| 'an exemplary empirical study in the
genre of History of the Book' Regenia Gagnier, Professor, School of English, Exeter University Prepublication Review |
| 'As the first scholar to study in any
detail this forgotten episode in the manufacture and
distribution of a product designed for a mass
fiction-reading public, Graham Law set himself a
formidable task in Serializing Fiction in the
Victorian Press.The raw materials necessary for a
well-rounded account are both abundant and hard to find,
and some have simply vanished. . . . Yet enough data of
various kinds have survived to enable Law to write a
substantial and densely factual study, ballasted by a
score of tables.' Richard D. Altick, Regent's Professor of English, Emeritus, Ohio State University 'The Curse of the Cliffhanger', Times Literary Supplement (9 Feb 2001) 5-6 |
| 'In this seminal study, Law (Waseda
Univ., Japan) adds an important new dimension to the
study of Victorian periodical literature, namely, a
detailed analysis of the publication of Victorian
fiction, serially, in newspapers. . . Law's important
research substantially changes the conception of
Victorian readership and the influence of fiction'
Rosemary T. VanArsdel, Distinguished Professor of English, Emerita, University of Puget Sound Review in Choice (American Library Association), 38:10 (June 2001). |
| 'Serializing Fiction in the Victorian
Press fufills our best expectations. It gives a
detailed descriptive history of the rise and decline of
syndication with a wide-ranging discussion of its
implications for readers and authors. It will prove
essential reading for those with an interest in this
particular aspect of publishing history. The book is
handsomely produced with sixteen, mostly uncommon
illustrations. The notes are excellent with a
comprehensive bibliography and index.'
Andrew Gasson, Author of Wilkie Collins: An Illustrated Guide (OUP, 1998) The Wilkie Collins Society Newsletter (Spring 2001) 1 |
| 'Serializing Fiction in the Victorian
Press has irreversibly recast the shape of
literary history in the nineteenth century . . . Law's
book opens up for new scrutiny an important transitional
period in the history of the novel and provides a wealth
of new information about authors reaching audiences with
serial fiction in the Victorian Age'
Michael Lund, Professor of English at Longwood College, Virginia, co-author of The Victorian Serial (UP of Virginia, 1991) Review in The Wilkie Collins Society Journal, NS4 (2001) 55-7 |
| 'The first two chapters provide a
comprehensive account of serialized fiction previous to
1850 and of the early newspaper serializers of the 1850s
and 1860s (primarily in Scotland). Chapters three and
four recount the history of Tillotson's Newspaper
Fiction Bureau of Bolton, Lancashire, and its rivals,
including the Northern Newspaper Syndicate, AP Watt's
literary agency, and W.C. Leng and Co. of Sheffield, all
of whom dominated the field during newspaper
serialization's heyday from the 1870s to the early
1890s. Together, these chapters constitute the first
cohesive, accurate history of how British newspaper
syndicates developed and operated during this time.'
Chuck Johanningsmeier, University of Nebraska, Omaha Review in SHARP News, 11:2 (Spring 2002) 12-13 |
| 'Law's Serializing Fiction is an
extremely readable and beautifully organized account of
the serializing of fiction by newspaper syndicates
toward the end of the nineteenth century . . . This is
material history at its best, the careful and undogmatic
unraveling of McLuhan's adage "the medium is the
message" . . .' Laura Mandell, Miami University Review in The Wordsworth Circle, 32:4 (Fall 2001) 278-80 |
| 'Law draws on a truly impressive range
of primary sources to illuminate the practices of the
syndicates, providing not only a history of the first
and most important, Tillotsons, and its competitors, but
also parallel stories of the careers in syndication of
authors well-known (Mary Braddon, Wilkie Collins,
Margaret Oliphant, Walter Besant) and vitually unknown
(David Pae) . . . a valuable contribution to periodicals
scholarship' Dallas Liddle, Augsburg College Review in Victorian Periodicals Review, 35:2 (Summer 2002) 189-90 |
| 'I learned something from every page of
this book . . . The scholarship of Serializing
Fiction is weighty. . . . The book is a stimulus
to further reading and a significant reference source
for scholars.' Mary M. Saunders, Professor of English, Hampden-Sydney College, Virginia Review in Review (University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville) v. 24 (2002) 111-28 |
| 'The story [of newspaper serialization]
is a complex one, intersecting as it does with so many
aspects of publishing and general history. At heart it
has elements of high drama: family sagas; professional
friendships and feuds; political, religious and
geographical rivalries; class and gender conflicts;
triumphs and tragedies; and all to the swelling
accompaniment of late nineteenth-century imperialism. In
less scrupulous hands it could lend itself to a telling
as melodramatic or ideologically driven as was some of
the serialised fiction itself. Law, who defines his
approach as non-ideologically "cultural materialist," is
cautious, dogged, and meticulously concerned to report
every possible fact and to document every assertion with
multiple examples. He has trawled through vast tracts of
primary and secondary material for his evidence, an
effort which anyone who has worked with newspapers can
only admire, appreciate, and be very thankful that
someone else has undertaken.' Helen Debenham, University of Canterbury, New Zealand Review in Australasian Victorian Studies Journal, 7 (2001) 192-4 |
| 'In 1878 the popular novelist James Payn
wrote to Bernhard Tauchnitz, "Literature has taken a
curious phase in England so far as fiction is concerned.
The largest prices are now got from country newspapers
who form syndicates, and each subscribe their portion
towards the novel" (qtd. 161). Payn's remark neatly
encapsulates why Graham Law's highly original,
meticulously researched study of serial fiction,
syndication, and newspapers is needed. In Law's account
the weekly rather than monthly serial predomi-nates, and
the history of Victorian serialization undergoes
substantive revision. ... Law's revised history of the
serial is densely detailed yet always lucid; if he
establishes the larger, and crucial, role played by the
provincial press in Victorian serialization he also
illuminates such matters as serial preferences in
Britain versus America (which preferred adventure to
sensation fiction given the latter's whiff of
impropriety). Only indefatigable research at the British
Newspaper Library and related archives could have
produced such a study; and if at times a certain
social-scientism creeps into Law's argument and prose
style, the data he generously provides in tables and
attractive plates is useful and breathtaking in range.
Principally a cultural materialist account, Law's study
also analyzes the impact of weekly serials on
authorship, readership, and genre, with due attention to
class, gender, and geography.' Linda Hughes, Texas Christian University Review in Victorian Studies, 44:4 (Summer 2002) 688-90 |
| 'For all that I may disagree with its
rejection of explicit and self-reflective theorization,
I have no hesitation in pronouncing Serializing
Fiction in the Victorian Press an essential text
for anyone studying nineteenth-century British media
history. I shall certainly be using it for years to come
as a rich mine of information about the varying costs of
fiction, what and who were published where, the nature
of contracts between authors and syndicates, between
syndicates and newspapers and so on. It is indeed as
reference book on the material conditions of
nineteenth-century provincial newspaper fiction
production that this volume will be most useful, with
its 18 tables, extensive bibliography and plethora of
detail. Furthermore, its first part, 'Context', provides
a summa, deriving from familiar secondary
sources, that I would recommend to students of Book or
Media History courses as a historical introduction to
the serial.' Andrew King, Canterbury Christ Church University College Review in Media History 8:2 (December 2002) 213-4 |
| Ralf Schneider, University of
Tubingen Review in ZAA: Zeitschrift fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik 50:2 (2002) |
| A. Banerjee, Institute of English,
School of Advanced Studies, University of London
Review in English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature 83:6 (Dec 2002) 563-4 |
| 'Two additional books – both
of them long in the making and based on research into
sources not previously tapped – call into question all of
our confident assumptions about who read what. Graham
Law's Serializing Fiction in the Victorian Press
draws on records from Tillotsons' Fiction Bureau and other
agencies that developed mechanisms for syndication. New
novels were sold in weekly parts and published first –
before they came out in volumes – by papers in major
provincial cities such as Nottingham, Liverpool, Aberdeen,
Dublin, Sheffield, Manchester, and Birmingham, as well as
in Australia and North America. As long as multiple papers
subscribed, each one could afford the draw of a popular
novelist. In addition to giving extra revenue to authors,
syndication provided journals in the U.S. with advance
sheets so they could publish ahead of the pirates that
would jump in once volumes were available. Law's data about circulation, publication dates, pay, and so forth, must now be considered when making generalizations about popularity, class, and literary form. Provincial readers of cheap weekly newspapers in the last quarter of the nineteenth century saw many books that were never published in volumes, but they were also the initial readers of novels not only by sensationalists such as Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon but also by Margaret Oliphant, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, and George Meredith. This information complicates our assumptions about penny-weekly fiction; it also suggests that we need to rethink matters of form. Most of us are used to reminding our students about the consequences of monthly serialization as opposed to publication in volumes; Law, however, proposes that by the last twenty years of the century the weekly serial also exerted specific pressures on the shape of mainstream fiction.' Sally Mitchell, Temple University Comments in Review Essay 'Reading Class', Victorian Literature and Culture 33:1 (March 2005) 331-339 |
| 'This is a
background book to crown all background books. Graham Law
has concerned himself with fiction as commodity. . . . [He] is at his most interesting when he deals with unorthodox publications. One tie-up was between W.F. Tillotson, of the Bolton Weekly Journal, and the Dundee firm of John Leng. That involved the syndication of a prolific writer, now forgotten, called David Pae. His work was published anonymously and serially, and seldom rose to the dignity of being issued in volume form. Yet, Professor Law tells us, Pae's fifty-odd works of fiction were quite possibly those that were most widely read during mid-Victorian years in Scotland and the North of England. They had titles such as Jessie Melville and Lucy, the Factory Girl, and were published again and again in various papers, albeit abridged and under alternative titles. This was to disguise the fact that they had already been clapper-clawed by the vulgar.' Philip Hobsbaum, University of Glasgow Review in George Eliot - George Henry Lewes Studies 48/49 (Sep 2005) 122-124 |