The Common Writer Life in Nineteenth-Century Grub Street [Paperback]

This book examines the conditions of authorship and the development of publishing and journalism during the nineteenth century.The Common Writer examines the conditions of authorship and the development of publishing and journalism during the nineteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary sources, it provides a detailed account on the social, cultural, and economic factors that control literary activity, and determine literary success or failure.The Common Writer examines the conditions of authorship and the development of publishing and journalism during the nineteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary sources, it provides a detailed account on the social, cultural, and economic factors that control literary activity, and determine literary success or failure.This book examines the conditions of authorship and the development of publishing and journalism during the nineteenth century. It provides a detailed account on the social, cultural, and economic factors that control literary activity, and determine literary success or failure. There are chapters on the place of women and working-class writers in a predominantly male, middle-class publishing industry; on literary clubs, societies, and feuds; on patronage, charity, and state support for writers; on literary journalists and the development of the bohemian character; on the facts that inspired the fictional world of Thackeray's Pendennis and Gissing's New Grub Street; and on the long-running debates on the status of writers and the state of literature. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary sources, The Common Writer adds substantially to our understanding of nineteenth-century literary history and culture.Acknowledgements; Introduction: the common writer; 1. Literature and charity: the Royal literary fund from David Williams to Charles Dickens; 2. From prisons to pensions: Grub Street and its institutions; 3. Bohemia in Fleet Street; 4. The labouring muse: working-class writers and lõ