals in this section do not match those in App. 4 because here schoolboys’ subscriptions are excluded.

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keeper Jones, who tied with Henry Pepperell, curate of Winwick, for the most magazine subscriptions at fifteen each, received no less than fourteen different magazines between January and November 1770, but had cancelled eight by the January 1771, issue, and the rest by the following July, keeping only one, the Town and Country, from February 1770 until the records end in 1780. Pepperell’s subscription records resemble Jones’s, though Pepperell was more interested in new periodicals and subscribed to them longer than Jones did, and though as a professional man he certainly had more disposable income: his buying of obscure novels is discussed in Ch. 1. His wife Katharine died in April 1779, but left at least two living children—Anne and William, christened in 1754 and 1755—and Pepperell seems usually to have had two subscriptions going at any time.³⁵ He began as a subscriber to the Christian’s in 1764, adding the Court Miscellany, or Ladies New Magazine immediately when it came out in July 1765 and keeping it for at least eight months. He took the Political and the Musical as soon as they were issued in January 1780, and October 1774, respectively, as well as the Sentimental a month after it was first published in March 1773, his longest subscription. He cancelled the Sentimental only in May 1777, when he also stopped the Musical and the Theatrical (after a five-month subscription). At that point he kept the Young Gentleman’s Magazine, but that ceased in July. The sole subscription that Pepperell held when the records end was the Political—for just eight months; he had therefore cancelled fourteen by that time.

G ROW T H A N D AT T R I T I O N I N M AG A Z I N E AU D I E N C E S The vacillations of subscribers such as Jones and Pepperell illustrate consumer fickleness, one of the two major problems that magazines faced in the 1770s. Though audiences grew, they did not expand as rapidly as did numbers of magazines, as noted earlier, and the loyalty of consumers was generally minimal. Uncommitted subscribers coupled with proliferating magazine titles and a provincial audience that reached ³⁵ Longden, Northamptonshire and Rutland Clergy, x. 239. According to an anonymous annotation made in ink in the NRO copy, p. 238, Pepperell married Katharine Pippin, both of the parish of Clipston, by licence on 22 January 1753 at Clipston.

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its peak in the mid-1770s created two patterns of growth and attrition in the circulation histories of magazines bought by the Clays’ customers.³⁶ The first pattern dominates: new magazines tend to reach their largest audiences among the Clays’ customers relatively soon after first being issued, and then to decline in circulation, sometimes genteelly over a long period, as did the Gentleman’s and later even the Lady’s and the Town and Country, sometimes rather precipitously, as in the case of the Court and City. When the Court and City began in January 1770, twelve customers signed up, and an additional subscriber switched to it from the Royal, another from the Town and Country. But by April 1770, five of these customers cancelled, and by December 1771, only three were on the books. The second and less common pattern, evident for the Critical Review, for example, which was issued in 1756, involves steady growth in and retention of a customer base. In the 1770s, however, new periodicals often stole the readership of older ones. Attrition of provincial magazine readership was widespread. Almost all the magazines introduced in the 1750s and 1760s followed the first pattern and were defunct by the early 1770s—including such titles as the Christian, the Newgate, Martin’s, the British, the Wonderful, and so on. Nonetheless, they apparently did succeed in enlarging the audience for magazines. As Table 5.2 indicates, during the period 1764–6, some 201 subscriptions were extant, more than three times the number in the earliest years recorded, 1746–8, and almost three-quarters of the total achieved later in 1770–1. After the Lady’s as well as the Town and Country had expanded this provincial audience in 1770–1, in part by attracting women subscribers, subsequent newly issued specialized magazines as well as older more general ones had to compete with them for readership. This competition meant that new periodicals in the 1770s had to appropriate the readership of older ones. Just eleven customers told the Clays to switch their subscriptions from one magazine to the other before 1770, but forty did so afterwards—and many other customers switched less officially, by cancelling a subscription and then shortly afterwards beginning another. The magazine audiences, then, tended to vacillate more as choices multiplied. Yet such customers would often settle down to subscribe to one magazine for a substantial period, as Jones finally did for the Town and Country. At least 117 individual ³⁶ For circulation histories of magazines with more than ten subscribers per month, see Fergus, ‘Women, Class’, tables 2.1 and 2.2; these tables show growth and attrition in customers for seventeen magazines, 1746–80.

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subscriptions to various magazines were held for more than four years—but that number represents less than 10 per cent of the total.³⁷ Admittedly, the archives themselves partly guarantee an absence of long subscriptions. The precise length of most subscriptions is indeterminable because of the gaps in the Daventry records, which can extend anywhere from five months to twelve years. A subscription cancelled just after records begin in any year could well have been on the books for years; similarly, one begun just before records end but not extant when they resume could have been cancelled at any point in between. Very lengthy subscriptions are easy to spot, however. The Clays recopied each magazine’s list of subscribers every month. Because they added names of new subscribers at the bottom of each list and simply omitted names of former subscribers who had cancelled, names at the top of the lists consisted of those who generally had subscribed longest. Thus, if a series of subscribers’ names remains in the same place at the top of the Gentleman’s listings at the close of one set of records and the start of another, the presumption that the subscriptions continued throughout that time is reasonable enough. Clear evidence for endurance of a year or more is present in only about 20 per cent of all subscriptions.³⁸ Of the remaining subscriptions, length is not determinable for about half; the other half, at least 400 and more likely 500, is made up of very short subscriptions. Thus, for 117 subscriptions to last more than four years is remarkable, even if these represent less than 10 per cent of the pool. In fact, six of these remained in force for twenty-two years and were all still uncancelled when the Daventry records end in August 1780: all started in June 1758, when day book NRO ML 692 begins, and could have extended in some cases for as much as twelve years before as well. These faithful subscribers include three for the London (Sir William Wheler, a Mr Parker, and the Revd Mr Williams, vicar of Napton, the brother of a surgeon in Rugby), and one each for the Gentleman’s (Stanley Burrough, headmaster at Rugby), the Monthly Review (Benjamin Warren, curate at Bugbrooke), and the Universal (Mr Denny, probably a weaver at Barby). Such loyalty was exceptional, not just among the Clays’ customers. Mayo has argued that when the audience for historical miscellanies ³⁷ The most popular magazines among those taken for five years or more were the Gentleman’s (20 subscriptions) and the London (30). ³⁸ Some 243 subscriptions of 1,151 lasted for at least a year, which excludes the 142 adult and three schoolboy subscriptions to the Lady’s Magazine with its vexed subscription history (two competing versions).

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began to shrink, the Universal and the London introduced fiction in order to retain or enlarge their audiences. For example, in the 1760s, the Universal abandoned its character as a historical miscellany, printing instead serial fiction by 1765. As Mayo says, ‘from this time, the magazine entered upon an ambitious program of magazine fiction, which quickly transformed it into a miscellany more closely approximating the Westminster, the Town and Country, the Lady’s, and similar compilations of the 1770s and later’.³⁹ Mayo considers that the London Magazine similarly relied on fiction to boost circulation from 1770. But if so, the addition of fiction does not seem to have been a particularly successful strategy for these magazines among Clay customers. The London had twenty-five subscribers, three more than the Gentleman’s, by June 1758, and continued to attract more Clay customers over the next two decades while the Gentleman’s readership steadily and more seriously declined, so that in August 1780, when the magazine records end, the Gentleman’s had twelve subscribers and the London twenty. It would be easy to conclude that the London’s comparative success had something to do with its shift of policy in the 1770s, away from its character as ‘historical’ miscellany and towards what Mayo calls the ‘popular’ miscellany, printing fiction. But in fact its success in this particular market came earlier. In the 1750s and 1760s, although some turnover in subscriptions ensued, new subscribers to the London generally stayed with the magazine (five out of six in 1758–9 and four of five in 1764–6). This ability to retain new subscribers was essential in keeping numbers stable: they would balance occasional cancellations by older subscribers, some of whom had taken the magazine for ten years or more. Nine London customers who began subscribing in the 1750s and 1760s were still doing so in September 1780, when the Daventry records end. At first, this stability seems undisturbed by the influx of newer magazines. Nonetheless, something happened to this provincial audience for the London between the February 1766 issue and January 1770—probably the advent of the Town and Country, issued in 1769. At least thirteen London subscribers were carried over from 1766, and a further eight had been added at the start of 1770. But four of these eight cancelled within the next twelve months, only one to order another magazine. In addition, old subscribers abandoned ship. Thomas Baseley of Marston, a subscriber since 1766, switched at the end of 1770 to the Town and Country until at least September 1780, and Mrs Jane ³⁹ Mayo, English Novel, 182.

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Ashley, a member of the gentry, did the same in January 1771, after having sampled the Town and Country for two months. New subscribers compensated for these losses only temporarily. During 1770, the London obtained only four new customers: one a manservant to Mr Armstead, for just four months, and another whose son was at the Daventry Academy, for seven months; a man who subscribed for two years; and Mr Jones, the turnpike keeper. Further attrition among London subscribers occurred slowly throughout 1771. And the Universal’s circulation history is similar, although it did not command as much loyalty from old customers as did the London: four who subscribed in the 1750s and 1760s were still on the books in January 1770, and just Mr Denny of Barby retained his subscription until August 1780. In other words, even magazines still capable of attracting long-term provincial subscribers found that consumer fickleness cut into their circulation in the 1770s, a period of attrition or holding steady rather than growth for most magazines taken from the Clays.

AU D I E N C E S F O R M AG A Z I N E S A N D N OV E L S Even if fiction in the London and the Universal did not particularly help their circulation with the Clays’ provincial audiences, magazine fiction may still have encouraged consumption of novels, and vice versa. James Raven has shown remarkable parallels between the numbers of new novels issued after 1775 and the numbers of longer tales produced in magazines, as catalogued by Mayo in The English Novel in the Magazines. Summarizing the results, Raven writes: ‘What is quite clear … is the increase in the number of magazine pages devoted to fiction during the period. The development of serial issues closely follows that of novel production, with striking similarities after 1775.’⁴⁰ If Siskin were right to interpret Raven’s work as ‘confirming the advent of a two-tier market’ for novels and magazines,⁴¹ then we would expect that provincial audiences for novels and for magazines would intersect substantially; customers who bought one form would tend to acquire the other. The Clay records reveal, however, that magazine subscribers and fiction buyers and borrowers, Siskin’s two tiers, intersect only marginally. As noted, more than half of adult subscribers to magazines (371 of 700) ⁴⁰ Raven, Judging New Wealth, 40. See also fig. 3, p. 34. ⁴¹ Siskin, The Work of Writing, 168.

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obtained no other print at all but their one or two subscriptions from the Clays. And the evidence shows that in the 1770s customers for magazines bought and borrowed fewer novels as the decade progressed, not more. Although both audiences were certainly augmented by the lending and borrowing of purchased magazines and novels among friends and family, as well as by the acquisitions of book clubs as discussed in Ch. 1, they may have been more distinct than common sense and analyses such as Raven’s suggest. Among other issues, in studies of the reading public, it is essential not to conflate production of print with consumption. Supply may exceed demand. Raven’s work valuably measures production but cannot take account of size of editions (which may have shrunk) or, more important, how many copies of those editions sold. As William St Clair puts it, ‘the fact of a book’s having been noted in a bibliography as having been printed is no guarantee that it was produced in more than a tiny edition, let alone that it was widely sold, circulated, or read’.⁴² Earlier chapters cite evidence indicating that some provincial customers with the greatest interest in a variety of new magazines—most of which included fiction—obtained novels also, as schoolboys did. In such cases, consuming one fictional form may have stimulated taste for another, thereby enlarging audiences for both. But in general, this crossover did not occur. Absence of crossover is clearest among women subscribers. After all, more than half of the women who subscribed did not buy or borrow any other print at all (fifty-two of ninety-eight, or 53 per cent). Oddly, this lack of intersection is especially true of the two largest segments of the female market for print, subscribers and borrowers: those who were obtaining fiction cheaply, at sixpence a copy for a magazine or at twopence or threepence a volume for borrowed novels. Just seven of the ninety-eight female subscribers borrowed novels (see App. 5). Male subscribers were exactly as unlikely as women to become customers for print from the Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth shops: 53 per cent of them paid for no other print (319 of 602). Or to put it differently, among subscribers to magazines, just 47 per cent of women subscribers (46) and 47 per cent of the men (283) consumed any other printed material, including serialized publications, from the Clays. Very rough figures on these other forms of print that interested male and female subscribers are not particularly revealing. Predictably, ⁴² St Clair, Reading Nation, 175.

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magazine subscribers who bought any other printed matter at all tended to buy a slightly wider range of it than customers for print who did not order magazines. But magazine subscribers were as likely as customers for print who did not obtain magazines to buy or borrow fiction: less than one in ten did so in both groups (64 of 700 subscribers, 87 among 1,095 non-subscribers). Subscribing to magazines thus does not seem to raise or lower the demand for other forms of fiction. Admittedly, the market for novels is limited, as discussed in Ch. 1. Consumers of novels constitute a small subset of adult Clay consumers in Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth, 8 per cent overall: a total of 151 among 1,862 customers for print, excluding the exceptional Warwick records. Adult consumers of magazines who buy or borrow novels form an equally small subset of magazine subscribers generally: 9 per cent (64 of 700 subscribers). What these figures mean is that, within these limited audiences of 151 and 64 customers respectively, four out of ten customers for novels were subscribers (64 of 151), even though less than one in ten subscribers bought or borrowed a novel from the Clays. Among the Clays’ provincial audience, then, those who did obtain fiction were likelier than other customers for print to be magazine subscribers also. In other words, the market seems to work in one direction—buyers and borrowers of novels are quite likely to subscribe also (over 40 per cent do)—but not in the other, since less than 10 per cent of adult subscribers buy or borrow fiction. If audiences for magazines and for novels reinforced each other, we might expect that subscribers willing, like Pepperell, to purchase several novels would prefer magazines that specialized in fiction, but generally they did not. Overall, traditional historical miscellanies such as the Gentleman’s and the London were most popular with adult customers who bought novels, attracting fourteen and fifteen subscribers each. More important, if magazines encouraged consumption of novels or if novels encouraged consumption of magazines, and if this effect were increasing as production of magazines and novels increased, then the histories of the most popular magazines ought to display these effects. Customers for such magazines should, over time, increase their buying and borrowing of novels; they should also consume a good deal more fiction than those who do not subscribe to magazines. But they do not. The five most popular magazines show a decided decline in numbers of subscribers who buy or borrow novels: see App. 5. The numbers are small, but taking 1770 as a watershed year, we might expect them to register increased consumption as an artefact not

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only of increased production of both forms of fiction, but also of the records themselves, since more months of accounts survive after that date than before. For example, just fifty months of magazine and novel records for Daventry predate 1770, along with less than two and a half years of novel records from the earliest Rugby day book, NRO D2925; from 1770, about seventy-three months of the Daventry records for magazines and novels remain, in addition to about five more years for Rugby (1779–84) and four and a half for Lutterworth (1776–81) in which novel buying and borrowing are recorded. But in fact, as App. 5 shows, although we see considerable increase in magazine subscriptions (60 per cent or 425 of all adults began their subscriptions on or after 1 January 1770), those who bought novels amounted to just twenty-one customers after that date, compared to twenty-seven before. Borrowers do increase slightly, from twelve before 1770 to thirteen afterwards, but that apparent increase is non-existent: proportionally, borrowers stay the same at a little over 3 per cent of subscribers. Possibly the American war played a part in decreasing consumption, but if so it was a selective part: magazine subscriptions fell much less. As Ch. 1 points out, however, book clubs’ buying was increasing during this time—and this collective increase may have helped to lower individual demand. Although the numbers are too small to analyse closely, it is striking that, even if women who bought magazines did not much overlap with women who consumed fiction, female subscribers’ tendency to purchase fiction did increase a good deal after 1770: the nine women subscribers who bought eighteen novels altogether purchased only three of them before 1770. Men were more conspicuous in obtaining novels: twenty-five of the seventy purchases among thirty-nine male subscribers predate that year. For example, John Ashley of Ashby St Ledgers, who subscribed to the London, bought James Annesley’s Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman in 1746 and Eliza Haywood’s The Invisible Spy in 1759—which he returned—as well as chapbooks and a jest book. After he died, however, his widow, who had been Jane Pocock with a fortune of £7,000 when she married in 1740, bought only Smollett’s Humphry Clinker and Charles Johnston’s The Reverie (1762) on 14 September 1774 while she subscribed to the Town and Country Magazine. She had continued the London subscription after her husband’s death but switched to the Town and Country in 1771. A surviving letter of Jane Ashley displays a lively and worldly style that suggests the Town and Country’s own editorial voice. She writes in 1781 to her goddaughter and eventual heiress Jane Monckton, rejoicing

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that she will have the ‘satisfaction of your pleasing Chit Chat’ in a forthcoming visit and that one of her dinner guests the night before ‘is as Large as Ever, but Chearfull and Good Temper’d, Mrs . Smith desired Miss Ashley who is a pretty Girl to set her Cap at him, therefore dont be Surprized if she Succeeds, I assure you, he took infinite Notice of her—a little Flirtation in the Country is allowable, to pass away the tedious hours—’.⁴³ As always, within small groups, in this case customers for novels and magazines, gender makes for the greatest differences. Though women customers are always fewer than men, proportionally they are two or three times more likely to buy fiction. Among magazine subscribers, 14 per cent of women buy or borrow novels (14 of 98), compared to just 8 per cent of men (50 of 602; see Appendix 5). In the overall community of 1,862 adult customers for print served by the Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth shops (including all those who purchased only serialized publications) the 42 women who obtained novels represent 16 per cent of all female customers for print (257), while the 110 men who do so constitute 7 per cent of male customers (1,605). (These figures do not correspond to those in Table 1.1, which are greater because they include Warwick customers.) Thus, a higher proportion of women who became customers for print did purchase or borrow novels, whereas almost exactly the same proportion of male and female customers became magazine subscribers (98 of 257 women, or 38 per cent, compared to 602 of 1,605 men or 37.5 per cent). A woman entering one of the Clays’ provincial bookshops, then, was just as likely as a man to subscribe to a magazine but was more than twice as likely to order or withdraw a novel; this disproportion was even greater in the Warwick shop.⁴⁴ Again, however, obtaining novels was not as popular with either sex as obtaining magazines.

C A S E S T U DY: T H E N OV E L I S T ’ S M AG A Z I N E Perhaps the best way to investigate the intersection of magazine and novel audiences is to look at the circulation history of the Novelist’s Magazine, first published in 1779 by Harrison and Brooke (though dated 1780 by all sources), and taken by four customers who also ⁴³ NRO M[F] 99, 12 July 1781. ⁴⁴ Fergus, ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers’, 178–9.

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bought or borrowed novels. The magazine reprinted novels more than fourteen years old in sixpenny parts. Both title and contents suggest that its customers would be especially attracted to fiction. But in fact these customers actually illustrate most of the trends already discussed, from readiness to cancel subscriptions to generally meagre consumption of novels, but with men as usual foremost as consumers. (As ever, schoolboys were an exception, at least in their eagerness for fiction, as shown in Ch. 4; the one schoolboy who took the Novelist’s will be considered here, however.) Five orders appeared immediately in the November 1779, magazine records, and in fact Thomas Clay took delivery of the first numbers—of John Hawkesworth’s Almoran and Hamet—on 19 December of that year. According to Mayo, parts were issued weekly, although at first the Clay records seem to indicate monthly deliveries.⁴⁵ Before the records end in August 1780, two women, eight men, and one schoolboy had subscribed, but of these eleven, one woman and five men—three of whom had been original subscribers—had already cancelled, dropping out somewhere between the printing of Fielding’s Joseph Andrews or Amelia, Langhorne’s Solyman and Almena, Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield, Smollett’s Roderick Random, Voltaire’s Zadig, or possibly Lesage’s Devil upon Two Sticks.⁴⁶ Mr Newton of Lutterworth, for instance, cancelled after just one issue in May. His immediate distaste contrasts with his unusual loyalty as a magazine subscriber: Newton took the Town and Country during 1770–80, and had the Royal Magazine at least between 1764 and 1772, as well as the Oxford Magazine for nearly a year in 1773–4. All five other cancellations of the Novelist’s occurred after three months: Miss Birt of Dunchurch and Mr Slade, almost certainly a clergyman, took no other magazines at all, although he subscribed to a serialized version of Charles Middleton’s New and Complete System of Geography and was active in ordering fairly recent novels for the Daventry Society of Clergymen, a book club, in 1780 and 1781: Frances Burney’s Evelina, Samuel Jackson Pratt’s Emma Corbett, Elizabeth Blower’s Parsonage House, and Henry Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling. The other three short-term subscribers to the Novelist’s did obtain other ⁴⁵ See ML 689/370; Mayo, English Novel, 363. ⁴⁶ This list is taken from Mayo’s ‘Register’, no. 168, p. 670, which gives numbers for cross-reference to his ‘Catalogue’, where dates of engravings are cited as evidence for dating the issues. The first engraving carries a date of 1 November 1779; I have been unable, however, accurately to connect subscribers’ orders with titles.

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magazines, however. Mr Scott of Walton took up a subscription to the Universal for just five months when he cancelled the Novelist’s; he had once subscribed to the Spiritual Magazine, from December 1764, but he stopped in January 1766, when the magazine may have ceased publication. Mr Allen, possibly a farmer in Helidon, obtained the Gardener’s Magazine a month after he dropped the Novelist’s but cancelled after only two months. Finally, William Copeland, the curate of Byfield, had taken the Musical for at least five months in 1774–5 and the English for at least ten months in 1777; he was evidently less pleased by the Novelist’s. None of these short-term customers for the Novelist’s bought or borrowed novels from the Clays. This attrition of half the subscribers in less than a year was not unusual for new periodicals in the 1770s; if Thomas Rees was accurate in stating that the Novelist’s had a circulation of 12,000 at its height, and if Clay customers were at all representative, that height must have been reached later.⁴⁷ The five subscribers who remained on the books in August 1780 probably persisted through November: Thomas Clay’s ledger account with ‘Messrs Harrison & Co’ indicates that he ordered five copies of each number from 16 June (starting with no. 17) to no. 39, delivered on 10 November 1780. All five had become customers for novels at some point. For example, Matthew Wise at Rugby School had paid in cash for his borrowing of novels after his younger brother John arrived at the school, but not before; his acquisitions are discussed in Ch. 4. Matthew was at least as interested in magazines as in novels. Gaps in the last Rugby ledger make it unclear how long he took the Novelist’s, which he began in July 1780, though he ordered four numbers in March 1782. He subscribed to the Universal (from August 1780) and the Westminster (from July 1780) as well, but later ledger pages indicate that he also took the European Magazine in 1782–3, and had the 1782 issues bound. Dr John Spier, rector of Crick, was not only a Novelist’s subscriber but a novel borrower: he had withdrawn Smollett’s Humphry Clinker (1771) in September 1771, as soon as the first borrower returned it, his sole withdrawal. His wife Anna Maria had died in 1760; he seems to have had only one child, John Erasmus Spier of Crick, who died in 1800 at age 86. Dr Spier began the Novelist’s in July 1780 and had not cancelled it by August, when the records end. He was one of the more ⁴⁷ Quoted by Mayo, English Novel, 364.

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frequent subscribers, with five magazines, but he kept only one for more than a year: the Monthly Miscellany for three and a half years between 1774 and 1777. Other subscriptions included a year of the London in 1765, the Sentimental for a year after it began in March 1773, and the Town and Country for five months in 1770. The other male borrower was less loyal to periodicals. William Jones of Heyford, schoolmaster and contributor to the Lady’s Magazine, took the Novelist’s from January 1780, and had not cancelled by August—by far his longest subscription. He was clearly much more satisfied with this publication than with his two others, the Diarian Repository, taken for one month in August 1771, and Hutton’s Miscellany, taken for April 1773—the only issue of the Birmingham bookseller William Hutton’s periodical bought by any Clay customer. That issue was in fact delivered to the Jones who kept a turnpike and who amassed fifteen subscriptions, so there was some connection between them, even if not necessarily a familial one since customers often took delivery for or delivered others’ magazines. In the same month that Jones of Heyford obtained and cancelled the Diarian, he borrowed a relatively new novel, and the only one that the records ascribe to him: Ann Emelinda Skinn’s The Old Maid, dated 1771 but actually published in December 1770. The two other subscribers to the Novelist’s who obtained additional fiction from the Clays were more dedicated: not only were they charter subscribers, beginning their subscriptions with the first issue, but they both purchased and borrowed novels. Mary Chadwick Clay, Samuel Clay’s wife, had obtained four recent novels between 1779 and 1781. She had not cancelled the Novelist’s by August 1780, when the records cease, and she had also in 1779 attempted to borrow not just Cox-Heath Camp (which she later bought) but also The Pupil of Pleasure (1776). Her brother-in-law Thomas Clay had sold it, however, probably during some period not covered by the records; as App. 2 indicates, it was borrowed twice, once by another woman and once by a Daventry Academy boy. John Parker, jun., of Newbold did not share Mary Clay’s interest in non-canonical fiction. He is, in fact, one of the few Rugby boys whose purchases it is possible to follow after he left the school, since he lived nearby and served as his father’s curate once he could take orders. He entered Rugby in 1763 aged about 8. The ledger accounts for him begin in 1764 and cease with his brief subscriptions first to the Westminster in March and April 1773, then the Sentimental from

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April through September. At Newbold, his father had subscribed to the Critical Review sometime before November 1764, but had cancelled by June 1773. John Parker, sen., then took up his son’s lapsed subscription to the Westminster in October 1773, until the following January. His son subscribed in his own name to the Critical in 1777 for at least three and a half years, resubscribed to the Westminster in 1779 for four months, took the Musical for at least six months at the end of 1777, and began the Theatrical by March 1779, a subscription that remained uncancelled eighteen months later. With seven subscriptions to his credit, John Parker, jun., is one of the most dedicated customers for magazines: only ten others subscribed to as many or more. He appeared as a purchaser in the Rugby day books by 1779, acquiring at least twentytwo books, none of them, however, under the influence of a review in the Critical. Having borrowed Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison and bought Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling in 1780, he also bound four volumes of Tom Jones in 1781, possibly the Novelist’s version. If he did not cancel, he would have received Tom Jones as part of his subscription at the end of 1780, though the large pages, double columns, and small print of the Novelist’s make a four-volume format unlikely.⁴⁸ What is striking about this case history of Novelist’s subscribers is, as one might expect, the firm link between subscribers and those willing to buy or borrow novels, with fully 45 per cent (5 of 11) doing so instead of the less than 10 per cent average for all adult subscribers (65 of 700). But perhaps equally striking is the failure of the majority of Novelist’s Magazine subscribers to obtain fiction from the Clays in any other but periodical form as well as their readiness to cancel their subscriptions to the Novelist’s. That is, even here we cannot really see a mutually supportive market for magazines and novels at work. On the other hand, John Parker’s interest in consuming fiction as a schoolboy in magazines and as an adult in novel form suggests that after the Clay records end in 1780, such a market might indeed operate in both directions: magazine subscribers might increasingly obtain novels. And indeed, the behaviour of the young Matthew Wise, who entered Rugby in 1778, seems to support this hypothesis, as do the purchases of other Rugby boys who subscribed to magazines in the 1770s (see Ch. 4). ⁴⁸ John Parker also had four volumes of the Novelist’s Magazine bound on 22 February 1782 (NRO ML 478), which suggests that he maintained his subscription for some time. By the end of 1781, the Novelist’s had produced six volumes.

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S E R I A L I Z E D P U B L I C AT I O N S R. M. Wiles’s definitive study of serialized publications unfortunately does not cover the principal decades included in the Clay records. I have therefore no evidence to confirm or deny Wiles’s contention that before 1750 serialized publications permitted a wide range of customers to own large, expensive folio editions by obtaining them in parts, which were often issued in weekly numbers over a year or more at sixpence apiece.⁴⁹ According to St Clair, nineteenth-century publishers’ archives show that allegedly inexpensive part books were actually very costly to buyers.⁵⁰ In so far as the Clay records are readable, they support this contention: after 1750, the gentry and professional classes, precisely those who were most likely to buy expensive editions to start with, predominated in the audience. And their choices were traditional. Works issued in serial form and bought by Clay customers tended to be Bibles, histories (usually of England), dictionaries of various kinds and other reference works, accounts of voyages, geographies, with occasional old favourites such as John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs or the Newgate Calendar. Overall, serialized publications appear to have been far less popular than magazines. Customers for serialized publications are, however, harder to recover from the records than are those for any other form of publication. Atypically, the Clays were inconsistent in their methods of recording these orders. They tended to keep lists of subscribers to serialized publications on the endleaves of the Daventry and Rugby day books, indicating what numbers each received. But they would also record some subscriptions to serialized publications each month, immediately after the magazine listings in the day books, and occasionally purchases of serialized works would be inserted as ordinary transactions. Many of these entries, but particularly the most comprehensive listings on the endleaves, would become almost unreadable as numbers of issues delivered were added, then crossed out when paid for—especially after John Clay’s death in 1775, when Thomas Clay’s cramped handwriting is sometimes almost entirely blotted. When they can be deciphered, the entries are less informative than usual, seldom adding first names ⁴⁹ R. M. Wiles, Serial Publication in England Before 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 260. ⁵⁰ St Clair, Reading Nation, 206.

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or parishes as a means of distinguishing between customers of the same surname. And several day books have lost their parchment covers and therefore lack all or part of the endleaves. For these reasons, all conclusions about demand for serialized works must be tentative. Nonetheless, more than 230 adult men and women can be recovered as subscribers, eleven of them women; records exist for more than 340 different subscriptions. The few women customers bought mostly Bibles with commentary, such as Henry Southwell’s, Samuel Newton’s, or William Dodd’s, or large reference works: for instance, ‘Bellamy’s Dictionary’, actually John Marchant, Gordon, and D. Bellamy, New and Complete English Dictionary, ‘Scot’s Biographical Dictionary’ (perhaps Joseph Strutt’s A Biographical Dictionary, sole surviving edition from 1785–6), Charles Middleton’s New and Complete System of Geography, or Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopedia, or Universal Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences. These women may have been acting rather like the male and female servants who bought books from the Clays primarily for self-improvement and instruction.⁵¹ That is, women were like servants in generally having limited funds to devote to print; parallel choices might arise from this shared limitation, even though all six of the women who can be identified belonged to the gentry and professional classes. Three of the works chosen by women were among the six titles that gained ten customers or more: Southwell’s Universal Family Bible had eighteen subscribers (two women), Middleton’s New and Complete System of Geography fifteen (one woman; the records call it ‘Middleton’s Geographical Dictionary’), and Chambers’s Dictionary of Arts and Sciences fourteen (three women). The other popular works had all-male subscribers: John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (ten, including one book club), the Universal History issued in volumes during 1746–8, with volume xxi made available in 1758 (twelve),⁵² and Tobias Smollett’s Complete History of England (fifteen, called in the records ‘Smollett’s Universal History’). Karen O’Brien notes that Smollett’s history was issued in 110 sixpenny numbers, and that ‘As many as 20,000 copies may have been sold through the numbered parts edition, and Smollett ⁵¹ Fergus, ‘Provincial Servants’, 224–5. ⁵² Wiles would not classify this work as a serialized publication, since it did not come out in fascicles, but the Clays themselves grouped together all works issued in numbers, whether fascicles or volumes or even issues (such as the Weekly Amusement, a numbered periodical that Mayo includes in his ‘Register’ and that I have therefore included among magazines).

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is said to have been paid the almost unprecedented sum of £2000.’⁵³ By the time the records end, however, subscribers had reached only no. 82. The socioeconomic class of male customers can be determined in just seventy-four cases: ten members of the gentry, forty-two professional men, nineteen tradesmen, a farmer, and a servant, Thomas Newberry of Daventry, who took Southwell’s Bible. One possible labourer is John Line of Daventry, who had subscribed to the Westminster Magazine for an indeterminate period before he cancelled his subscription in March 1779; he may have been the Mr Line who obtained just ten parts of the Newgate Calendar at about the same time—as did the two likely farmers, Mr Hartop of Newnham (18 parts) and the same Hewitt who was probably a farmer and shared a subscription to the Lady’s Magazine with William Gough. The Newgate Calendar was also the most popular serialized publication among the nineteen identifiable tradesmen, attracting three more customers, including a draper, a saddler, and a baker. These customers completed their sets; the records are too fragmentary to make this determination accurately throughout, but as a rule, members of all classes seem equally inclined to leave sets incomplete. Generally, however, tradesmen resembled the gentry and professional men in preferring Bibles, geographical dictionaries, and other large reference works as serialized publications. Customers who obtained serialized publications were very likely to be magazine subscribers as well, perhaps predictably: at least 105 of the 700 adult magazine subscribers also took serialized publications, more than half as many again as subscribers who obtained fiction. Nearly a fifth of those subscribers to both serialized works and magazines bought only these periodicals from the Clays (nineteen, including a clergyman’s daughter, Susan Layng, whose subscription to the Lady’s Magazine was for a time concealed under her father’s name, but who obtained at least nine numbers of Southwell’s Bible in her own name). The customers who bought serialized publications and no other print generally resembled all the other customers for serialized works: they obtained primarily Bibles and reference works, taking five of the eighteen editions ⁵³ Karen O’Brien, ‘The History Market in Eighteenth-Century England’, in Isabel Rivers (ed.), Books and their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England: New Essays (London: Continuum, 2001), 114. Five Clay customers subscribed to the later Continuation of Smollett’s history, issued according to O’Brien in fifty numbers; only two of its subscribers had taken the earlier work.

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of Southwell’s Bible, three of five Willoughby’s Bible, three of six Josephus, and three of four Mortimer’s New History of England. Among their favourites, however, were some slightly more sensational titles. These customers who purchased only serialized print constituted three of seven subscribers to an edition of the Newgate Calendar (including the baker and farmer Hartop mentioned earlier) and three of five to Matthew Taylor’s England’s Bloody Tribunal, on Protestant martyrs. One obtained John Wilkes’s anti-government North Briton (originally published in 1763) in fascicles: Mr Lucas was an employee—possibly a gardener—at Sir Francis Skipwith’s estate near Rugby. This publication was apparently issued at a time when only the Rugby records could register it (NRO D2925: 1768–70). In any event, no subscribers are indicated in the Daventry records. Lucas took at least 192 numbers, more than the three other subscribers obtained. S U M M A RY Altogether, the customers for publications issued serially act like customers for magazines. Both forms expand the provincial reading public. That is, both attract customers who otherwise do not show any interest in obtaining printed matter from the Clays. Magazines, however, pull in about five and a half times more exclusive customers than do serialized works: 371 rather than 68. Both forms appealed most strongly to a traditional reading public—members of the gentry and professional classes—but attracted increasing numbers of tradesmen, artisans, turnpike keepers, farmers, servants, and even an occasional labourer after 1770. Women, however, were much more likely to subscribe to magazines than to serials, particularly once the Lady’s Magazine enlarged the female audience. Throughout the period covered by the records, both magazines and serialized publications seem to have exhausted customers’ interest or purses, leading to short or truncated subscriptions. That is, this expanded reading public was not particularly stable, although the tendency to sample a number of different publications one after another was confined to magazines and increased after 1770. This latter tendency calls for some explanation. The great success of two magazines introduced in 1769 and 1770—the Town and Country, which purveyed short, entertaining gossip about figures in high places (not unlike People magazine now) and the Lady’s—not only enlarged the market for magazines by attracting new subscribers, but may have

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helped to change its nature also. That is, along with many other new periodicals in the 1770s, addressed to increasingly specialized audiences, these magazines may have encouraged customers to develop a greater degree of choosiness or fickleness. Customers may have developed a stronger sense than had obtained earlier that magazines were to be sampled and discarded rather than held, bound, and saved. Brand loyalty, in other words, was less evident. One reason might be that customers found a certain sameness in these multiplying products. All magazines drew upon the same newspapers for their news, printed at the end of each month’s issue; many produced fiction; most imitated successful features in others. In other words, during the 1770s, magazines cannibalized one another as well as one another’s audiences. Although no evidence suggests that magazines attracted customers away from novels, they did not seem to stimulate demand for novels either. If they had done so, then we might expect that consumers of novels who also subscribed to magazines—most of which contained fiction—should outnumber those who subscribed to serialized publications, seldom fictive. Instead, the percentage for subscribers to serialized publications, not generally fictional in content, is higher at 15 per cent than for adult subscribers to magazines, usually fictional in part, at 9 per cent. Similarly, we might expect, in a market that linked obtaining novels with magazines, that those who read novels would be more likely to subscribe to magazines than to obtain serialized publications, but here too the attraction to both forms was equal: more than four of every ten consumers of novels obtained each. What seems to happen is that the small audience for novels at the Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth shops tended to demand a variety of printed materials in some quantity, not simply fiction. The surviving bookselling ledgers do, however, document a predominantly male and predominantly elite audience for novels. And it is during the 1780s and afterward that production of novels really explodes. Perhaps provincial boy customers of the 1770s became the (apparently) largely male provincial audiences of the 1780s and 1790s; but if so, we are left once again with the question of why that audience was so firmly identified with women when so much evidence suggests that, at least among Clay customers, men bought and perhaps even read more fiction than women, both in novel form and in magazines.

Conclusion Some of the general conclusions derived from this project bear on the historiography of the period. The long-dominant, classic accounts by modern critics from Ian Watt onwards of a predominantly female readership for eighteenth-century novels are flimsy, based on no evidence other than reference to the statements of eighteenth-century book reviewers and moralists. Even more nuanced modern accounts of reading by Watt’s successors make the mistake of taking interested or even hysterical contemporary accounts as accurate descriptions of real reading practices. The historical record, where it can be examined in booksellers’ registers, reveals a predominantly male provincial readership for fiction from the 1740s. Even in London, among fashionable, affluent customers of the firm of Hookham & Carpenter in the 1790s, men continue to be eager consumers, though in that decade and class context not as eager as women. Furthermore, we distort the past when we impose our sense of our current business practices onto earlier periods. For instance, critics assume that rising production of novels and rising production of magazines after 1770 points to what Clifford Siskin has called a ‘two-tier market’ for fiction, ‘one in which the popularity of one product supports rather than cannibalizes the sales of the other’.¹ Siskin’s formulation implies a closely shared customer base. But among the Clays’ adult customers, at least, only about 10 per cent of those who acquired prose fiction in magazines also bought or borrowed novels—and the evidence suggests that they did so less and less often over time. More specific conclusions about provincial readership that I have reached in this study are as follows, with an indication of where discussion and evidence is to be found. First, the provincial audience for novels was small (Ch. 1). It was in fact much smaller than that for magazines, most of which incorporated fiction. Between 1770 and 1799, when more than 1,700 novels were published in England, the ¹ Siskin, Work of Writing, 168.

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Clay and Stevens customers bought or borrowed less than 10 per cent of them—and usually only one or two copies of each. Over 9 per cent of the Clays’ 2,052 adult customers for print in Daventry, Rugby, Lutterworth, and Warwick bought novels; Table 5.1 shows that four times as many, more than 37 per cent, subscribed to magazines in Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth (Ch. 5). Among Stevens’s smaller clientele (588 customers), over 14 per cent bought novels—an advance that probably reflects the increasing production of the 1780s and afterwards. In the provinces from 1740, men were the primary customers for new novels—including novels written by women (Ch. 2). Though women customers of the Clays were twice as likely as were men to purchase novels by women, men’s dominance in the market made them the greater consumers even of female-authored fiction. Men represented 76 per cent of the Clays’ adult novel buyers and 54 per cent of adult borrowers (87 of 114 and 49 of 90; see Table 1.1.2). When fifty-eight schoolboys who bought novels are included, aged 10 to 18 and studying at Rugby School or the Daventry Dissenting Academy (the latter proportionally more interested in fiction), male buyers come to 84 per cent of the total. Seventy-five schoolboy borrowers also increase the percentage of male borrowers to 75 per cent. The Stevens figures are even more lopsided. Indisputably, the most dedicated borrower of novels in all the Clay records was John Latimer, a butcher in Warwick: he withdrew forty-four different novels during two successive winters (January 1771–February 1772), and he was charged with rereading four of them as well. As in most cases, it is possible that Latimer withdrew books for another member of his household—his wife or his son—though some evidence suggests otherwise (Ch. 1). Generally, unless they are schoolboys or single men living alone, men remain ambiguous as consumers so long as we presume that they cannot be obtaining novels, especially female-authored ones, for themselves. But some adult men can be proved to consume the fiction they acquired, and certainly the interest of schoolboys cannot be discounted. Altogether, then, the provincial reading public in the latter half of the eighteenth century appears to reverse the often-quoted assertion by Henry Tilney in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey: although he alleges that men read ‘nearly as many’ novels as do women (i. ch. 14), it seems that women in the provinces hardly ever seem to read as many as men do. Though another clich´e about eighteenth-century readers is that they would rather have borrowed fiction than owned it, members of this provincial community bought novels more often than they borrowed them, probably in part because the booksellers’ lending libraries were

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small and dated. Arguably, the most determined buyer of novels was William Bagshaw Harrison, a single man living alone in Daventry, who bought five novels in the space of twelve months in 1758 and 1759, but just two of these were relatively new. A wealthy clergyman’s wife, however, Catherine Huddesford, almost equalled him by buying nine new novels between 1768 and 1770 (Ch. 1). One consequence of the fact that men were in charge of most transactions in which novels were bought and borrowed in the provinces is that men’s novels were consumed more than those by women. The Clay records indicate that when women controlled transactions, they were twice as likely to purchase works by women as men were—26.7 per cent of the time (13 of 47 works) rather than 14.2 per cent (26 of 183). That is, women novelists would have fared better in the provincial marketplace before 1780 if women had been the principal consumers of fiction. Over time, however, provincial men did become more likely to purchase women’s novels as more were produced: 23 per cent of Stevens’s male customers’ purchases of novels were written by women (54 of 231), just as 23.5 per cent of female customers’ purchases were (4 of 17). If men were the principal buyers and borrowers of novels in the provinces, why then was the form so closely identified with women by eighteenth-century commentators? Although I offer some speculations on the cultural work accomplished by this identification at the end of Ch. 1, the records themselves do suggest one limited answer: a higher proportion of women who became customers for print did purchase or borrow novels, whereas almost exactly the same proportion of male and female customers became magazine subscribers. A woman entering one of the Clays’ provincial bookshops, then, was just as likely as a man to subscribe to a magazine but was more than twice as likely to order or withdraw a novel (Ch. 5; see also Table 1.1.2, App. 4). Such disproportionate activity within bookshops, if typical, may have helped give currency to moralists’ convictions that women were the primary customer for novels. Among the Clays’ adult customers for print in all four shops, the 62 women who obtained novels represented 20.5 per cent of all female customers (302), while the 127 men who also did so constituted just 7.3 per cent of adult male customers (1,750; see Table 1.1.2). Eighteenth-century reviewers often asserted that women were the primary producers of novels in English, just as they assumed that women were the primary consumers. But the bibliographical work of James Raven and Antonia Forster in the first volume of The English Novel 1770–1829 has demolished this parallel illusion: women never published the majority

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of novels, even though the proportion of female-authored novels did rise sharply in the last decades of the century. The provincial market supported this rise. Fictions by women were almost exactly as much in demand among these provincial consumers as were fictions by men— as long as works were new (Ch. 2). Within a period of five years from first publication, demand for novels by men and women remained comparable. How to determine whether novels were by men or women, however, is surprisingly difficult. As James Raven has argued, more than 80 per cent of novels were published anonymously between 1750 and 1790. And in many cases, though we can now confidently attribute authorship to novels originally published anonymously, contemporaries did not share that knowledge. Clay and Stevens customers preferred to avoid anonymous fictions though these dominated the market: just 22 per cent of their purchases and borrowings were of novels that remain anonymous now. Because I am interested in the demand for works coded female compared to those coded male or neutral, I have counted among female-authored novels those identified as ‘By a Lady’, and so forth; see the discussion and justification for doing so in Ch. 2. Importantly, novels by women, including those coded female, did not enjoy a sustained provincial demand: they did not become ‘canonized’, so to speak, by customers for novels (Ch. 2). Although demand for new novels written by men and women was about equal, consumers kept borrowing and buying the novels of men even when they were no longer new but did not continue to obtain works published by women once these novels were more than five years old. Just four novels written by women were bought or borrowed over fifteen years by Clay and Stevens customers; twenty-eight by men were, or seven times as many (see Table 2.2). Women’s novels do not retain their reputations in this male-dominated provincial market; men’s do. Provincial readers consumed plays less often than novels but in a similar manner. Plays written by men and women enjoyed comparable demand while new, with women customers (even fewer than for novels) also giving plays written by women a preference (Ch. 2). But over time, like novels written by women, female-authored plays tended to disappear; men’s plays were far more often purchased as ‘classics’ (ten years old or more). That is, as with novels, men’s plays were far more likely to achieve something like canonical status than women’s. The Clay borrowing records offer evidence that men, women, and schoolboys were frequently desultory readers, sometimes skipping volumes in long novels, sometimes even borrowing a novel whose last

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volume was missing (Ch. 2). We cannot assume simply that readers who took out only initial volumes always lost interest in the work, since in some cases the same reader earlier or later withdrew the full set. Almost a third of all the Clays’ borrowers (54 of 167) engaged in this practice, and over 17 per cent of withdrawals from the libraries were desultory. Although it has been thought that the review journals, including the Monthly and the Critical Reviews, had a strong influence on the book purchasing of their readers, a study of the provincial male audience that subscribed to such magazines—including several all-male book clubs—indicates that individual customers tended to buy most books without immediate influence by a review, sometimes even without waiting until a review appeared (Ch. 1). And even when a review could have influenced an individual buyer or a club, as in the case of six purchases of novels, the review was not always favourable. The clubs, however, seem increasingly to have relied on reviews in making their selections, and over time the clubs’ share of the market increased relative to individuals’ purchasing. They were composed of primarily traditional readers: clergymen and other members of the professions. As reading societies proliferated, then, the influence of review journals on purchases may have increased sufficiently to justify the usual high estimation of their importance to the market. That is, although their effect on individual eighteenth-century provincial readers was relatively slight, the 30 per cent of book club purchases that can be traced to their influence may have been high enough then, or may have become high enough later, to promote or jeopardize the sales of particular books. Women readers can be difficult to extract from the historical record, particularly married women (Ch. 1). Evidence from the Clay records shows that as many as a quarter of provincial women’s magazine subscriptions were concealed under a husband’s or (much less often) a father’s or brother’s name (Ch. 5). This concealment may not compromise what the records can tell us about the female audience as much as might be expected, however. Some cross-class case studies of the Clays’ women customers indicate that women tended to consume more books, including more fiction, as single women or as widows than during their married lives, and while married, their husbands were not conspicuous as customers for books either (Ch. 1). These case studies along with the history of male customers such as Latimer, Harrison, or Francis Baker suggest that provincial reading of fiction in quantity may have been associated not just with the seasons (winter) but with certain stages of life (youth and age, bachelorhood and widowhood).

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Except as subscribers to the Lady’s Magazine (Ch. 5), provincial women whom I have been able to identify as positioned below the gentry and the professional classes, especially tradesmen’s and farmers’ wives, were seldom customers for fiction. A female reading public for fiction among the middling sort was created by the market: by a magazine that appealed to women across class lines, the Lady’s. But these readers did not necessarily go on to consume other fiction (Ch. 1). Overall, among the Clay’s female consumers, all four segments of the market—buyers of novels, borrowers of novels, buyers of drama, and subscribers to magazines—remain essentially separate as well as quite small, though among Stevens’s later female customers these segments overlapped a bit more. Between 1744 and 1784, Rugby schoolboys were much less genderbound in their reading than we would expect of boys at an all-male school today; gender boundaries seem more fluid among them, as they appear to have been among adult readers as well (Ch. 3). This fluidity may surprise at first, for the boys endured a harsh educational and social regime at Rugby as at other English public schools, wherein they bullied and tyrannized over one another—a regime that I have dubbed ‘licensed war’. But in fact that very harshness may account for the appeal of works associated with the feminine and for the eagerness of Rugby boys to read texts that asked them to identify themselves with a heroine (such as the protagonist of Goody Two-Shoes)—to identify, that is, in ways that we have tended to ignore or think impossible. Boys at Rugby consumed what Mitzi Myers has called ‘cross-writing’: adult fictions abridged for children, romance tales abridged for adults (usually in chapbooks) that were appropriated by children, and fictions written for children with an eye to adult readers (cited in Ch. 4). Their reading not only crosses gender boundaries but suggests that some modern scholars’ accounts of this period’s literature for children as simply bourgeois and didactic are too narrow. Children’s books allowed boys to create an alternative home, a child’s space, where they could be children in a different way than a hostile, exacting school culture permitted. They could imagine a more attractive community. Thus, stories of survival and endurance—such as Goody Two-Shoes, which I have analysed in detail (Ch. 3)—could console, inspire, beguile. And the mixtures of elements in riddle books, fairy tales, and other fictions, while they may have provided conventional maxims and moral saws at the surface, could easily be read against the grain by children. Some boys at Rugby may have sought to hide their reading of all or selected novels from parents or headmasters: they paid in cash so that

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their reading would not appear on their periodical bills (Ch. 4). If they did attempt to keep such reading from adult scrutiny, then these Rugby boys were aware of negative cultural attitudes towards such novels as Ann Emelinda Skinn’s The Old Maid, the novel most frequently treated in this way. Remarkably, however, there is no evidence that the boys tried to keep their purchases of chapbooks or children’s books from appearing in their accounts. Rugby schoolboys bought children’s books in great numbers as well as fictional chapbooks costing eightpence—generally traditional romances greatly abridged for adults as the Clays’ usage of the term ‘chapbook’ indicates (ch. 4). These chapbooks and children’s books were originally intended for two different audiences. We can thus actually see in the Rugby bookselling records what happens when a specialized genre, the children’s book, new to the eighteenth century and addressed to a particular audience, is marketed to that audience in competition with an established but less specialized older form, the chapbook. Predictably, the new form supplanted the earlier one, yet to some extent the Clays’ marketing practices as well as changes in Rugby School’s administration influenced this result (Ch. 4). The elite audience for traditional chapbook literature corroborates what students of popular culture have maintained, that it is useless to attempt to distinguish ‘elite’ from ‘popular’ taste. The Rugby records indicate that shortly after the novel became a genre of some interest to adults, the form was abridged for children and appropriated by them with an avidity that adult customers of both the Clays and Stevens did not show (Ch. 4). Rugby boys bought far more abridged novels than provincial adults and schoolboys together bought of their originals. Among provincial adults, the most popular form that incorporated fiction was the magazine, with nearly 1,300 subscriptions recorded for Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth customers (Ch. 5). The availability of magazines considerably enlarged the Clays’ customer base for print: some 371 of the 700 adult subscribers obtained no other printed matter at all from the Clays. The publications most successful in creating their own audiences, that is, in attracting subscribers who bought no other print from the Clays, were the Town and Country Magazine and the Lady’s Magazine. Indeed, the twenty-seven women whose entire investment in print included only a subscription to the Lady’s represent 28 per cent of all the Clays’ women subscribers in and around Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth. Furthermore, since without them just 230 women altogether obtained printed matter from the Clays in their Daventry,

Conclusion

243

Rugby, and Lutterworth shops, these 27 exclusive subscribers to the Lady’s enlarged the Clays’ entire female customer base for print by nearly 12 per cent. In other words, the Lady’s expanded the female audience. These popular magazines, the Town and Country and the Lady’s, encouraged reader participation as writers in magazine culture. One subscriber to the Lady’s, William Gough, probably employed at the Globe inn near Daventry, published a number of enigmas and poems in the magazine, entering into exchanges with other male readers who were also neighbours. And in one of his poems, he confesses his pleasure in a work that he contends is ‘chiefly to amuse the fair’ (Ch. 5). Although the Clay records do not support the idea that magazines’ popularity enlarged the customer base for novels, they do demonstrate that an increased supply of magazines on the market—certainly along with greater literacy and disposable income—interacted with consumer demand to expand audiences for print between 1746 and 1780, and part of that expansion in class and gender came from men and women of the middling sort (Ch. 5). But this expansion brought with it two problems, at least in the provinces. First, audiences did not grow as fast as magazines proliferated: magazines had to cannibalize one another’s audiences. And second, the expanded audience tended to be fickle. Most subscriptions were short and many subscribers changed frequently. Case studies of subscribers to the Novelist’s Magazine show such fickleness, though a few maintained subscriptions and acquired other novels also (as most did not). Serialized publications were far less popular than magazines and less successful in attracting customers who did not otherwise purchase printed matter from the Clays: some 68 of about 230 customers for serialized works acquired them exclusively (Ch. 5). A number of these conclusions bear directly on our ability to reconstruct eighteenth-century reading practices. Although some Marxist and postmodern explorations of ideology imply that readers are helplessly indoctrinated by cultural texts, many theorists of reading practices suggest possibilities of resistance and of active dialogue. Prominent among them has been Michel de Certeau, who sees the reader as ‘poaching’ actively from texts, not as passively manipulated or controlled by them.² Roger Chartier, following de Certeau, speaks of readerly ‘appropriation’ of texts, an activity through which readers construct a text’s meaning for themselves, refashioning what they consume.³ Reading practices ² De Certeau, Practice, 174.

³ Chartier, Cultural Uses, 6–7.

244

Conclusion

characterized by appropriation are sceptical and can be subversive. Possibilities for resistance exist, too, in the pluralities of texts themselves. Looking at how French philosophic texts or libelles were put together before the revolution, Chartier notes their: overlapping genres, criss-crossing motifs, and … blending of levels of discourse such as political denunciation, pornographic description, and philosophical reflection. This very plurality, inscribed in the texts themselves, makes it impossible to conclude that they were read in an identical manner by all their readers or that their interpretation could be reduced to any one simple ideological statement.⁴

Many eighteenth-century English fictional texts were plural, like the libelles, and readers could adopt different subject positions as they read them, crossing generational and gender lines, for instance. I would argue that the evidence I can offer of cross-gendered, cross-generational, cross-class provincial reading in the second half of the eighteenth century in England reinforces the work of such theorists as de Certeau and of theorist-practitioners such as Chartier. And we can, with Jacqueline Pearson, imagine that readers served by the Clays and Stevens could read fiction conservatively or resistingly or both together.⁵ We might alternatively picture Samuel Butler at Rugby reading a novel surreptitiously as he waits to be called upon to construe Greek; or Egerton Stafford, also at Rugby, taking out the first two volumes of Light Summer Reading for the Ladies, or the History of Lady Lucy Fenton to read, despite knowing that the third volume was lost; or the butcher John Latimer getting through an entire volume of The History of Indiana Danby in one night by candlelight during winter; or Catherine Huddesford checking newspapers or review journals in the process of deciding to order the anonymous The Orphan Daughter (1768) and True Delicacy (1768) and receiving them on Guy Fawkes Day in 1768 but not, say, the equally anonymous The Visiting Day or John Cleland’s The Woman of Honour, also published in that year. But how they read them remains even more speculative. Perhaps this attempt to study provincial readers of fiction in the eighteenth century resonates most strongly and most ironically for me in the vain fiction I nurtured from the start: that it would be possible to realize this reading community imaginatively, to recreate fully from booksellers’ records these lost readers’ scenes of reading. ⁴ Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, transl. Lydia G. Cochrane (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 87. ⁵ Pearson, Women’s Reading, 19.

APPENDIX 1

Clays’ Circulating Library Stocks Evidence exists for the circulation of ninety-seven novels altogether within the three small libraries; forty-six in Daventry, fifty-eight in Warwick (forty exclusively), and thirty-four in Rugby (eleven exclusively). In Lutterworth only two novels were borrowed: Tom Jones and Sir William Harrington, both present in the Daventry library. Entries in italics in the Warwick and Rugby lists circulated in earlier libraries; entries preceded by † indicate female-authored works (twenty-three in Daventry, Warwick). Novels withdrawn from all three libraries were: all of Samuel Richardson’s (Pamela, Clarissa, Sir Charles Grandison), two by Henry Fielding (Amelia, Tom Jones); Tobias Smollett’s Humphry Clinker; and Arabian Nights, Fool of Quality, Light Summer Reading for the Ladies, Old Maid, The Picture, and Sir William Harrington. 1. Novels borrowed by adults and schoolboys from Daventry circulating library (= 46 titles); ∗ indicates borrowed by Daventry Academy boys (22 titles); ∗∗ indicates borrowed in Daventry only by schoolboys (2 titles) 1729 M243 1751 R90 1761 R653 1751 R83 1706 M23 1747 B229 †1779:3 †1769 R1314 1708 M38 1766 R993 1740 B30 †1778:11 1716 M85 1769 R1314 1726 M199 †1750 R29 †1769 R1276

Adventures of Abdullah Adventures of George Edwards a Creole Almoran and Hamet∗ Amelia∗ Arabian Nights Entertainments∗ Clarissa∗ Cox-Heath Camp [see note below] Delicate Distress∗ Devil on Two Sticks Fool of Quality [5 vols. 1765–70; 1770: 24]∗ Fortunate Country Maid [transl.] Friendship in a Nunnery, or American Fugitive Gil Blas Gordian Knot Gulliver’s Travels∗∗ Harriot Stuart History of Miss Sommerville

246 1771:53 †1755 R316 1756 R362 1745 B162 1745 B167 1768 R1185 1766 R1017 1737 M323 1743 B113 1774:17 1775:13 †1771:52 1740 B23 1654 W488 1751 R100 †1766 R1028 1678- W5557 1776:14 1722 1748 B253 1754 R246 1754 R221 1771:20 1687 W4803B 1685 W904B †1772:38 1749 B272 1759+R507 1768 R1201

Appendix 1 Humphry Clinker∗ Invisible Spy John Buncle [part 2: 1766] Leonora∗ Life of Bampfylde-Moore Carew Light Summer Reading: History of Lady Lucy Fenton∗ Memoirs of a Magdalen Memoirs of Signor Gaudentio di Lucca Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman Modern Fine Gentleman∗∗ Morning Ramble∗ Old Maid; History of Miss Ravensworth∗ Pamela Parthenissa Peregrine Pickle∗ Picture, The∗ Pilgrim’s Progress Pupil of Pleasure∗ Religious Courtship Roderick Random Sir Charles Grandison∗ Sir Harry Harald∗ Sir William Harrington∗ Spanish Decameron, 10 novels Spanish Rogue: Guzman de Alfarache Test of Filial Duty∗ Tom Jones∗ Tristram Shandy Visiting Day∗

Note: Cox-Heath Camp above presents a special case. It was borrowed from Thomas Clay by his sister-in-law Mary Clay and subsequently bought by her; it almost certainly did not circulate to anyone else. 2. Novels borrowed by adults in Samuel Clay’s Warwick library (= 58 titles, 40 exclusively in Warwick, 18 in Daventry also at various times) 1768 R1242 1750 R1 1768 R1172 1751 R83 1706 M23

Adventures of Miss Lucy Watson Adventures of Mr. Loveill Adventures of Oxymel Classic Amelia Arabian Nights Entertainments

Appendix 1 †1751 R86 1747 B229 1762 R699 1771:49 †1769 R1314 1771:40 †1769 R1298 1766 R993 1740 B30 1769 R1266 †1727 M209 1771:17 1769 R1314 †1758 R441 1767 R1105 †1763 R786 1761 R665 †1771:41 †1765 R884 †1767 R1077 †1769 R1276 1768 R1173 1771:53 1755 R320 1743 B119 1762 R738 †1744 B146 1768 R1185 1770:34 1770:12 1769 R1284 1754 R253 1766 R1017 †1768 R1187 †1762 R736 †1771:37 1768 R1190 †1771:52 1740 B23

Betsy Thoughtless Clarissa Country Seat Curate of Coventry Delicate Distress Elopement, or Perfidy Punished Emily Montague Fool of Quality [5 vols. 1765–70; 1770: 24] Fortunate Country Maid [transl.] French Lady Fruitless Enquiry Generous Inconstant Gordian Knot Henrietta High Life, or History of Miss Faulkland Histories Lady Frances S—and Lady Caroline S— History of James Lovegrove History of Lady Barton History of Miss Indiana Danby History of Miss Pittborough History of Miss Sommerville History of Two Young Gentlewomen Humphry Clinker James Ramble Jonathan Wild Launcelot Greaves Felicia to Charlotte Light Summer Reading: Lady Lucy Fenton Lucilla, or the Progress of Virtue Maid of Quality, or History of Lady Lucy Layton Margaretta, Countess of Rainsford Marriage Act Memoirs of a Magdalen Memoirs of a Scoundrel Millenium Hall Miss Melmoth, or the New Clarissa Modern Wife Old Maid; Hist. Miss Ravensworth Pamela

247

248 †1766 R1028 1769 R1290 1748 B253 1760 R550 1754 R246 1771:20 †1769 R1293 1749 B272 1771:33 1772:26 1766 R1007 1765 R896 †1767 R1098 1768 R1203

Appendix 1 Picture, The Reward of Virtue: Miss Polly Graham Roderick Random Romance of a Day Sir Charles Grandison Sir William Harrington The Sybil Tom Jones Undutiful Daughter Unfashionable Wife Vicar of Wakefield Wanderer Woman of Fashion Woman of Honour

3. Novels borrowed by Rugby schoolboys under John, Thomas, then Samuel Clay (= 34 titles; 11 circulated exclusively in Rugby). No record exists that fourteen of these titles ever circulated in Daventry, and of these fourteen, three (Emily Montague, Histories of Lady Frances S—and Lady Caroline S—, and Millenium Hall) circulated first in Warwick and then in Rugby only after Samuel Clay took over, suggesting that he made what was left of his Warwick library available to the boys from August 1781. The eleven titles listed below in a Roman typeface circulated exclusively at Rugby. 1751 R83 1706 M23 †1758 R447 1652 W106 1782:15 1725 M186 1747 B229 1771:45 †1769 R1298 †1770:3 †1772:31 1766 R993 †1778:11 1716 M85 †1750 R29 †1763 R786 1771:53

Amelia Arabian Nights Entertainments The Brothers Cassandra Cecilia Chinese Tales Clarissa Contemplative Man: History of Christopher Crab Emily Montague Fatal Friendship Fine Lady Fool of Quality [5 vols. 1765–70; 1770: 24] Friendship in a Nunnery, or American Fugitive Gil Blas Harriot Stuart Histories Lady Frances S—and Lady Caroline S— Humphry Clinker

Appendix 1 1768 R1185 1771:46 1743 B113 †1762 R736 1774:17 1775:13 †1771:52 1740 B23 1751 R100 1714 M75 1734 M294 †1766 R1028 1754 R246 1754 R221 1771:20 1749 B272 1737 MX45

Light Summer Reading: Lady Lucy Fenton Man of Feeling Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman Millenium Hall Modern Fine Gentleman Morning Ramble Old Maid; History of Miss Ravensworth Pamela Peregrine Pickle Persian Tales Peruvian Tales Picture, The Sir Charles Grandison Sir Harry Harald Sir William Harrington Tom Jones Venetian Tales

249

APPENDIX 2

Novels in English Bought and Borrowed, 1744–1807, by Date of First Publication

Date of 1st publication∗

Title

Totals

Clay customers

Stevens customers

bou. bor. all F M F M Rug. Rug. Ac. Ac. F M F M bou. bou. bor. bor. bou. bor. bou. bor. bou. bou. bor. bor. 1611 P4915 1639 P4914

Don Quixote Exemplary [or Entert’ng] Novels 1652 W106 Cassandra 1654 W488 Parthenissa 1678− W5557 Pilgrim’s Progress 1679 W169 Princess of Cleves [transl.] 1685 W904B Spanish Rogue: Guzman de Alfar. 1687− W656B Turkish Spy

25 1

1

26 1

2

1 2 1

3 2 14 1

2

2

13 1

2

2

1

12 1

7

2 1 1

1

4

1 2 1

2 1

1

3

1

1687 W4803B 1687 W7710A 1698–00 1699 W674 1700 M5 1706 M23

1716 M85 1718 M93 1719 M95 1719 M99 1720 M113 1722 1724 M163

1

1 2

1 2

12 1 6

12 1 20

14

4 1 2

2

9 1

8

1 23 1 8 1

4

1 1

2 1

3 1 1

1 1 1 1

1 24 1 9 1 2 3 11 1

4 2

6 1 6 17 1

1

1

2

2

1

1

2 5

5 1

5 1 2

1

2

1

2

1

11 1

1

1

2

3

1

4 7 1

1

1

2

4

2 1

6

1 6

1

1

1

1 3 3

4

1

3

1 (continued overleaf )

251

1724 M167 1725 M186 1726 M199 1727 M209

1

Appendix 2

1708 M38 1709 M45 1714 M75

Spanish Decameron, 10 novels Cynthia a novel London Spy (periodical; bk. 1703) Telemachus Scarron’s Works Arabian Nights Entertainments Devil on Two Sticks Memoirs New Atlantis Persian Tales 2v 1714 3v Gil Blas History of Hyppolito and Aminta Novels by Jane Barker Robinson Crusoe Memoirs of a Cavalier Religious Courtship Novels, 4v: Eliza Haywood La Belle Assembl´ee Chinese Tales Gulliver’s Travels Fruitless Enquiry

252

Date of 1st publication∗

Title

Totals

Clay customers

Stevens customers

bou. bor. all F M F M Rug. Rug. Ac. Ac. F M F M bou. bou. bor. bor. bou. bor. bou. bor. bou. bou. bor. bor. 1727 M216 1729 M243 1734 M294 1735 M307

1737 MX45 1739 M337 1740 B23 1740 B30 1741 B37 1741 B42 1741 B72 1742 B90 1742 B102

1 2 2 1 2 1 1 1 9 1

5 7

3

1 2 2

1

1

2 1

2

1 1 14 8

1 1 2

3 1

1 7 1

1 2 2

1 1 7 1

Appendix 2

1736 M318 1737 M323

English Hermit Adventures of Abdalla Peruvian Tales, 2v 1734; 3v 1739 Paysan Parvenu, Fortunate Peasant Life of Marianne Memoirs Sigr Gaudentio di Lucca Venetian Tales Jewish Spy Pamela Fortunate Country Maid [transl.] History Don Alphonso Blas Pamela in High Life Persiles and Sigismunda Joseph Andrews The Skimmer; Tanzai & Neadarne

1 3 1

1

1 7

1

1

2

3

1

2 1

1

2 1

1 2

2

1743 B113 1743 B119 1744 B146 1744 B149 1744 B150 1745 B162 1745 B167

1747 B214 1747 B223 1747 B229 1748 B246 1748 B253 1749 B272 1749 B273

3

6

1 1

1 1

2 2

2 1 2 7

2 1 5

2

1

1

1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1

1

1 1

1 1

1 1

1

1

1

1

1

1

14 1

16

30 1

1

8 1

9 7 5

2 15

11 22 5

2

1 3 3

3

3 1

1

2

1 1

2

1

3

4

1

2 3

3 1

2

2

6

3

1

4

1 1

5

1

3 1 1

1

1

3 1

253

1750 R1 1750 R10

3

Appendix 2

1745 B178 1746 B190

Mem. Unfort. Young Nobleman Jonathan Wild Felicia to Charlotte, Letters from David Simple Fortunate Foundlings Leonora Life of BampfyldeMoore Carew Oriental Tales Hist. Intrigues Priests and Nuns Adv. Kidnapped Orphan rev. 1767 Familiar Let. Char. David Simple Clarissa Memoirs Woman Pleasure (illus.) Roderick Random Tom Jones Governess; Little Female Academy Adventures Mr. Loveill Tom Jones in Married State

(continued overleaf )

Title

Totals

Clay customers

254

Date of 1st publication∗

Stevens customers

bou. bor. all F M F M Rug. Rug. Ac. Ac. F M F M bou. bou. bor. bor. bou. bor. bou. bor. bou. bou. bor. bor. 1750 R27

1751 R100 1751 R107 1753 1753 R192 1754 R221 1754 R246 1754 R253 1755 R316 1755 R318 1755 R320

1

1 5

1 1 1

3 1 1

12 3 2 23

1

3 4 1

1

5 1 1 13 3 2

1

26 1 1

3

2 1 1

5 2 1

1

4

1

1

4

1 1 1

8

6

3

1 7 29 2 1 1

7 32 2 5 1 1

4

1 1 1

5 2 1

2

3 5 1 1

3 11 1 1

1 5

3

3

Appendix 2

1750 R29 1751 R33 1751 R78 1751 R83 1751 R86 1751 R90

Adventures Joe Thompson Harriot Stuart Peter Wilkins Pompey the Little Amelia Betsy Thoughtless Adventures of G. Edwards a Creole Peregrine Pickle Chinese Spy Art of Ingeniously Tormenting Ferdinand Count Fathom Sir Harry Harald Sir Charles Grandison Marriage Act Invisible Spy Card, The Life and Adv. James Ramble

1756 R362 1757 R412 1758 R441 1758 R447 1759 R456 1759 R466 1759 R493

1761 R670 1762 R699 1762 R724 1762 R728

1

2 1 1

3 1

3

2

2

2

4 2

1 1

1

1

1 1

1 1

1

1

2 1

6 13 1 1 4 1 1 2

1

2

1 1

1

6

2

6 10 1 2

3 1

1

1 1 2

4

1

1

2 1 1

1 2 6 1 1

1 1

2 1 1

1

2 3

1

1

1

1

1

1 1

1

2 (continued overleaf )

255

1762 R736

2

Appendix 2

1759 R495 1759+R507 1760 R550 1760 R577 1761 R653 1761 R665

John Buncle [part 2: 1766] Letters between Henry and Francis Henrietta Brothers, The [= History Osmond] Agenor and Ismena [transl. French] History of Portia Mother, or the Happy Distress Rasselas Tristram Shandy Romance of a Day Adventures of a Guinea Almoran and Hamet History of James Lovegrove Miss Sidney Bidulph Country Seat, or Summer Eve. Ent Reverie, The History Longsword Earl of Salis. Millenium Hall

256

Date of 1st publication∗

Title

Totals

Clay customers

Stevens customers

bou. bor. all F M F M Rug. Rug. Ac. Ac. F M F M bou. bou. bor. bor. bou. bor. bou. bor. bou. bou. bor. bor. 1762 R738 1763 R769 1764 R778

1764 R819 1764 R862 1765 R884 1765 R868 1765 R896 1766 R993 1766 R1007 1766 R1017 1766 R1028 1766 R1038

1 1

1

6

6

2

1 2 2

14

2

1

2

2

2 4

1

4

1 2 6

1 1 1

1 3 34

1

3 29 4 2 8

18 2 8 2

1 1

4

1 5

2 1

1 1 1

2 2

2

1

Appendix 2

1763 R784 1763 R786

Launcelot Greaves History of Julia Mandeville Letters Theodosius and Constantia Marmontel’s Tales Histories Lady Fr. S. & Caroline S. Memoirs Miss D’Arville Tales of the Genii History of Miss Indiana Danby Castle of Otranto Wanderer, The Fool of Quality [5 vols. 1765–70] Vicar of Wakefield Memoirs of a Magdalen Picture, The History of Sir George Ellison

3

1 1

3

3

3 5

1 1

3 1 2

1

1

9 1

2

12

1 2

1 2

3

7

1

1766 R1046 1767 R1077 1767 R1098 1767 R1105 1767 R1121 1767 R1134 1768 R1172 1768 R1173

1768 R1187 1768 R1190 1768 R1191 1768 R1196 1768 R1201 1768 R1203 1768 R1234 1768 R1242 1769 R1264

2 2

2 2

1 2

1 2

1

1 1 1

1

1

1

14

15

1

1 1

2 1 1

1 1

1 2 10 1 10 2 1

2 1

1

1

1 1

1 1 1 1 1

1 1

3

2

Appendix 2

1768 R1185

8

1 1

1

2 10 1 10 2

2

1

1

3

2 1

1

1

4

5 3

1

2

(continued overleaf )

257

Midnight Spy History of Miss Pittborough Woman of Fashion High Life; History Miss Faulkland Barford Abbey History of Nourjahad Adventures Oxymel Classic History Two Young Gentlewomen Light Sum. Rg.: Lady Lucy Fenton Memoirs of a Scoundrel Modern Wife Orphan Daughter, a Moral Tale True Delicacy Visiting Day Woman of Honour Sentimental Journey Adventures Miss Lucy Watson Fatal Obedience; Hist. Mr Freeland

258

Date of 1st publication∗

Title

Totals

Clay customers

Stevens customers

bou. bor. all F M F M Rug. Rug. Ac. Ac. F M F M bou. bou. bor. bor. bou. bor. bou. bor. bou. bou. bor. bor. 1769 R1266 1769 R1271 1769 R1276

1769 R1290 1769 R1293 1769 R1296 1769 R1298 1769 R1304 1769 R1314 1769 R1314 1769 R1320 1769 R1334 1769 R1340 1769 R1343

1 1 1

1 1

4

5

1

1

1

1

2

1 2 1

2 1 8 1 13 7 1 2 1

1

1

1 2 1

6 13 7

1 1 1

2

2 1

Appendix 2

1769 R1284

French Lady History Amintor and Teresa History of Miss Sommerville Margaretta, Countess of Rainsford Reward Virtue: Polly Graham Sybil, The Hermit, The Emily Montague Exemplary Mother Delicate Distress Gordian Knot Common Sense Adventures of an Atom Sentimental Journey contin., iii, iv Loves Othniel and Achsah

1 1 1 1 1

1

1 2

5 2

4

6 5

2 1

1 1 1

1

1770:3 1770:12 1770:14 1770:14 1770:23

1770:33 1770:34 1771 1771:3 1771:17 1771:20 1771:33 1771:37 1771:40

1

2 1

2 2

7

7

2

2

1

1 1

1 1 2 1 1

1

1

4

1

1

1

1 1 1

1 1 1

2 1

4 19 2 2

1 4 19 3 2

2

2

1

1

2 1

1

1

1

2 1

Appendix 2

1770:26 1770:28 1770:29

1 1

1

2 5 2

2 2

7

5

2 1

1 (continued overleaf )

259

Fatal Friendship Maid of Quality: Lady L Layton Memoirs Miss Arabella Bolton, i Memoirs Miss Arabella Bolton, ii Adventures of a Bank Note Younger Sister Theodora Life and Adv. Timothy Ginnadrake Placid Man Lucilla, or the Progress Virtue [transl.] Pupil of Nature [Voltaire: Huron] Anecdotes of a Convent Generous Inconstant Sir William Harrington Undutiful Daughter Miss Melmoth: The New Clarissa Elopement or Perfidy Punished

Title

Totals

Clay customers

260

Date of 1st publication∗

Stevens customers

bou. bor. all F M F M Rug. Rug. Ac. Ac. F M F M bou. bou. bor. bor. bou. bor. bou. bor. bou. bou. bor. bor. 1771:41 1771:45

1771:53 1772:11 1772:26 1772:30 1772:31 1772:38 1773:24 1773:26 1773:34 1773:36 1774:3

1 3 6 1

2 1

2 1

2 4 13

12 4 16

17

23 1

3

3 1

1 1

2 2

1 1 5 3

1 1

3 2 1 1 6 3 1

1

1 1

4 1 1 1

2 1

3 4

2

2

1

1

5

1

9

3

1

2

3

1

4

3

1

2

1

3 1 2

1

1

1

1 1 3 2

1 1

Appendix 2

1771:46 1771:49 1771:52

History of Lady Barton Contemplative Man; Hist. Chr. Crab Man of Feeling Curate of Coventry Old Maid, The; Miss Ravensworth Humphry Clinker Hist. Miss Dorinda Catesby &c. Unfashionable Wife Rambles Mr Frankly [& 1776:7] Fine Lady Test of Filial Duty Tears of Sensibility Cecilia or Eastern Lovers Spiritual Quixote Man of the World La Belle Philosophe, or Fair Philos.

1774:10 1774:14 1774:16 1774:17 1774:24 1774:30

1776:7 1776:8 1776:14 1777 1777 1777 1777:7

1

1 1

1

1

1

1

2 1

2

2

1

3 1

6 4

6 4 3

3 1 1

1

1 2 1

4

2

3 1

1

1

3

3

5

1

4 1

1 1

1

1

1

1 1 2 3

2

1

1

1 3

1

2

1 5

1 2

1

2 (continued overleaf )

261

1777:13

1

Appendix 2

1775:13 1775:16 1775:22

History of Lord Stanton Locket, or History Mr Singleton Mem. Unfortunate Lady of Quality Modern Fine Gentleman Juliet Grenville History Arsaces, Prince of Betlis Morning Ramble Waiting Maid Village Memoirs [1st publ. 1765] Lady Ann Neville Isabella Pupil of Pleasure Collection Novels (3v; E. Griffith) Englishman’s Fortnight at Paris Incas, The [transl. Marmontel] Mutability of Human Life Julia de Roubign´e

Title

Totals

Clay customers

262

Date of 1st publication∗

Stevens customers

bou. bor. all F M F M Rug. Rug. Ac. Ac. F M F M bou. bou. bor. bor. bou. bor. bou. bor. bou. bou. bor. bor. 1777:16 1777:17 1778:10 1778:11

1779:3 1779:8 1779:10 1779:11 1779:13 1779:17 1780:12 1780:18 1780:2 1780:23 1781 1781:1

1 2 8 1

1

1 4

1 1 1 3 2 1 1 1 2

1 2 1

1 4 1 2

1

2 9 5

1 2 1

1

1

2 1 5 3 1 1 1 2

1

1 4 1 2

1 4 2

2

1

2

1 2 1 1 1 1 2

1 1 1

2 1

1 3

1 1

1

1

Appendix 2

1779

Old English Baron (Champ. Virt.) History Miss Temple Evelina Friendship in a Nunnery Lady Eliza Audley [retransl.] Cox-Heath Camp Sylph, The Sorrows of Werther Columella Hermit of the Rock Shenstone Green Parsonage House Alwyn, or Gentleman Comedian Count de Poland Emma Corbett Sentimental Excursions Adventures of a Hackney Coach

1781:5 1781:9 1782 1782:12 1782:14 1782:15 1783:9 1783:15

1784:17 1785:22 1785:29 1785:46 1786:31

1

1

1 1

1 1

1

1 3 2 1

1 12 1

1 1 1 12

1 1 15 2 2

1

1 1 1 12

1 1

1

9

1

1 2 1

1

4 2

4 2

4 2

2

2

2

2 1

1

2 1

1

1 2

1

1 12

1 2

1

1 1

1

1 1

1

1

(continued overleaf )

263

1786:34 1787:34

1

Appendix 2

1783:16 1783:19 1783:22 1783A3

Distressed Virtue; Hist. H. Nelson Gilham Farm a novel Anecdotes of a Boarding School Mount Henneth George Bateman Cecilia Adelaide and Theodore Recess, The [1785:37 also] Burton Wood Two Mentors Man in the Moon Sandford & Merton, +1786, 1789 Italian Letters Anna, or the Welsh Heiress Tales of the Castle Modern Times; Adv. G. Outcast Tales 12C, 13C [1789: Norman T] Caroline of Litchfield Curse of Sentiment

264

Date of 1st publication∗

Title

Totals

Clay customers

Stevens customers

bou. bor. all F M F M Rug. Rug. Ac. Ac. F M F M bou. bou. bor. bor. bou. bor. bou. bor. bou. bou. bor. bor. 1787:38

1788:72 1788:79 1789 1789:31 1789:37 1789:41 1789:54 1789:63 1789:68

1

1

1

1 1 2 1 1

1 2 1 1

2 2

1 2

2

2

2 1 2

1 2

1

6 3

5 3

3

3

1 1 2 1 1 1 2

1

2 2 1 2 5 3

1

1

2

1

1

2

Appendix 2

1787:39 1788:8 1788:47 1788:54 1788:58

Louisa, or the Cottage on the Moor Sorrows of the Heart Augusta New Robinson Crusoe Julia de Gramont Melissa and Marcia, or the Sisters Emmeline Original Stories from Real Life Paul and Mary [transl. Paul & Virginie] Agnes De-Courci Arundel Hartley House, Calcutta Zeluco Cometilla, or Views of Nature Ethelinde

1790 1790 1790:19 1790:61 1791:41 1791:53

1794 1794:7 1794:16 1794:23 1794:26 1794:41 1794:47 1794A6

1 1 1 1 1 1

1

1 1 1

1 1 1 1 2 6 1 1 1 1 1 4 2

4

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 2

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1

1 1 2

6 1 1

6 1

1 1 1 8 2

1

Appendix 2

1791:58 1792:6 1792:29 1792:32 1792:42 1793:10 1793:15 1793:45

1

1 1 4 2

1

3

(continued overleaf )

265

Smollett’s Works Sterne’s Works Maid of Kent Sicilian Romance Simple Story Popular Tales of the Germans Romance of the Forest Child of Providence Man As He Is New Arabian Tales Marcus Flamineus Minstrel, The Maxims of Gallantry Advantages of Education Evenings at Home Count Roderic’s Castle Ellen, Countess of Castle Howel Caleb Williams Packet, The Herman of Unna Mysteries of Udolpho Brothers, The, Novel for Children

Title

Totals

Clay customers

266

Date of 1st publication∗

Stevens customers

bou. bor. all F M F M Rug. Rug. Ac. Ac. F M F M bou. bou. bor. bor. bou. bor. bou. bor. bou. bou. bor. bor. 1795 1795:7 1795:17 1795:36 1795:44

1796:57 1796:65 1796:67 1796:82 1796:89 1797:26 1797:40

1 2 2 2

1 1

2 3 1 1 3 1

5

1 1 6 1 2 3

1 1

1

1

1 1 3 2 2 2 3 1 1 8 1 1 1 6 2 3 3 2

1 1 1

2 2 2 2

3 1 1 3 1

5

1 1

1 1

6 1 1 2

1 1

1

1

Appendix 2

1796 1796:2 1796:21 1796:22 1796:26 1796:36

Comforts of Arabella Montford Castle Henry Democrat, The Victim of Magical Delusion Paul and Virginia Agatha Hermsprong Modern Novel Writing Camilla Hannah Hewit, the Female Crusoe Nature and Art Abbey of Clugny Edward Marchmont Gossip’s Story Beggar Girl and her Benefactors History of Vanillo Gonzales

1797:45 1797:58 1797:70 1797:72 1798:19 1798:56 1798:57 1798:60 1799

1800:42 1800:56 1800:69

1 3 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 3 2 2 1

1 1

2 3 1 1 2 1 1

1 1 1 1 3 1 2 2 2

1 1 1 1

1

3 1 2 1 2

1 1 1 3 3 2 2

1 1 3 2 2 1

1

2 3 1

2 3 1

1 2 1 1

2 1 1

1 1

1

(continued overleaf )

267

1800:74 1801:25 1801:35 1801:45

1 1 1

Appendix 2

1799:34 1799:76 1799:79 1799:94 1799:95 1800:30 1800:39

Hugh Trevor Grasville Abbey Italian, The Count de Santerre Arthur Fitz-Albini Tales of the Cottage Tales of the Hermitage Pity’s Gift Domestic Stories— Juvenile Lit. Norman Banditti Aristocrat, The Natural Daughter Vagabond, The A Tale of the Times Castle Rackrent Memoirs of Modern Philosophers Mourtray Family Mordaunt Letters of a Solitary Wanderer School for Fashion Moral Tales Letitia Infernal Quixote

268

Date of 1st publication∗

Title

Totals

Clay customers

Stevens customers

bou. bor. all F M F M Rug. Rug. Ac. Ac. F M F M bou. bou. bor. bor. bou. bor. bou. bor. bou. bou. bor. bor. 1801:59

2

1

1

1 1 1 1

1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 4

1 1

1 2

1 1 1 1 1 2

1 1 2

1 1 1

1 1

1

1 1

1 1 1 1 1 2

Notes: ∗ Date of first publication followed by a letter refers to identification number in one of the standard bibliographies of fiction published in English: Pollard and Pedgrave (P), Wing (W), McBurney (M), Beasley (B), Raven (R). Year followed by colon refers to numbers in Garside, Raven, and Sch¨owerling, The English Novel, 1770–1829. See Bibliography for full citations. Abbreviations: bou. = bought; bor. = borrowed; F = female adult; M = male adult; Rug. = Rugby boys; Ac. = Academy boys.

Appendix 2

1801:64 1802:17 1802:60 1804:16 1805:28 1805:29 1805:33 1805:35 1805:41 1805:57 1806:4 1806:64

Adonia, a Desultory Story Splendid Misery Wife and Mistress Infidel Father Aubrey Flim-flams! Modern Griselda Fleetwood Pilgrim of the Cross Secret, The Adeline Mowbray Cottager’s Daughter Winter in London

APPENDIX 3

All Children’s Book and Chapbook Titles Bought by Rugby Boys 3.1 Newbery books bought by Rugby boys, 1744–84, by year of first publication (total = 990) Roscoe First published Short title ID † J225 J248 J321 J219 J308 J186 J358 J253 J270 J27 J346 J7a J190b J74

1744 1749 1749 1751 1752 1753 1753 1753 1753 1756 1756 1757 1757 1757

J258 J309 J334

1759 1759 1760

J348

1761

J175 J77

1763 1763

J174 J97

1763 1764

Little Pretty Pocket Book Mosaic Creation Philosophy for Children Lilliputian Magazine Trip’s History of Birds & Beasts Infant Tutor Be Merry and Wise (Jests) Museum New Year’s Gift History of the Bible Pretty Poems for Children Aesop’s Fables in Verse Food for the Mind (Riddles) Poems for Children Six Foot High New History of England Pretty Play-Thing Short Histories for Improvement of the Mind Telescope’s Newtonian Philosophy History of Evangelists Compendious History of the World Life of Christ Easter-Gift

Cost (in Total sold pence) 6 6 6 12 6 6 6 12 2 6 6 6 6 12

6 1 8 31 38 4 24 34 2 14 13 16 49 15

6 3 12

106 1 11

12

6

12 18

5 42

12 2

1 2

(continued overleaf )

270

Appendix 3

3.1 (cont.) Newbery books bought by Rugby boys, 1744–84, by year of first publication (total = 990) Roscoe First published Short title ID † J110 J148 J368 J380 J40

1764 1764 1764 1764 1764

J167 J301 J366 J336 J356 J315 J279

1765 1765 1766 1767 1767 1768 1768

J98 J317 J132 J131 J382 J251 J316 J222 J88 J48 J381 J214 J233 J223 J347 J354 J345 J86 J229 J16 J52 J299

1768 1768 1768 1769 1769 1769 1769 1770 1770 1770 1770 1770 1770 1770 1770 1771 1771 1771 1772 1773 1773 1773

Fairing, or Golden Toy Lives of the Martyrs Valentine’s Gift Whitsuntide Gift History of Book of Common Prayer Little Goody Two-Shoes Polite Academy Twelfth-Day Gift Sixpennyworth of Wit Tom Thumb’s Folio Clarissa Newbery’s Tales of Mother Goose Robinson Crusoe Sir Charles Grandison Tom Jones Joseph Andrews Moral Lectures Mother’s Gift Pamela Little Female Orators Curiosities of London History of the Enchanted Castle Entertaining Stories Tommy and Nancy Goodwill London Cries Lottery Book Tea-Table Miscellany Hobby-Horse Sugar Plumb Cries of London Juvenile Trials Juvenile Sports Lilliputian Auction Poetical Description of Birds

Cost (in Total sold pence) 6 12 6 2 12

34 1 7 4 1

6 12 12 6 1 12 9

26 2 10 17 10 1 35

6 12 12 12 6 4 12 6 6 6 6 6 1 2 6 2 6 6 6 6 1 6

61 8 38 27 6 1 4 4 18 3 3 9 4 1 1 1 1 9 13 16 4 3

Appendix 3

271

3.1 (cont.) Newbery books bought by Rugby boys, 1744–84, by year of first publication (total = 990) Roscoe First published Short title ID † J298 J15 J5 J213 J220 J280 J355 J369 J230 J50 J47 J47a — — —

1773 1773 1773 1774 1774 1774 1774 1774 1776 1777 1787‡ 1787‡ — — —

Poetical Description of Beasts Drawing School Gulliver’s Travels Gil Blas Lilliputian Masquerade Picture Exhibition Tom Thumb’s Exhibition Vice in its Proper Shape Lives of the Admirals Don Quixote Pilgrim’s Progress, part 1 Pilgrim’s Progress, part 2 Newbery’s Little Books Newbery’s History Book Newbery’s History Book

Cost (in Total sold pence) 6 6 6 12 2 6 2 6 12 12 9 9 6 6 3

1 6 48 50 2 3 22 2 6 2 20 16 2 2 1

Notes: † Roscoe ID numbers refer to numbers in Sydney Roscoe’s John Newbery and His Successors; see Bibliography. ‡ These works were first purchased by Rugby boys in March 1779, at the stated prices; possibly they were produced by another publisher (or Newbery issued these works earlier).

3.2

Newbery books bought by Rugby boys, 1744–1784, by title

Roscoe First published Short title ID † J7a J315 J77

1757 1768 1763

J86 J88 J50 J15 J97 J381 J110

1771 1770 1777 1773 1764 1770 1764

Aesop’s Fables in Verse Clarissa Compendious History of the World Cries of London Curiosities of London Don Quixote Drawing School Easter-Gift Entertaining Stories Fairing, or Golden Toy

Cost (in Total sold pence) 6 12 18

16 1 42

6 6 12 6 2 6 6

9 18 2 6 2 3 34

(continued overleaf )

272

Appendix 3

3.2 (cont.)

Newbery books bought by Rugby boys, 1744–1784, by title

Roscoe First published Short title ID † J190b J213 J5 J40

1757 1774 1773 1764

J48 J175 J27 J354 J186 J131 J16 J229 J174 J52 J219 J220 J222 J167 J225 J230 J148 J233 J223 J358 J382 J248 J251 J253 J258 J270

1770 1763 1756 1771 1753 1769 1773 1772 1763 1773 1751 1774 1770 1765 1744 1776 1764 1770 1770 1753 1769 1749 1769 1753 1759 1753

J279

1768

J316

1769

Food for the Mind (Riddles) Gil Blas Gulliver’s Travels History of Book of Common Prayer History Enchanted Castle History of Evangelists History of the Bible Hobby-Horse Infant Tutor Joseph Andrews Juvenile Sports Juvenile Trials Life of Christ Lilliputian Auction Lilliputian Magazine Lilliputian Masquerade Little Female Orators Little Goody Two-Shoes Little Pretty Pocket Book Lives of the Admirals Lives of the Martyrs London Cries Lottery Book Merry and Wise, Jests Moral Lectures Mosaic Creation Mother’s Gift Museum New History of England New Year’s Gift Newbery’s History Book Newbery’s History Books Newbery’s Little Books Newbery’s Mother Goose’s Tales Pamela

Cost (in Total sold pence) 6 12 6 12

49 50 48 1

6 12 6 2 6 12 6 6 12 1 12 2 6 6 6 12 12 1 2 6 6 6 4 12 6 2 3 6 6 9

3 5 14 1 4 27 16 13 1 4 31 2 4 26 6 6 1 4 1 24 6 1 1 34 106 2 1 2 2 35

12

4

Appendix 3 3.2 (cont.)

273

Newbery books bought by Rugby boys, 1744–1784, by title

Roscoe First published Short title ID † J321 J280 J47 J47a J74

1749 1774 1787 1787 1757

J298 J299 J301 J309 J346 J98 J334

1773 1773 1765 1759 1756 1768 1760

J317 J336 J345 J347 J348

1768 1767 1771 1770 1761

J132 J355 J356 J214 J308 J366 J368 J369 J380

1768 1774 1767 1770 1752 1766 1764 1774 1764

Cost (in Total sold pence)

Philosophy for Children Picture Exhibition Pilgrim’s Progress, part 1 Pilgrim’s Progress, part 2 Poems for Children Six Foot High Poetical Description of Beasts Poetical Description of Birds Polite Academy Pretty Play-Thing Pretty Poems for Children Robinson Crusoe Short Histories for Improvement of the Mind Sir Charles Grandison Sixpennyworth of Wit Sugar Plumb Tea-Table Miscellany Telescope’s Newtonian Philosophy Tom Jones Tom Thumb’s Exhibition Tom Thumb’s Folio Tommy and Nancy Goodwill Trip’s Hist. Birds & Beasts Twelfth-Day Gift Valentine’s Gift Vice in its Proper Shape Whitsuntide Gift

6 6 9 9 12

8 3 20 16 15

6 6 12 3 6 6 12

1 3 2 1 13 61 11

12 6 6 6 12

8 17 1 1 6

12 2 1 6 6 12 6 6 2

38 22 10 9 38 10 7 2 4

3.3 Eightpenny Chapbooks bought by Rugby boys, 1744–1784 (total = 170) Short title Aesop’s Fables Book of Knowledge

Total sold 1 2 (continued overleaf )

274

Appendix 3 3.3 (cont.) Eightpenny Chapbooks bought by Rugby boys, 1744–1784 (total = 170) Short title Cambridge Jests Guy, Earl of Warwick History Robin & Johnny Armstrong History Twelve Caesars History Nine Worthies History Book History Charles XII of Sweden History Dick Hazard History Don Quevedo History Earthquakes History English Rogue History Fools of Fortune History Moll Flanders History Queen Elizabeth History Reynard the Fox History Robbers History Rosamund History Sir Francis Drake History of America History of Essex History of Fairies History of Fortunatus History of Parismus History of Pirates History of Robin Hood History of Troy History of Wales History of Witches History of the Highwaymen Hocus Pocus a Chap Book London Jester Lucky Idiot Memorable Accidents New Whole Duty of Prayer

Total sold 1 25 1 2 1 30 3 2 1 2 3 1 1 1 4 1 1 2 1 1 3 5 1 1 6 3 3 1 5 4 2 2 1 1

Appendix 3

275

3.3 (cont.) Eightpenny Chapbooks bought by Rugby boys, 1744–1784 (total = 170) Short title

Total sold

Profitable Recreations Rich Cabinet Robinson Crusoe Seven Champions of Christendom Seven Wise Masters Seven Wise Mistresses Two Journeys to Jerusalem Valentine and Orson Winter Evening’s Entertainment

1 1 9 15 2 4 1 11 1

3.4 Children’s books (other than Newbery books) bought by Rugby boys, 1744–1784 (total = 241) Short title Baxter’s Discoveries Book of Fables Book of Fables Book of Fables Cheats of London Child’s Play Thing (1743) Conquest of Mexico Conquest of Mexico 18d . Daphne and Amintor Dilworth’s Anson’s Voyage Dilworth’s Buccaneers America Dilworth’s Don Quixote Dilworth’s Hist. England Dilworth’s Hist. King of Sweden Dilworth’s History Book Dilworth’s Life Cromwell Dilworth’s Life Czar Muscovy Dilworth’s Life Marlborough Dilworth’s Life of Pope Dilworth’s Life of Swift Dilworth’s Marshall Saxe Dilworth’s Prince Eugene

Cost (in pence)

Total sold

6 3 6 1 12 12 12 18 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12

2 1 2 1 2 5 1 2 1 5 2 4 2 1 2 1 2 4 1 1 1 1 (continued overleaf )

276

Appendix 3

3.4 (cont.) Children’s books (other than Newbery books) bought by Rugby boys, 1744–1784 (total = 241) Short title Dilworth’s Royal Assassins English Hermit English Hermit 6d . English Rogue 8vo Entertaining Dialogues Gessner’s 18d . Death of Abel Gessner’s 12d . Death of Abel History Reynard the Fox 12d . History Amadis de Gaul History Book, 6d . History Book, 1d . History Book, 2d . History Book, 12d . History Charles 12th, 18d . History King of Prussia History Kouli Khan History Robin Hood History Dick Whittington & his Cat History of Cinderella History of Czar Peter the Great History of England 12d . History of Kouli Khan Holiday Amusements House that Jack Built Life Prince Eugene Life of Christ Little books London Vocabulary Man of Pleasure Pocket Book Memoirs of Cranston Mother Goose’s Tales (large) Narrative of Harrow Pilgrim’s Progress Pleasing Miscellany

Cost (in pence)

Total sold

12 18 6 12 6 18 12 12 6 6 1 2 12 18 12 12 4 6 6 18 12 18 6 2 18 6 2 12 2 3 18 6 12 6

1 35 10 1 1 2 3 1 1 19 4 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 4 2 1 2 1 2 1 1 2

Appendix 3

277

3.4 (cont.) Children’s books (other than Newbery books) bought by Rugby boys, 1744–1784 (total = 241) Short title Roderick Random Royal Assassins Seven Champions, 12d . Small Book of Dialogues Smarts [of] Hymen St Paul’s Story Book Tales of the Fairies Tim Grin’s Jests Tom Gay’s Jests Tom Thumb’s History Tom Thumb’s Travels Tower of London True Friend, Master Unfortunate Englishman Westminster Abbey Windsor Castle Wisdom in Miniature World Turned Upside Down Youth’s Divine Pastime

Cost (in pence)

Total sold

9 12 12 6 6 12 2 9 6 6 6 18 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 6

1 1 2 1 1 4 1 11 1 1 2 2 4 1 30 3 4 2 7 1

APPENDIX 4

Magazines taken by Clay customers, Daventry, Rugby, and Lutterworth only, 1746–1780, with customer totals

All subscribers Subscriptions

Women

Men

Schoolboys†

98 133

602 1,103

31† 60

Total 730† 1,296

†Schoolboys at Rugby School and Daventry Dissenting Academy; one Rugby boy, John Parker, jun., subscribed at Rugby and as an adult; he is counted only once in the totals.

Adult subscribers: Totals (Take both magazines and serials) Adult customers for print Print other than serials or magazines Print and magazines Only magazines and serials Only magazines, no other print Only serials, no other print Total

Women 98 (5) Women

Men 602 (100) Men

Totals 700 (105) Totals

156

939

1,095

45 1 52 3 257

265 18 319 64 1,605

310 19 371 67 1,862

Magazines and subscriber totals, Daventry records 1746–80: individual subscribers, adults and schoolboys; subscriptions by book clubs are excluded.

Appendix 4 Subscriptions 1 2 3 5 1 3 9 4 2 10 1 1 3 2 25 12

Women’s subscriptions 1

1

3 1

8 33 3 1 12 25 3 5 2 3 137 11 3 24 10 8

1

7 1 1 1

279

Short title of magazine and years of issue Antiquarian Repository 1777 Beauties of All the Magazines 1762–4 (Mayo 13†) Biographical 1777 British Magazine 1760–7 (Mayo 26) British Miscellany 1779 British Oracle 1770 Builder’s 1774 Cambridge 1770 Candid Review 1765 Cathedral 1765 Collection Hymns 1779 Complete 1764 Convivial 1777 Copperplate 1774–7 Court and City 1770–1 (Mayo 51) Court Miscellany, or Ladies New Magazine 1765–71 (Mayo 54) Covent Garden, or Amorous Repository 1772–4? (Mayo 55) Critical Review 1756+ Diarian Repository 1771–4 Edinburgh Magazine and Review 1773–6 (Mayo 70) English Magazine 1777 Every Man’s Magazine 1771–3 (Mayo 80) Farmer’s 1777 Freeholder’s 1769–71 (Mayo 86) Gardener’s 1780 General 1777 Gentleman’s Magazine 1731+ (Mayo 91) Gentleman’s Museum 1770–2 Gospel Magazine 1766 Gospel Magazine, 1773–80 Grand Magazine of Magazines 1758–9 (Mayo 99) Grand Magazine of Universal Intelligence 1758–60 (Mayo 100) (continued overleaf )

280

Appendix 4

Subscriptions 1 145 3 10 2 1 112 6 1 8 8 18 3 7 13 34 3

Women’s subscriptions 66 1

5 5

1

1

5 19 8 9 11 29 3 14 1 39

2

Short title of magazine and years of issue Hutton’s Miscellany 1771 Lady’s Magazine, Wheble’s August 1770–December 1772 and Robinson and Roberts’ April 1771 + (Mayo 116) Lady’s and Gentleman’s Museum 1777 Lawyer’s 1773–7 Literary Magazine 1758 Literary Transactions 1764 London Magazine 1732–83 (Mayo 124) London Review 1775–77 Lottery 1777 Magazin a` la mode, d´edi´e aux dames 1777–8 (Mayo 127) Macaroni Magazine 1777? Martin’s 1758–64 Matrimonial Magazine, or Monthly Anecdotes of Love and Marriage 1775 (Mayo 131) Medical 1773–4 Monthly Miscellany 1774–7 (Mayo 141) Monthly Review 1749+ Moral and Entertaining Magazine 1777–80 (Mayo 148) Museum Rusticum 1764 New Musical and Universal Magazine 1774–7 (Mayo 156; Mayo gives the closing date as 1775(?) ) New Universal Magazine 1751–9 (Mayo 159) Newgate 1765 Novelist’s Magazine 1780–9 (Mayo 168) Oxford Magazine, 1768–76 (Mayo 169) Parliamentary Register 1777–80 Political Magazine and Parliamentary, Naval, Military, and Literary Journal 1780–91 (Mayo 175) Remembrancer 1777 Royal Magazine, or Gentleman’s Monthly Companion 1759–71 (Mayo 186)

Appendix 4 Subscriptions

Women’s subscriptions

2 2 22 6 5 22 157 1 1 89

4 16 4

25

1

7 4

1

44

4

4 6 8 6 total 1,296 ∗

3

1 1

281

Short title of magazine and years of issue St. James’s Magazine, 1762–4 (Mayo 189) Sandys Museum 1779 Sentimental Magazine 1773–7 (Mayo 200) Sessions Papers 1774–7‡ Spiritual 1764–6 Theatrical 1779+ Town and Country 1769–96 (Mayo 213) Trader’s 1775 Treasury 1770 Universal Magazine 1747–1803 (Mayo 218) Universal Museum, or Gentleman’s and Lady’s Polite Magazine 1762–72 (Mayo 220) Weekly Amusement 1763–7 (Mayo 223) Weekly Miscellany, or Agreeable and Instructive Entertainer 1772–5 (Mayo 228) Westminster Magazine, or the Pantheon of Taste 1772–85 (Mayo 231) Whimsical Repository 1774 Wonderful Magazine 1764–6 (Mayo 233) Christian’s Magazine 1764–5 Young Gentleman’s Magazine 1777

133

Just 11 Rugby School subscribers included in Daventry Records †Robert D. Mayo, ‘Register of Periodicals’, The English Novel in the Magazines 1740–1815 (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1962), catalogue number. ‡Before 1774, the Clays treated a work with this title as a serialized publication; it is not clear whether the two are the same publication. Six customers took the serialized Sessions Papers briefly before 1774.

APPENDIX 5

Adult consumers of Novels and Magazines, 1746–80, Daventry, Rugby, Lutterworth Only Adult∗ customers for novels Women

Men

Total

25 24 4 45

82 33 9 106

107 57 13 151

Buy Borrow Buy and borrow total

Adult∗ subscribers to magazines Subscriptions begin 1746–80 All subscribers

1770–80 only

Pre-1770 Post-1770 Total All subscribers

Totals Buy novels Borrow novels Buy and borrow Mags. and novels

275 27 12 4

425 21 13 5

35

29

Men Buy novels Borrow novels Buy and borrow

260 23 12 4

342 16 6 3

Women Buy novels Borrow novels Buy and borrow

15 4 0 0

83 5 7 2

1770–3 1774–80 Total

700 Totals 48 Buy novels 25 Borrow novels 9 Buy and borrow 64 Mags. and novels

228 12 9 2

197 9 4 3

425 21 13 5

19

10

29

602 39 18 7

Men Buy novels Borrow novels Buy and borrow

186 10 4 1

156 6 2 2

342 16 6 3

98 Women 9 Buy novels 7 Borrow novels 2 Buy and borrow

42 2 5 1

41 3 2 1

83 5 7 2

Appendix 5

283

Adult∗ subscribers to Gentleman’s Magazine All subscribers Totals Buy novels Borrow novels

Pre-1770 Post-1770 Total All subscribers 84 7 5

45 6 1

129 13 6

Totals Buy novels Borrow novels

1770–3 1774–80 Total 29 4 1

16 2 0

45 6 1

∗ Adults only; does not include subscriptions of schoolboys, book clubs; subscribers who resubscribe to a magazine are counted only once; all Warwick customers excluded.

Adult∗ subscribers to London Magazine Subscriptions begin 1746–80 All subscribers Totals Buy novels Borrow novels

1770–80 only

Pre-1770 Post-1770 Total All subscribers 63 0 4

37 5 1

100 15 5

Totals Buy novels Borrow novels

1770–3 1774–80 Total 22 3 1

15 2 0

37 5 1

Adult∗ subscribers to Universal Magazine All subscribers Totals Buy novels Borrow novels

Pre-1770 Post-1770 Total All subscribers 38 4 1

39 2 1

Adult∗ subscribers to Lady’s Magazine Subscriptions begin 1770–80 All subscribers Totals Buy novels Borrow novels

77 6 2

Totals Buy novels Borrow novels

17 1 1

22 1 0

39 2 1

Adult∗ subscribers to Town and Country Magazine 1770–80

1770–3† 1774–80 Total All subscribers 69† 7 5

1770–3 1774–80 Total

47 1 1

116 Totals 8 Buy novels 6 Borrow novels

1770–3 1774–80 Total 87 5 8

54 1 0

141 6 8

†Subscribers include those to Wheble’s Lady’s Magazine (1770–72) and to Robinson and Roberts’ Lady’s Magazine (1771+) ∗ Adults only; does not include subscriptions of schoolboys, book clubs; subscribers who resubscribe to the magazine are counted only once.

Bibliography M A N U S C R I P T A RC H I V E S O F E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U RY BOOKSELLERS Clay family of booksellers, Northamptonshire Record Office (NRO) Day books; ∗ = incomplete Daventry: John Clay (buried 18 Nov. 1775), D64 30 Sept. 1746–25 Mar. 1748, D2931 1 July 1758–28 Sept. 1759, ML 692 5 Dec. 1764–22 Mar. 1766, D2930 26 Jan. 1770–21 Mar. 1771, D7719 28 July 1771–5 Feb. 1772∗ , ML 699 11 Mar. 1773–5 Jan. 1774, ML 89 4 Jan. 1774–16 Feb. 1775; Thomas Clay (buried 26 July 1781), ML 88 29 Jan.–18 Dec. 1777, ML 10 31 Mar. 1779–12 Sept. 1780. Rugby: John Clay, D2925 9 Apr. 1768–11 Aug. 1770; Thomas Clay, D4843 1 Mar. 1777–20 Mar.1777, D7938 7 Aug. 1779–5 Aug. 1780, D3400 12 Aug. 1780–Aug. 1781; Samuel Clay (died 6 March 1800), D3400 Aug. 1781–29 Oct. 1781, M L478 29 Oct. 1781–12 June 1784. Lutterworth: Thomas Clay, ML 694 11 July 1776–7 Aug. 1777, D2926 27 Aug. 1777–25 Feb. 1779, D2928 ?5 Mar. 1779–22 Feb. 1781. Warwick: Samuel Clay, D2929 8 Aug. 1770–7 Mar. 1772. Ledgers: Rugby, John Clay, D3412 1744–64; ML 691 1764–74. John then Thomas Clay, D2932 1774–81; Samuel Clay, D10297 1781–8∗ . Other: John and Thomas Clay, D2927, ‘Country Chapmen’, 1742–76; ML 689, ‘London Suppliers’, 1742–81. John and Samuel Clay, D2820, ‘Bookbinding’, 1763–5. Thomas Clay, X7555, ‘Cash Book’, 1775–80, and D6133, ‘Cash Book’, 1780–1. William Clay, Grocery, Ironmongery: D3411, day book, 1771–2; D5226, day book, 1772; ML 1247, ledger, 1771–2. Samuel Clay, Grocery, Ironmongery: ML 484, day book, 1774–5; ML 482, day book, 1780–1; D10114, day book, 1781–3; D7481, day book, 1783–5. Samuel Clay, Rugby Bank, D2820, ‘Cash Book’, 1788–92. Hookham, James, and Carpenter, Thomas, London 1791–8, Ledgers F and G, Petty Ledger F, The National Archives: PRO C104/75/1–3. Gosling, Robert, London 1730–40, Gentleman’s Ledger B, Bodleian MS Eng. Misc. C296. Murray, John, Ledgers, Edinburgh and London 1771–1806, on deposit at the National Library of Scotland (Murray Archives). Stevens, Timothy, Cirencester, 1780–1807, Gloucestershire Record Office (GRO) D9125/7870, four folio ledgers, A–D, cited in text by letter followed by slash and page number.

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Stanton, Judith Philips, ‘Statistical Profile of Women Writing in English from 1660 to 1800’, in Frederick M. Keener and Susan E. Lorsch (eds.), Eighteenth-Century Women and the Arts (New York: Greenwood, 1988), 247–54. Staves, Susan, Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660–1833 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990). ‘Matrimonial Discord in Fiction and in Court: The Case of Ann Masterman’, in Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski (eds.), Fetter’d or Free? British Women Novelists, 1670–1815 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1986), 169–85. Stickland, Irina, The Voices of Children 1700–1914 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1973). Summerfield, Geoffrey, Fantasy and Reason: Children’s Literature in the Eighteenth Century (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984). Taylor, John Tinnon, Early Opposition to the English Novel (New York: King’s Crown, 1943). Taylor, Richard C., ‘James Harrison, The Novelist’s Magazine, and the Early Canonizing of the English Novel’, SEL 33 (1993), 629–43. Thaddeus, Janice Farrar, Frances Burney: A Literary Life (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000). Tompkins, J. M. S., The Popular Novel in England, 1770–1800 (1932; London: Methuen, 1969). Townsend, John Rowe, ed., John Newbery and His Books: Trade and PlumbCake for Ever, Huzza! (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1994). Trials for Adultery: or, the History of Divorces, 7 vols. (1779; New York: Garland, 1985). Twelfth-Day-Gift, 2nd edn. (London: Carnan & Newbery, 1770). Valian, Virginia, Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 2000). Venn, J. A. (comp.), Alumni Cantabridgienses, Part II, 1752–1900, 5 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). Vickery, Amanda, ‘Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women’s History’, Historical Journal 36 (1993), 383–414. Warner, William B., Licensing Entertainment: The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain, 1684–1750 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957). West, Benjamin, The Pedantic Hypocrite Exposed … (Northampton, T. Dicey & Co., 1786). Wiles, R M., Freshest Advices: Early Provincial Newspapers in England (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1965).

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Index to Novels, Bought and Borrowed Aikins, John, and Letitia Barbauld, Evenings at Home (1794) 90 Amory, Thomas, John Buncle (1756) 51, 191, 192 Annesley, James, Memoirs Unfortunate Young Nobleman (1743) 90, 225 Anonymous, Adventures of a Hackney Coach (1781) 84 n. 13 Anonymous, Agatha (1796) 106 Anonymous, Agenor and Imena (1759) 181 Anonymous, Amintor and Teresa (1769) 64 n. 44 Anonymous, Anecdotes of a Convent (1771) 57 Anonymous, Arabella Bolton (1770), 58–9, 84 n. 17, 91 n. 13, 113 Anonymous, Augusta (1788) 106 Anonymous, Bampfylde Moore Carew (1745) 88, 90, 107, 192 Anonymous, Cox-Heath Camp (1779) 67, 107, 229 Anonymous, Distressed Virtue (1781) 67 Anonymous, Fatal Friendship (1770) 186 Anonymous, Fatal Obedience (1769) 69 Anonymous, Generous Inconstant (1771) 45, 50 Anonymous, Gilham Farm (1781) 67 Anonymous, History of Miss Indiana Danby (1765) 43, 44, 45, 57–8, 90, 112, 113, 191, 244 Anonymous, History of Miss Sommerville (1769) 91 n. 17 Anonymous, Lady Eliza Audley (1779) 68 Anonymous, Leonora (1745) 51 Anonymous, Light Summer Reading for the Ladies, or the History of Lady Lucy Fenton (1768) 64 n. 44, 90, 105, 109, 110, 112, 184, 187, 191, 192, 193, 244 Anonymous, Modern Fine Gentleman (1774) 184, 192

Anonymous, Morning Ramble (1775) 91 n. 17, 112, 183, 192 Anonymous, Orphan Daughter (1768) 64 n. 44, 244 Anonymous, Sir Harry Harald (1754) 51, 91 n. 17, 186 Anonymous, Sir William Harrington (1771) 90, 105, 106, 112, 183, 186, 187, 191, 193 Anonymous, Tom Jones in Married State (1750) 157 Anonymous, True Delicacy (1768) 64 n. 44, 69, 244 Anonymous, Undutiful Daughter (1771) 105 Anonymous, Visiting Day (1768) 51, 90, 106 n. 37, 112, 193, 244 Arnaud, Baculard d’, Tears of Sensibility (1773) 57, 58 Atkyns, Lady, The Hermit (1769) 64 n. 44

Bage, Robert, Mount Henneth (1782) 183 Barker, Jane, Novels (1719) 181 Blower, Elizabeth, Parsonage House (1780) 227 Bonhote, Elizabeth, Rambles of Mr Frankly (1772) 79, 191 Bridges, Thomas, Adventures of a Bank-Note (1770) 64 n. 44, 113 Briscoe, Sophia, Fine Lady (1772) 192 Brooke, Frances, History of Emily Montague (1769) 44, 64 n. 44, 91 n. 17, 112, 180 n. 34, 187, 189 Brooke, Frances, History of Julia Mandeville (1763) 183 Brooke, Henry, Juliet Grenville (1774) 57, 84 n. 13, 192 Brooke, Henry, The Fool of Quality (1766+) 6, 62, 84 n. 13, 88, 89, 106, 110, 111, 113, 187, 191 Brydges, Egerton, Arthur Fitz-Albini (1798) 57

298

Index to Novels

Bunyan, John, Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) 51, 58–9, 88, 112, 114 Burney, Frances, Camilla (1796) 57, 89, 91 n. 17 Burney, Frances, Cecilia (1782) 38, 88, 89, 105, 120, 121, 122, 140, 150, 176, 180 n. 34, 183, 184, 187 Burney, Frances, Evelina (1778) 56, 88, 89, 183, 227 Carra, Jean-Louis, Cecilia (1773) 58, 76 Cervantes, Miguel de, Don Quixote (1611) 7, 51, 88, 181, 183, 188, 206 Cervantes, Miguel de, Persiles and Sigismunda (1741) 181 Cleland, John, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748) 31 n. 96 Collier, Jane, Art of Ingeniously Tormenting (1753) 181 Collyer, Mary, Letters from Felicia to Charlotte (1744) 103 n. 32, 180 n. 34 Cooper, Maria Susannah, Exemplary Mother (1769) 69 Coventry, Francis, Pompey the Little (1751) 84 n. 13 Cradock, Joseph, Village Memoirs (1765, 1775) 62 Cumberland, Richard, Henry (1795) 56–7, 100 Day, Thomas, Sandford and Merton (1783) 89, 127 n. 19, 156, 159–60 Defoe, Daniel, Moll Flanders (1722) 17 n. 59 Defoe, Daniel, Religious Courtship (1722) 89 Defoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe (1719) 46, 66, 87, 114, 127, 176, 177, 178, 181, 193 Du Bois, Lady Dorothea, Theodora (1770) 192 F´enelon, Franc¸ois de Salignac de La Mothe, Telemachus (1699) 47, 88, 127 n. 19, 181, 206 Fielding, Henry, Amelia (1751) 44, 51, 88, 106 n. 37, 112, 184, 227 Fielding, Henry, Jonathan Wild (1743) 44

Fielding, Henry, Joseph Andrews (1742) 64 n. 43, 88, 90, 107, 206, 227 Fielding, Henry, Tom Jones (1749) 44, 51, 88, 107, 111–2, 113, 157, 158, 160, 176, 181, 183, 184, 192, 230 Fielding, Sarah, David Simple (1744) 102 n. 32, 107, 180, 181 Fielding, Sarah, Governess, Little Female Academy (1749) 88, 90, 150 Fleming, Francis, Timothy Ginnadrake (1770) 84 n. 13, 113 Galland, Antoine, Arabian Nights Entertainments (1706) 44 n. 5, 88, 110, 112, 114, 127, 181, 191 Gibbes, Phebe, Friendship in a Nunnery (1778) 91 n. 17, 184, 187 n. 44 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Sorrows of Werter (1779) 84 n. 13, 90, 192 Goldsmith, Oliver, Vicar of Wakefield (1766) 51, 88, 107, 227 Gomez, Mme de, La Belle Assembl´ee (1724) 17 n. 59 Graves, Richard, Columella (1779) 56, 84 n. 13, 183 Graves, Richard, Spiritual Quixote (1773) 84 n. 13, 90 Griffith, Elizabeth and Richard, Letters between Henry and Frances (1757) 45, 79, 113 Griffith, Elizabeth, Collection of Novels (1777) 183 Griffith, Elizabeth, Delicate Distress (1769) 89, 105, 106 n. 37 Griffith, Richard, Gordian Knot (1769) 43, 91 n. 17, 106 n. 37 Guthrie, William, The Mother (1759) 58 Hawkesworth, John, Almoran and Hamet (1761) 192, 227 Haywood, Eliza, Betsy Thoughtless (1751) 44, 103 n. 32, 105 Haywood, Eliza, Fruitless Enquiry (1727) 183 n. 38 Haywood, Eliza, Invisible Spy (1755) 51, 90, 93, 103 n. 32, 107, 225

Index to Novels Hill, John, George Edwards a Creole (1751) 51 Jenner, Charles, Placid Man (1770) 32 Johnson, Samuel, Rasselas (1759) 67 n. 48, 88, 90, 192 Johnstone, Charles, Adventures of a Guinea (1760) 192 Johnstone, Charles, History of Arsaces (1774) 192 Kelly, Hugh, Memoirs of a Magdalen (1766) 66 Kidgell, John, The Card (1755) 183 Knight, Ellis Cornelia, Marcus Flamineus (1792) 67 n. 48 La Calpren`ede, Gaultier de Coste, seigneur de, Cassandra (1652) 180 n. 34 La Fayette, Mme de, Princess of Cleves (1679) 183 n. 38, 191 Langhorne, John, Letters between Theodosius and Constantia (1764) 88, 90, 191, 192 Lawrence, Herbert, Contemplative Man, History Christopher Crab (1771) 187 Le Pileur d’Apligny, Hermit of the Rock (1779) 58–9 Lennox, Charlotte, Harriot Stuart, (1750) 91 n. 17, 107 Lennox, Charlotte, Henrietta (1758) 45, 103 n. 32 Lesage, Alain-Rene, Devil upon Two Sticks (1708) 62, 88, 90, 181, 227 Lesage, Alain-Rene, Gil Blas (1716) 88, 113, 176, 181, 186 Mackenzie, Henry, Julia de Roubign´e (1777) 183, 192 Mackenzie, Henry, Man of Feeling (1771) 88, 91 n. 17, 100, 113, 183, 195, 227, 230 Mackenzie, Henry, Man of the World (1773) 183, 192, 193 Marana, Giovanni, Turkish Spy (1687) 16, 62 Marmontel, Jean, The Incas (1777) 192 Marmontel, Jean, Tales (1763) 127 n. 19, 192 Meeke, Mary, Abbey of Clugny (1796) 59

299

Minifie, Margaret and Susannah, The Picture (1766) 91 n. 17, 110, 184, 192 Minifie, Susannah, Barford Abbey (1767) 44 n. 5, 191 Moore, John, Edward (1796) 91 n. 17 Moore, John, Mordaunt (1800) 56 Moore, John, Zeluco (1789) 56, 91 n. 17 Mouhy, Charles de Fieux, Fortunate Country Maid (1740) 45, 91 n. 7, 112 P´etis de la Croix, Franc¸ois, Persian Tales (1714) 91 n. 17, 181, 183 Pratt, Samuel Jackson, Emma Corbett (1780) 227 Pratt, Samuel Jackson, Pupil of Pleasure (1776) 112, 192, 229 Pratt, Samuel Jackson, Shenstone Green (1779) 32, 56 Pye, James Henry, The Democrat (1795) 57 Quintana, Francis, Hippolito and Aminta (1718) 181 Radcliffe, Ann, The Italian (1797) 96 Radliffe, Ann, Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) 56, 90 Radcliffe, Ann, Romance of the Forest (1791) 16 n. 58, 17, 100 Reeve, Clara, Old English Baron (1777) 127 n. 19 Richardson, Samuel, Clarissa (1747–8) 44, 47, 62, 64, 70, 88, 107, 110, 111, 112, 113, 183, 191, 192 Richardson, Samuel, Pamela (1740) 63–4, 68, 88, 108, 111, 180, 181, 186 Richardson, Samuel, Sir Charles Grandison (1754) 44, 45, 64, 88, 106, 110–11, 112, 183, 186, 191, 193, 230 Ridley, James, Tales of the Genii (1764) 88, 192 Rogers, A., History of Miss Temple (1777) 68 Rutledge, James, Englishman’s Fortnight at Paris (1777) 192

300

Index to Novels

Scott, Sarah, Millenium Hall (1762) 62, 79, 90, 180 n. 34 Shebbeare, John, The Marriage Act (1754) 112 Sheridan, Frances, Nourjahad (1767) 64 n. 44, 103 n. 32 Sheridan, Frances, Sidney Bidulph (1761) 103 n. 32 Skinn, Ann Emelinda, Old Maid, or History of Miss Ravensworth (1771) 51, 88, 89, 112, 184, 185, 186, 187, 192, 206, 229, 242 Smith, Charlotte, Ethelinde (1789) 106 Smollett, Tobias, Adventures of an Atom (1769) 64 n. 44, 88 Smollett, Tobias, Humphry Clinker (1771) 50, 51, 57, 88, 104, 105, 111, 186, 187, 189, 192, 193, 225, 228 Smollett, Tobias, Launcelot Greaves (1762) 44, 88 Smollett, Tobias, Peregrine Pickle (1751) 27, 88, 106, 107, 110, 111, 114, 184, 186, 187, 188, 191, 192, 193, 206

Smollett, Tobias, Roderick Random (1748) 88, 107, 181, 227 Sterne, Laurence, Sentimental Journey (1768) 88, 192; imitated in Lady’s Magazine 27 Sterne, Laurence, Tristram Shandy (1759+) 50, 88, 111 n. 46, 113 Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver’s Travels (1726) 45, 88, 110, 114, 127, 135, 180, 181, 192 Tooke, William, Othniel and Achsah (1769) 59 Voltaire, Pupil of Nature (1771) 181 Walker, George, The Vagabond (1799) 57 Walpole, Horace, Castle of Otranto (1765) 192 Ward, Edward, London Spy (1698–1700) 45 West, Jane, Infidel Father (1802) 57 West, Jane, Tale of the Times (1799) 57

Index to Customers for Novels See also General Index, readers of novels, case studies adults Adams, Fitzherbert (gentry) 32 Allen, Mr (farmer?), Novelist’s Magazine subscriber 228 Anonymous apothecary’s apprentice, Lutterworth 31 n. 96 Anonymous manservant to Mr Carpenter 51 Anonymous manservant to Mrs Brooke 47 Anonymous officer at the Swan, Warwick 45, 112 Anonymous shopman of Stowe 51 Ashley, Jane Pocock (gentry) 225 Ashley, John (gentry) 107, 161, 225 Baucot, Mr 112 Birt, Miss, Novelist’s Magazine subscriber 227 Bromfield, Mrs (clergyman-schoolmaster’s wife) 112 Brooke sisters (innkeeper’s daughters) 69, 76 Cave, Mrs 113 n. 47 Copeland, William (clergyman), Novelist’s Magazine subscriber 228 Cripps, Edward, Esq. 106 Crossfield, Miss (housemistress, Rugby) 111 n. 45 Freeman, Edith Hanwell (clergyman’s wife) 63–4 Freeman, George (clergyman) 64 Godby, Mr 107 Graham, Mr (clergyman) 57 Haines, Miss (tradesman’s daughter?) 67 n. 48 Harris, Mr (mason) 112 Hervey, Mrs 108, 111 Hindes, Mr 50, 56, 111 n. 46 Hutchins, Samuel (manservant) 47 Innys, Mrs 112 Ireland, Mr 111 n. 45

Jemson, Samuel (clergyman) 104, 105, 106 n. 37, 206, 208 Jones, Miss (gentry) 107 Jones, Mr (turnpike keeper) 111 n. 44, 112, 193, 208, 214, 222, 229 Knightley, Mr (gentry) 188–9 La Roque, Peter (clergyman) 50, 56, 111 n. 46 Lovell, Miss 106 n. 37, 111 n. 45 Lover, Miss 111 n. 44 Lucas, Mrs 111 n. 44, 112 Master, Thomas, Esq. 111 n. 44 Oakden, Charles Simon (attorney) 24, 105 Parkes, Mrs (draper’s wife) 67 n. 48, 105 Prowdman, Miss 107 Ruding, Susannah Maria and Walter (gentry) 45, 50 Sawbridge, Miss 112 Scott, Mr, Novelist’s Magazine subscriber 228 Sharman, Mr (woolcomber) 51 Shellard, Mrs (clergyman’s widow) 59, 60 Slade, Mr (clergyman), Novelist’s Magazine subscriber 227 Smith, John (clergyman) 107 Smith, Miss (gentry) 36, 62 n. 37, 100 Timbrell, Mr (mercer) 27 Wane, Mr Jonathan 106 Watson, Joseph 111 n. 45 Williamson, Capt. Richard (gentry) 61–2 Daventry Dissenting Academy Bealey, Joseph 192 Brown, W. 111 n. 45 Coles, John 106 n. 37, 194, 206 Coles, Richard 192 Cooke, John 110, 111, 194 Cox, John 193

302

Index to customers

Daventry Dissenting Academy (cont.) Fawcett, Benjamin 192 French, Barron 111 n. 44, 192 French, Nathaniel Bogle 111 n. 45, 194 Girle, Samuel 192 Hawkes, William 110, 192 Henley, William 98, 191 Hunt, Henry 111 n. 45, 194 Larkcom, J. 106 n. 37, 109, 194 Lewis, George 111 n. 44 Maxwell, Mr 110 Slater, Robert 109, 192 Smith, William 104, 111 Sweet, Thomas 192 Tattersall, William 192 Taylor, John 192 Townsend, Josiah 111 n. 45 Withers, T. 109, 194, 207 Rugbeians Babington brothers 111 n. 45, 140, 186, 187 Biddulph, Theophilus 178 n. 31, 181 Bird, William 140, 142, 166 Brewster, John and Thomas, Barbados (ent. 1742) 107, 141, 181 Brewster, John and Thomas, Barbados (ent. 1765) 98, 141, 146 n. 68, 166, 178 n. 31, 181

Bruce, Hon. James 181 Cumyns, Robert 141, 195 Fisher, John 181 Harpur brothers 111 n. 46 Hill, William 121, 126, 176 Kerr, John Manners 121 Knightley brothers of Fawsley 188 Knightley, John Wightwick 111 n. 45 Knightley, Thomas 167, 178 Legge brothers 186, 187, 195 Leighton, Francis 121 Lloyd, James 106 n. 37, 121 Loggin, William 181 Mansel brothers 141, 142, 146 n. 68 Miller, Arthur 188 Newsam, Thomas Peers 141, 178 Nichol, Richard 181 Parker, George 121 Parkhurst brothers 181 Satchell, Samuel 178, 181 Smith, Thomas 141 Smith, William 186, 195, 206 Stafford, Egerton 110, 184, 185, 186, 195, 244 Walker, George 185–6 Walker, Richard 113 n. 47, 181 Walker, Thomas 141 Walsingham, John 121 Wheler brothers 140 Wickins, Thomas 121 Wise, Matthew (ent. 1777) 121

General Index Abercromby, Ralph (Rugbeian), account of schoolboy reading 157–8 abridgements, ‘beauties’ and extracts 43–4, 115, 126, 127 n. 19 abridgements of novels, popularity with schoolboys 164, 176, 242; see also Newbery books Cervantes, Miguel de, Don Quixote, abridged by Dilworth 173 n. 25 Cockburn, John, Unfortunate Englishman 172 Defoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe 66 Defoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe (chapbook) 66, 69, 161 n.13, 164 n. 20, 177, 178 Defoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe (one shilling) 127 n. 19 Fielding, Henry, Joseph Andrews (chapbook) 161 Fielding, Henry, Tom Jones (chapbook) 184 Longueville, Peter, English Hermit 121, 172, 173, 176 Richardson, Samuel, Pamela (chapbook) 162 n. 13 Smollett, Tobias, Peregrine Pickle (chapbook) 161 Addison, Joseph 68, 158, 160 Addison, Joseph, and Steele, Richard, Spectator 212; Guardian 24 Altick, Richard D. 12 anonymous novels, see novels, anonymous Appendices, references to 1, Clays’ circulating library stocks 34, 35 n. 107, 44 n. 5, 45, 83, 106 n. 36, 180, 191 2, novels, bought and borrowed 7, 34, 36, 57, 75, 78, 82, 89, 105, 106, 107 3, children’s book, chapbook titles bought by Rugby boys 164, 172, 175

4, magazines taken by Clay customers 193, 199, 212, 217 n. 34, 238 5, adult consumers of novels, magazines 223, 224, 225, 226 Apperley, Charles James (Rugbeian) 121, 124–5, 128–9, 132; account of schoolboy reading 160, 184 Armstrong, Nancy 10 n. 26, 71 n. 54, 73 n. 59, 78 Arnold, Thomas, headmaster, Rugby 128, 133 Ashworth, Caleb, head, Daventry Dissenting Academy 189 audiences for print, provincial, see under genres: chapbooks and children’s books, novels, plays, magazines, review journals; see also readers of novels: case studies of; see also readers, lower classes total 33, 33 n. 102 Austen, Jane ix–x, 4, 126, 237 Baillie, Joanna 102 n. 30 Baker, Richard, Chronicle of Kings of England (1630) 158–9 Bakhtin, Mikhail 115 ballads 30, 31 n. 97; see also readers, lower classes: customers for other print, Warner, Mrs Mary (chapman?) Barbauld, Anna Letitia 90, 120 n. 7, 138; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Barry, Jonathan 162–3 Battestin, Martin C. and Ruthe 4 n. 9, 16 n. 57 Behn, Aphra 8, 10, 183 n. 38 Bell, John, publisher 76, 207; Bell’s British Theatre 99 Belsham, Thomas, tutor, later head, Daventry Dissenting Academy 109 n. 41, 150, 189 n. 46, 192 Bender, John 10 Benedict, Barbara M. 115, 116 n. 56

304

General Index

Benger, Elizabeth Ogilvy 23 Bentley, Richard, publisher 4 n. 6 Berford, G.M.W. 135–6 Bew, William, publisher, London 84 n. 14 Bickerstaffe, Isaac 64 n. 44, 70, 97, 99 n. 27, 101, 188 Billington, William, plebeian poet 203 n. 15 Birch, Walter (Rugbeian) 129, 131 Bligh, John, 4th Earl of Darnley 124, 184 Bloxam, Matthew Holbeche 120 n. 6, 127, 131, 134, 156 n. 3 book clubs 5, 34, 49, 52–3, 97, 190; composition, 52; increased novel buying 54, 56, 56–7 Academical Society, buys novels 34, 57–8, 190, 191–2 Cirencester Book Society 24, 94; obtains novels 57 n. 25, 88 Daventry Society of Clergymen, novels 57, 190, 227 Lutterworth Society, buys novels 32, 34, 190 Rugby Society 24, 65, 94, 190 booksellers’ archives, eighteenth-century, listed 284–5; see also: Clay family of booksellers; Gosling, Robert; Hookham, Thomas, and Carpenter, James; Murray, John I; Stevens, Timothy, bookseller, Cirencester ‘bespoke’ records in, day books 30–2 Clay records among, importance of 28; incomplete, 28, 189, 220; compared to Stevens’s, 47; register broad-based clientele within, 20, 28–31; register ‘secret’ reading at Rugby School 184 day books and ledgers among, described and differentiated 28–32 London-based, professional and aristocratic clientele 15–19 Borsay, Peter 19 n. 65 Boswell, James 116 Bowers, Toni O’Shaughnessy 8 Bray, William (Rugbeian), account of schoolboy reading 156–7 Brewer, John 178 n. 32

Brinsley-Richards, James 134 n. 46 Brooke, Frances 91, 94; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Brooke, Samuel I, printer 226 Brown, Richard D. 36 n. 109 Buckland, James, London supplier 32 Burney, Charles 74 Burney, Frances 4, 74, 88, 89, 91–2, 104, 122; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Burrough, Stanley, headmaster, Rugby School 123, 168, 171, 220 Butler, Marilyn 4 n. 8 Butler, Samuel 124, 125, 126, 244 Byron, George Gordon, Lord 3, 160 canon formation, see women writers, changes in demand for Centlivre, Susanna 62, 99, 102 n. 30, 103 Certeau, Michel de 74, 243, 244 Cervantes, Miguel de 103; see also: Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed; abridgements of novels Don Quixote 114, 127; serialized 39, 51 Chandos, John 128, 130 n. 33, 133 n. 43, 135 chapbooks and children’s books 161–79, for specific titles, see: chapbooks; Newbery books; abridgements of novels; see also App. 3; see also Dilworth, W. H. audiences for, provincial, chapbooks, lower classes 3, 31, 161 n. 13; middling sort, 69, 165; elite, 161, 165, 225; Rugby schoolboys, 118, Ch. 4 passim crossover, elite and popular culture 162–3, 179; in other genres 208 distinguishing chapbooks, children’s books, problems of 161–4 marketing triumph, children’s books over chapbooks 165–6, 172, 174, 178, 242 sales of, at Rugby School, increase 165–6; see also Tables 4.1, 4.2, Figure 4.1; decline in chapbook sales 177–8 sales of, to parents 165 stocked, at Warwick shop 177

General Index teaching, use of in, children’s books 120; at Rugby School 176–7 chapbooks, delimited 163–4; of novels, 161; women customers for, 69; see also abridgements of novels; see also chapbooks and children’s books Academy of Compliments 161 n. 13 Aristotle’s Masterpiece 161 n. 13 Art of Destruction 161 n. 13 Book of Knowledge 182 Cinthia 161 n. 13 Fortunatus 166 Guy, Earl of Warwick 66, 162, 164 n. 20, 166, 172, 174 History of Seven Wise Masters 164 n. 20 History of the Gentle Craft 165 penny histories 165 Seven Champions of Christendom 166, 174 Valentine and Orson 135, 136, 164 n. 20, 173, 174 Chapone, Hester 24 Chartier, Roger 114, 115, 208, 243, 244 children’s books, see chapbooks and children’s books; see also Newbery books Cibber, Theophilus 46 circulating libraries, commercial, proprietary, subscription, cathedral 14; stocks, see App. 1; see also Clay family of booksellers; see also Stevens, Timothy archives 14–15, 28–9 charges of 34, 60, 94, and absence of profit from 35, 44, 106 clientele, assumptions about 12–13, class of, 47; elite patronage 18–19 novel market, role in 5–6, 80, 83, 89, exaggerated, 54; market for plays, role in 93, 94 Stevens’s and Clays’, how representative 34–5 Clarke, Mary (gentry), mother of Rugby schoolboys 24, 132, 133, 150 Clarke, William (innkeeper), father of Rugby schoolboys 120, 207 classical education, see also Rugby School

305

and booksellers 23; and innkeeper’s son 29 curriculum for, at public schools 124; Latin, early study 120 value of, estimated 124, 158, 160 Clay family of booksellers, Daventry, Rugby, Lutterworth, Warwick 20–7; John Clay, 21–2; Samuel Clay, 24, 25–6, 119 n. 5, and his wife Mary Chadwick Clay, see under readers: case studies of; Thomas Clay, 24, 26–7; see also booksellers’ archives catchment areas 20–21, 33–4 business practices, at Rugby 141–2, 165, 173–4; bookbinding, 32; books returned, 107; books valued, 65; catalogue of books, John Clay’s, 21–2, 51; magazines, recording subscriptions to, 212; sales printed matter substantial, 15 n. 54, 55; second-hand novels, 64 n. 43, 107; serialized publications, recording subscriptions to, 231; speed in filling orders, 53; take subscriptions to books, 26–7; variety of wares, 21, increased by successor at Rugby 123 commercial circulating libraries at Daventry 191; at Lutterworth, 113 n. 47; at Rugby, 180; at Warwick, 34, 43, 44–5, 48, 49; fees, 34; not profitable 44; how representative, 34–5; stocks, see App. 1 education of 22–3 prosperity of 22, 26 shops, how representative 33–4; subscribers to magazines, how representative 211 Clery, E. J. 116 Colclough, Stephen M. 109 n. 40 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 138, 152, 161, 167 Colman, George, and Thornton, Bonnell, Connoisseur 43, 126 conduct books, audiences for 73 Congreve, William 62, 94, 99 Cooke, John, publisher, London 84 n. 14, 102, 104

306

General Index

Coote, John, bookseller, originator Lady’s Magazine 201 n. 5 Corfield, Penelope 19 n. 65 Cowley, Hannah 97, 99, 100, 101, 102 n. 30, 189 Crain, Patricia 143 Crane, Robert S. 162 n. 14 Critical Review 52–8, 59, 72, 114, 182 n. 37, 219, 230; cost of 197 Crossfield, Thomas, headmaster, Rugby School 168, 171 Cumberland, Richard 56, 64 n. 44, 93, 100, 160; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed customers for novels; see novels, audiences for; see also Index to Customers for Novels customers for print, total 33, 33 n. 102 Darnton, Robert 1–2, 139 Daventry Dissenting Academy 189; see also Index to Customers for Novels: Daventry Dissenting Academy boys at, buy magazines 193–4; consume novels, 189–93, proportionally more than Rugbeians, 190; interest of, in novels by women 191–2 Davidoff, Lenore, and Hall, Catherine 25 n. 82 Davis, Lennard J. 6 n. 15 Day, Thomas, History of Little Jack 127 n. 19; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed day books, see booksellers’ archives Defoe, Daniel 10, 103, 114, 149; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Tour through Great Britain 63 desultory reading, see reading practices Devonshire, Georgiana, Duchess of 18 Dilworth, W.H. 166, 173 Doddridge, Philip 189 Dodsley, Robert, Toy Shop, 97; Cleone, 45; Oeconomy of Human Life 68 Doody, Margaret 9, 74 n. 61 Doty, Alexander M. 203 Downie, J. A. 20, 179 Drayton, Michael, Polyolbion (1612) 158–9

Edgeworth, Maria 4, 136 n. 51, Patronage (1814) 4 Edwards, Jonathan, sermon 52 Ellis, Kate Ferguson 8 Enfield, William 127 n. 19, 189 Erickson, Lee 13 Ezell, Margaret 84 Feather, John 15 n. 54, 22 n. 73, 34 n. 103, 216 n. 31 female-authored novels, plays, see women writers, changes in demand for F´enelon, Franc¸ois de Salignac de La Mothe- 103; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Fielding, Henry 4 n. 9, 103; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Joseph Andrews (1742) 160 Tom Jones (1749) 4 n. 9, 107, 111–12, 113, 157, 160, 176 Fleming, Marjory, child reader 156 Flint, Kate 42, 72 n. 55 Forster, Antonia 7 n. 18, 12 n. 38, 56 n. 23, 72 n. 56, 77, 78–9, 82, 91, 103, 113, 185 n. 41, 238 Forster, John 127, 131 Gallagher, Catherine 10 n. 24 Gaskell, James Milnes 130 Gay, John 30, 97 Gibbon, Edward 108, 132, 134 Gissing, George, New Grub Street 115 Goldsmith, Oliver 103, 142, 144; Deserted Village, 144; Vicar of Wakefield, 144, 160; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Gonda, Caroline 14 Goody Two-Shoes 8, 137–54, 165, 166, 174, 177, 178, 199, 203 cross-written narrative voice 143–4 modern critics on 142–3, 148–9 plot of, 145–48, play with identity, 149–50; and the feminine 150–1 popularity of, at Rugby School 119, 140 Rugby schoolboy readers of, identified, 140–2; how may have read 149–54, 241 Gosling, Robert, bookseller, London 15, 16, 17, 19

General Index Gough, William (tapster and/or labourer) 200–3, 205, 207, 208, 212, 233 Grenby, M. O. 161 n. 13, 162 Griffith, Elizabeth 91, 99; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Guest, Harriet 13 Hands, Elizabeth, plebeian poet 65, 68 Harrison, James, publisher viii–ix, 102, 103, 104; Novelist’s Magazine 226–31 Hatley, Victor A. 31, 32, 120 n. 6, 192, 200 n. 4, 201 n. 7 Hayes, Philippa (housekeeper) 47, 93–4, 101 Haywood, Eliza 8, 10, 17 n. 59, 90, 93, 183 n. 38; Betsy Thoughtless, 101; Female Spectator, 45, 150; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Heyer, Georgette viii, x Hitch, Charles, publisher, London 164 n. 20 Holcroft, Thomas 102 Hookham, Thomas, and Carpenter, James, publishers and booksellers, London, 16–19, 28, 43 n. 3, 236; circulating library 16 n. 58, 18–19 Hume, Robert D. 10, 96 Hunt, Margaret R. 11 n. 33 Hunter, J. Paul 2, 6 n. 15, 10 n. 25, 11–12, 71, 72 n. 55 Hunter, Jean 203 Hutton, William, Birmingham bookseller 229 Inchbald, Elizabeth, 101, 102; The British Theatre, 102 n. 30; The Modern Theatre (1811), 102; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Jackson, Mary V. 152 Jacobs, Edward 13 James, Thomas, headmaster, Rugby School, 123–9, passim, 132; and children’s books 160, 168, 171, 173–4, 176–7 Johnson, Samuel, 114, 115, 116, 119, 138; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed

307

Dictionary (1755), 46, 69, 126, 139; Rambler 43, 126, 157 Justice, George 10–11 Kaufman, Paul 2, 13, 14, 15 n. 53, 24, 52, 57 n. 25, 57 n. 26, 83 n. 12, 94 n. 24 Kent, Henry, publisher of abridged novels, London 164 Klancher, Jon P. 212, 213 Knail, William, headmaster, Rugby School 168, 171 Knox, Vicesimus, Elegant Extracts 126, 127 n. 19, 181 Kramnick, Isaac 142, 143, 152, 153 Lackington, James, bookseller, London 28 n. 93 Lady’s Magazine 27, 62, 69, 70, 199–209 competing versions 200 n. 5, 201, expands female audience 216–17, 242–3 male pleasure in reading 202–3 male contributors to, of low status, 201–2, 203–5: Bromfield, Thomas (schoolboy), 203, 205; see also Gough, William (tapster and/or labourer), West, Benjamin (clergyman, poet, schoolmaster); see also readers of novels: case studies of, male, Jones, William subscribers to, schoolboys, 150, 194–5, schoolmasters, 205; adult male, many middling sort, 206–9, 214; see also Prowett, David (servant) Lamb, Charles 138 Landor, Walter Savage (Rugbeian), 126, 127, 129, 131, 140, 174; account of childhood reading 158–60 Langhorne, John, 103, 227; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Laqueur, Thomas W. 72–3 Lee, Sophia 102 n. 30 ledgers, see booksellers’ archives Lennox, Charlotte, 65, 91, 94, 97; Female Quixote, 103; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Lesage, Alain-Ren´e, 103; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed

308

General Index

literacy rates 11–12 Lovell, Terry 5 Lynch, Deirdre Shauna 11, 20 n. 68 Lyte, H. C. Maxwell 123, 134 n. 46 Lyttleton, George 135 Mack, Edward C. 122, 123, 130 magazines, see also Critical Review; Lady’s Magazine; Monthly Review; Novelist’s Magazine; Town and Country Magazine archival sources for study of, only in Clay records 211–2 audiences for, provincial, size of 198, 212, 214–15, 237, 242; see App. 4 ; class of, 213–4, 217–8, 234 and see also Table 5.1, 209; female audience, 59–60, 216–17, and see also Table 5.2, 215 attrition among subscribers to, 219–22; fickleness, 218–19, 222; cancellations 193–4, 215–6 cost of 197 create own readerships 212–3, 216–7 delivery of 22, 27, 53, 229 expansion of audiences for, 197–8, 214–6; does not produce increased demand for novels, 60, 222–6; see also App. 5 men as subscribers to, see Table 5.1; see Gough, William (tapster and/or labourer), Jones, Mr (turnpike keeper), 111 n. 44, 112, 193, 208, 214, 222, 229; readers of novels, case studies of, Pepperell, Henry ; see also Lady’s Magazine numbers of subscribers to, and titles of, 212; see also App. 4 profitability in sales of, to Clays 32 proliferation of, 214–6; see also Table 5.2 215 schoolboys as subscribers to, 193–6; tendency also to consume novels 195 subscriptions to, short, common, 193–5, 213, 216, 243; longer subscriptions 220–2 supplier of, to Clays, sale or return basis 32

women as subscribers to, concealed, 35–6, 39, 209–11; failure to consume novels also, 223; see also readers of novels: case studies of, female titles of: Court and City, 68, 194, 208, 219; Gentleman’s, 195, 199, 214, 218, 219, 220; Literary, 214; London, 214, 220, 221–2; Magazin a` la mode, d´edi´e aux dames, 29, 207; Matrimonial, 194; Sentimental, 188, 194, 207, 218, 229; Universal, 194, 207, 214, 220–1; Weekly Amusement, 232 n. 52; Westminster 188, 194, 195, 208, 233 Manley, Delariviere 8, 10 Marshall, John, publisher of chapbooks, London 164 Maxted, Ian 216 n. 31 Mayo, Robert D. 102 n. 32, 194, 198, 207 n. 20, 212, 217, 220–1, 222, 227 n. 46, 232 n. 52, App. 4 McCarthy, William 90 n. 16, 120 n. 7 McCreery, Cindy 217 n. 33 McKay, Barry 161 n. 13 McKendrick, Neil 178 n. 32 Melly, George 126 Michaelson, Patricia Howell 50 n. 9 Milhous, Judith 96 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley 107 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de 55 Monthly Review, 45, 52–59, 77, 182 n. 37, 185, 205, 220; edition sizes of, 7; cost of 197 Moore, John, 57 n. 25; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed More, Hannah, 101; Cheap Repository Tracts 59 multiple and repeated readings, see reading practices Murray, John I, publisher x, 15–16, 17, 19 Murray, John II, publisher ix–x, 4 n. 6 Myers, Mitzi 136, 144, 156, 160 n. 11, 241 Newbery, Elizabeth (widow, nephew Francis) 172 Newbery, Francis (nephew), 137, 172, 175; see also Newbery books

General Index Newbery, Francis (son) 7, 175 Newbery, John, 8, 137, 143–4, 150 n. 71; see also Newbery books Newbery books, 46, 137–8, 192; adult purchasers of, 6, 139; edition sizes of, 7; popularity of, 165–6, Table 4.1, 167; see also Goody Two-Shoes; see also chapbooks and children’s books; for full list, App. 3.1, 3.2 Bunyan, John, Pilgrim’s Progress (J47) 167 Collection Pretty Poems for … Children Six Foot High (J74) 137 Defoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe (J98) 136, 166, 167, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178 The Fairing (J110) 153–4, 159 Fielding, Henry, Joseph Andrews (J131) 121, 175, 176, 177 Fielding, Henry, Tom Jones (J132) 121, 175, 176, 177 Food for the Mind (J190b) 136, 166 Lesage, Alain-Ren´e, Gil Blas (J213) 121, 142, 159, 166, 167, 174, 175, 176 Lilliputian Magazine (J219) 153 Little Pretty Pocket Book (J225) 172 Mother Goose’s Tales (J279) 125, 150, 159, 178 New Year’s Gift (J270) 146 n. 68 Philosophy for Children (J321) 166 Richardson, Samuel, Clarissa (J315) 46, 175–6 Richardson, Samuel, Pamela (J316) 175 Richardson, Samuel, Sir Charles Grandison (J317) 175 Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver’s Travels (J5) 135, 173 Tom Thumb’s Exhibition (J355) 166 Trip’s History of Birds and Beasts (J308) 141 Twelfth-Day Gift (J336) 153 Newgate Calendar, serialized 231, 233, 234 Noble, John, circulating library 94 n. 24 North Briton, serialized 234 Novelist’s Magazine, 88, 102–3, 104, 226–30, 243; circulation of, 228; see also readers of novels: case studies of, female, Chadwick, Mary Clay; male, Jones, William,

309

Parker, John, jnr, Spier, Dr John; schoolboy, Wise, Henry novels, see also reading practices; see also readers of novels, case studies of; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed; see also Index to Customers for Novels; see also App. 1 2 anonymous, largest segment novel market, 79–80; explanations for ubiquity of, 80; initial and sustained demand for, weak, 80; sales of, compared to femaleand male-authored novels, 80–1; see also Table 2.1 audiences for, assumptions about, 5–9, 237–8; assumed middle-class, 19; assumed primarily female, 7–9, 11–14, 41, 236; anxieties over reading by women, 42, 72–3; assumptions difficult to challenge, 45, 199; false assumptions about gender, possible reasons for 19, 50, 226, 238, see also 70–74 audiences for, London (1790s), women primary customers 17–19 audiences for, provincial, and class, 19, 34, 43, 47; of men, 51, 52; of women, 67, case studies 60–70 audiences for, provincial, male, dominant in Midlands 15, 37, 41–59, esp. 47–9. Table 1.1.2, 237; dominant as members of book clubs, 52–4, 56–7, and as subscribers to review journals, 52, 59; invisible culturally, 9, 37, 39; possible causes for invisibility, 73–74, 195–6; prefer male-authored novels to female-, over time, 81–3, 84, 87–8, 238; see Table 2.3; see also women writers, changes in demand for audiences for, provincial, female, not extensive 41–3, 48–50, 59–60, case studies of, 60–70, prefer female-authored novels, 82, 96 n. 26, 117; under-represented in records,

310

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novels (cont.) especially married women 35–6, 211 audiences for, provincial, prefer buying to borrowing 6, 237; small 42, 89, but growing, 43 n. 3, 236–7 binding of, cost and frequency of 32 copyright fees for 4, editions of, sizes 7, 83 female-authored, see women writers, changes in demand for lower classes as customers for, see readers, lower classes orders of 30–1 O’Brian, Karen 233 Orwell, George 122 Paine, Thomas 100 Palmer, Roundell 130, 133 Paulson, Ronald 142, 143, 148, 149, 151 Pearson, Jacqueline 11, 14, 244 periodicals, see magazines Perrault, Charles 125 Perry, Ruth 10 plays 92–104; audiences for, provincial, 97; book clubs, sales to 94, 97–8; cost of, 95; demand for female-authored, weak, 96; demand for male-authored, strong over time, 98; demand for Shakespeare’s, 98–9; distribution of, to provinces, fast, 93, 94; female-authored, excluded from anthologies, 99, 102; female-authored, increasing numbers, 92; female-authored, more often bought new, 97, 99; female-authored, not sold as classics, 99–101; novels in demand more than, 96; profits from, 96, 101; see also Table 2.4; see also women writers, changes in demand for provincial life 19, 20–27; population of towns served 21 provincial readers, see readers: total customers 33, 33 n. 102 Plumb, J. H. 178 n. 32 Pomfret, John 46

Portner, Ruth 5 n. 11, 15 n. 54, 22, 27 n. 90, 53, 64 n. 43 Price, Leah 1 n. 1, 115–6 Priestley, Joseph 189 Prose, Francine 91 Prowett, David, jnr (servant) 29, 76, 207, 208 Radcliffe, Ann 16 n. 58, 17, 18 n. 63, 152; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Raven, James 1 n. 1, 6 n. 15, 7 n. 17, 12 n. 38, 54, 60 n. 32, 75, 77, 78–80, 103, 113, 163, 185 n. 41, 222–3, 238, 239 readers of novels, see also audiences for, provincial, novels; see also readers, lower classes; see also Index to Customers for Novels; see also audiences, provincial, under other genres: chapbooks and children’s books, plays, magazines, review journals case studies of, female: Brooke, Sarah (innkeeper) 68–70, 71, 120 n. 6; Clay, Mary Chadwick (bookseller’s wife), 25, 26, 44–5, 67–8, 71, 97, 107, 229; Fraunces, Ann Harris (apothecary’s widow), 66–7, 71; Huddesford, Catherine (clergyman’s wife), 18, 64–6, 68, 71, 100, 238, 244; Westley, Mary and Frances (gentry), 62–3, 70, 110, 111 n. 44; Williamson, Jane (gentry) 61–2, 68, 71, 100 case studies of, male: Baker, Francis (clergyman) 51, 104, 112, 240; Harrison, Henry Bagshaw (attorney), 45–6, 55–6, 61, 69, 183, 238, 240; Jones, William (schoolmaster), 203–4, 229; Latimer, John (butcher), 43–4, 45, 46, 51, 106, 111 n. 44, 113, 237, 240, 244; Parker, John, jnr (Rugbeian, then clergyman) 100–1, 141, 188, 189, 193, 195–6, 209, 229–30; Pepperell, Henry (clergyman), 58–9, 76, 208, 218, 224; Smith, John (gentry), 36, 62 n. 37, 100; Spier, Dr John

General Index (clergyman) 104, 161, 162 n. 13, 228–9 schoolboy, accounts of childhood reading by Rugbeians: Abercromby, Ralph 157–8; Apperley, Charles James, 160, 184; Bray, William, 156–7; Landor, Walter Savage 158–60 schoolboy, case studies of: Lickorish, Richard 110, 112, 113, 181, 182–3, 195; Sleath, William Boultbee, 110, 112, 113, 182, 183, 195, Wise, Matthew (ent. 1778) 112, 187, 195, 228, 230 readers, lower classes customers for novels: anonymous apothecary’s apprentice, Lutterworth 31 n. 96; anonymous manservant to Mr Carpenter, 51; anonymous manservant to Mrs Brooke, 47, 70; anonymous shopman of Stowe, 51; Hutchins, Samuel (manservant) 47 customers for other print: anonymous maidservant of Mrs Brooke 30, 69–70; anonymous manservant of Mr Armstead, 208 n. 23; Atkins, Polly (servant), 70, 97; Baxter, Molly, 31; Brown, William (manservant), 29; Chipman, Mr (coachman), 30; Denman, Joseph (servant), 208 n 23; Fennell, Richard (poor man), 31; Howard, Mary, 161 n. 13; Forster, Richard, 97; Line, John (labourer), 233; Newberry, Thomas (servant), 233; Prowett, David, jnr (servant), 29, 76, 207, 208; Rogers, Thomas (baker’s son), 97; Warner, Mrs Mary (chapman?), 31 n. 97, 163, 165; see also Gough, William (tapster and/or labourer); see also plebeian poets West, Benjamin, and Billington, William reading practices 13–14, 50 adult, determined by life stages 36, 45, 61, 71,183, 240 appropriation 74, 114–15, 243–4 borrowing leading to buying 107

311

desultory reading 108–13, possible causes, 113–16, common 109, 113, 240 repeated and multiple readings 44, 104–7, 117, of different versions of same work 178, 184 review journals, see also magazines; see also Critical Review, Monthly Review audiences for, provincial, class of 52; almost exclusively male, 59; favourable reviews in, influence of 57 subscribers’ book purchases, influence on, weak 5, 54–5, greater for book clubs 54, 240 Reynolds, Frederic 101, 102 Richardson, Samuel 12, 61, 103, 114, 148, 160; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Richmond, Joseph, headmaster, Rugby School 119 n. 2, 168, 171 Ridley, James 103; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Rizzo, Betty 183 n. 38 Robinson, George, and Roberts, John, publishers, Lady’s Magazine 200 n. 5, 201, 204 n. 16, 216 Robinson, Mary 16 n. 57, 18 n. 63; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of 46 Roscoe, Sydney 125 n. 16, 159, 167, 174, 175 n. 27 Rose, Jonathan 2 Rouse, W. H. D. 119 n. 4, 123 n. 11, 126 n. 18, 129 n. 31, 131 n. 35 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 103, 107 Rugby School class of students at 119–21, 123 cost of 63, 119, 123 curriculum of 120, 123–5 library at 126–7 school culture at, brutality and ‘licensed war’ 127–36, 241; alcohol, 128–9; fagging and bullying, 129–31; fighting at 133; Riot Act 134 increased admissions at 168 Rugby schoolboys, see also readers of novels: case studies of, schoolboy; see also Rugby School; see also

312

General Index

Rugby schoolboys (cont.) Index to Customers for Novels: Rugbeians abridgements of novels, appetite for 164, 175–6, 242 as borrowers Frances Burney’s Cecilia, identified 120–1 as buyers of chapbooks and/or children’s books 165–79; numbers bought by, 155; for titles bought, see Newbery books as buyers of works other than school texts, fiction 172 n. 22; see also Table 4.2 169–71 Clarke, John Plomer, experiences at school 120, 128 n. 24, 132–3, 174 n. 26 cross-gendered reading of 121–2, 150–2, 195, 241; of Lady’s Magazine, 206; see also Goody Two Shoes novel consumption of 179–83; one quarter of all Clay customers’ interest, 172; correlated with consumption chapbooks, children’s books 179 invisible, in ‘secret novel reading’ of 155, 183–9, 195–6, 241–2 magazines taken by 193, 194–5, 206, correlated with novel consumption, 195; suggesting possible future fiction consumption 230, 235 St Clair, William 46 n. 6, 64 n. 43, 75–6, 117, 231 argument of, on copyright protection and readership 2–3 concurrence with 42, 47, 54, 223 disagreements with 4–5, 32, 56–7, 80, 84 n. 14, 98–9, 115, 135, 173 Scott, Sarah 62; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Scott, Walter 4, 56, 80, 160 Selfe, Sidney 123 serialized publications 29, 55, 67, 231–4; see also Newgate Calendar; see also North Briton; see also Smollett, Tobias, History of England

and class 233–4 and gender 232 less popular than magazines 231 sermons, bought 7, 52, 56, 100 Shakespeare, William 102 n. 30, 125, 160 sales to Midlands customers 5, 94, 98–99 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 3 Sheridan, Frances 99; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 100, 101 Sheriffe, Lawrence 122 Shevelow, Kathryn 6 n. 15 Siskin, Clifford 75 n. 1, 198, 222, 236 Skelton-Foord, Christopher 13 Skinn, Ann Masterman 185; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Smith, Charlotte 18 n. 63, 102 n. 30; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Smith, Sidney 132 Smollett, Tobias 103, 160; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed History of England, serialized 55, 232–3 Snagg, Richard, publisher of chapbooks, London 161–2 n. 13, 162 n. 13 Sontag, Susan 139 Southey, Robert 3, 127, 137, 138, 158, 167; The Flagellant 151 Spencer, Jane 10 n. 24 Spooner, Abraham (Rugbeian) 133, 206 Spooner, William (Rugbeian) 127–8 Spufford, Margaret 162, 163 Stanton, Judith Phillips 77, 92 Staves, Susan 185, 210 Sterne, Laurence 103, 144; Tristram Shandy, 143; see also Index to Novels Bought and Bound Stevens, Timothy, bookseller, Cirencester 15, 23–4, 27 business practices 36; magazine ledger lost, 60; see also booksellers’ archives circulating library 43 n. 3, 60; how representative, 34–5; stocks 106

General Index shop, how representative 33–4 Summerfield, Geoffrey 138, 140, 152 Swift, Jonathan 103; Tale of a Tub (1704), 45; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed tables, location; references to 1.1.1, numbers novels bought, borrowed 48; 30, 47, 49, 82, 96 1.1.2, numbers customers for novels 48; 17, 42, 49, 50, 59, 82, 172, 180, 237, 238 2.1, sales and borrowings of male, female, and anonymous authors of novels 81; 82, 89 2.2, canonical novels bought and borrowed 85–6; 84, 85, 88, 89, 102, 176, 239 2.3, canonical and non-canonical novels, buying and borrowing by gender 87; 84 2.4, buyers of drama 95; 96, 107 4.1, most popular chapbooks and children’s books at Rugby 167; 136, 140, 172, 175, 176, 177 4.2, Rugby boys’ yearly purchases of little books, novels, etc. 169–71; 166, 179, 180, 183 5.1, class and gender of magazine subscribers 209; 208, 217, 237 5.2, magazine subscriptions, 1746–80, Daventry, Rugby, Lutterworth 215; 214, 219 Figure 4.1, sales chapbooks, children’s books to Rugby boys over four decades 168; 166 Taylor, John Tinnon 72 n. 57 Taylor, Richard C. 102 n. 30, 103, n. 32 Thackeray, Thomas, grandfather of William Makepeace Thackeray 123, 141 Thaddeus, Janice Farrar 16 n. 57, 74 n. 61 Thrale, Hester 114, 119, 120 Tissot, Samuel-August, Onania 128 Town and Country Magazine 199, 204, 221, 222, 234–5, 242–3 enlarges magazine audience 216, 217, 219, 234

313

subscribers, adults 55, 207, 218, 225, 227, 229; schoolboys 193–5 Valian, Virginia 91 n. 19 Vickery, Amanda 25 Warner, William B. 10, 116 Watkins, Charles, draper, brother-in-law to John Clay 22, 25 n. 83, 119 Watt, Ian, 6; his argument on ‘rise’ of novel, and revisions 9–11, challenge to ‘triple rise’ thesis, 11–12; assumes female audience for fiction 12, 77–8 West, Benjamin (clergyman, poet, schoolmaster) 203–4, 205, 206 West, Jane 68; see also Index to Novels Bought and Borrowed Wheble, John, publisher Lady’s Magazine 27, 200 n. 5, 201, published subsequently by Robinson and Roberts, q.v. Wiles, R.M. 14, 231, 232 n. 52 Williams, Helen Maria 100 Wollstonecraft, Mary 100 women writers, changes in demand for female-authored novels, demand for 37, 75–92, 99; demand for, disproportionate after fifteen years, 83–4, 87–88; demand for, equal to male-authored novels first five years, 84, Tables 2.2, 2.3, but borrowed more than bought, 83; displaced by male-authored ‘canonical’ novels, 88–91; increases in numbers, proportions, over last decades of 18C, 77; majority of novels, alleged, 77–8; one-third of novels, in reality, 78; preferred by women customers, 82, 96 n. 26; representation of, proportional in App. 2 78 female-authored plays, demand for 37, 96–104; see also Table 2.4; increases in numbers, 92; demand for, weak, 96; demand for, greater for new than old, 99; not sold as classics, unlike male-authored plays, 99–101;

314

General Index

women writers, changes in demand for (cont.) preferred by women customers 96 female novelists, displaced by male ‘canonical’ novelists 91–2

gatekeepers’ anthologies and novels by women 102–4, and plays by women 102 parallels between, novelists and playwrights 96 Wycherley, William 99, 101