Over the past couple of months, I've checked out several non-fiction books on all sorts of topics that I imagine to be of interest to me -- Modernism! World War I and the arts! The history of children's literature! -- and have, without fail, been unable to finish a single one. Oh, it's not the subject's fault, and it's not
really the author's; these are accomplished scholars, you know. Except that, well, "accomplished scholar" doesn't always translate to, er, "engaging writer." Intensive academic work in the field of English doesn't necessarily give one a gift for skillfully manipulating language or a strong sense of narrative; the Stephen Greenblatts of the world are rare. Sometimes the best person to write an insightful literary history is an outsider -- like someone with an academic background in political science and law! But of course!
I first read Daniel Pool's
Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters: The Rows and Romances of England's Great Victorian Novelists in 1999, and reread it a few times after that, but haven't picked it up since 2002 or so. Ah, the joys of college. In any event, something put me in the mood for a little publishing history, so I started it again two days ago. If possible, I think I love it even more than I thought I did. The novel as dominant form of popular entertainment really began to emerge in the early decades of Victoria's reign, the 1830s and '40s. (Novels had, of course, existed prior to this point, but, for various reasons outlined in the book, only began to gain genuine respectability as a literary form during this period.) And, like any good form of popular entertainment, the novel -- or, rather, the entire literary industry -- came with a great deal of delightful backstage drama. Pool, in his tremendously readable style, relates the stories of the industry's major players, dealing not only with authors such as Dickens and Marian Evans, AKA George Eliot, but also with key figures in the publishing world, like the painfully young [by which I mean, my age, but doing a job of actual importance] George Smith, champion, publisher, and object of unrequited affection of Charlotte Brontë, or the unscrupulous Mr. Newby, who was fond of selling his wares by confusing the public about issues of authorship and newspaper review attribution. So fond was he, in fact, of leading readers to believe that each latest novel was really written by some better-known author than it really was, that he resorted to printing critical comments such as these in the first edition of Anne Brontë's
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:
"The work is strangely original. It reminds us of Jane Eyre. The author is a Salvator Rosa with his pen." -- Britannia
"We strongly recommend all our readers who love novelty to get this story, for we can promise them they never read anything like it before. It is like Jane Eyre." -- Douglas JerroldHonestly, I can't fault Newby at all, because I'd reprint these gems of critical observation and
total lack of irony, too.
Though, fond as I am of Newby's exploits, nay, of all Pool's stories, my heart belongs to the long, awkward saga of William Thackeray and Charlotte Brontë, who seemed to get herself caught up in these sorts of things far more than an introverted clergyman's daughter from the countryside really should have. The two authors initially had something of a mutual admiration society going on: she loved his work, he read
Jane Eyre in a day, and she, in turn, wrote a fangirly dedication to him -- whom she had never met, it needs to be noted -- for the book's second edition. In a wonderfully unfortunate twist of fate, however, this dedication also led to the swift devolution of the whole lovefest. Thackeray, as it happened, had a mad wife who had been put away, was raising two young daughters, and relied on a governess for care of the girls.
Jane Eyre was subtitled "An Autobiography," and the author's name, "Currer Bell," was known to be pseudonymous. You can see where I'm going with this. Thackeray was furious, Charlotte was mortified, and, well, I'll leave the rest for your own reading. Because you really, really need to read this book.
Really! If you're into Victorian novelists and scandal and all that.
And who isn't? At least read it for statements like this:
Was it just Charlotte? Was it that publishers were so sexy? (94)And for the fact that it would make a bloody good
Masterpiece Theatre series, and if someone else doesn't someday adapt it, I will. Couldn't turn out any worse than last season's Billie Piper-miscasting, Jemma Redgrave-wasting
Mansfield Park.
