Excursions in Victorian Bibliography. Michael Sadleir
it is harmless enough, less cruel than killing birds, less degrading than drink. Naturally, however, it cannot be indulged to more than limited degree. Shakespeare and Sterne and Keats and Browning I may own, but in reprint. And so with many another. But to the extent possible in fact and a little beyond that permissible in money, I have contrived, from one phase to another, to keep myself fairly supplied with “reading firsts.” A decadent, I collected Verlaine and Mallarmé, Rimbaud and the Anglo-Irish nineties; a neo-primitive, I bought Synge and Verhaeren, Conrad and the chief Georgian poets of the new simplicity. And so matters progressed, while gradually novels ousted poetry from my shelves, and, again gradually, from the reading of modern novels I came once more to Trollope and the writers of his age.
It is not until one undertakes seriously the collecting of the less-known Victorian novelists that one realizes how prime the sport that their assembling offers, how destitute of guide-posts is the maze of their work. In the capacity of quarry few authors or groups of authors can rival those with whom this volume deals. The essence of collecting is the chase. The buyer of world-famous rarities, of which the whereabouts is trumpeted abroad, knows nothing of the thrill of that dusky provincial bookshop, among whose tumbled piles Victorians must surely lurk. The dapper expert in ingenious moderns with his prefaces, his cancel-titles, his censored (but disappointing) curiosa, his “works” and “limiteds,” can set one joy alone against my dozen. He may, if the gods be kind, on the shelves of bookshops proper find books that were bought for new, but have not sold and still remain, lacking an entry to the world of second-hand, still fresh, still offered at the published price. But in the main his life is one of “inside information”; his ally in the trade sells books instead of making them; it is the principle of the turf in terms of Whatman paper and grey Michalet boards. To the collector of Victorians (exception made, of course, of Dickens's parts, of Wuthering Heights, of Desperate Remedies, of other far reputed treasures) belongs neither the pursuit of “folios” across the world nor the click of the tape pegging out details of obscure pamphlets. Copies of three-volume novels by writers of reputation are hard to find at all, and very hard in anything of condition. Nevertheless, when found, they are often cheap. And then, when one is bought, there comes the reading of it.
And yet at times the collector feels forlorn and without guidance, for maybe the book he buys is a little known one, of which the very name is strange. Indeed, the lack of pointers obtrudes harshly, and in a sense no less literary than bibliographical. Not only is information as to actual titles scarce and unreliable, but among the great number of these writers' books the student must perforce read his own way to a sense of relative quality. At the cost of some hours of tedium and of many mistaken purchases I have arrived at a general knowledge of what these novelists wrote, when they wrote it, and what it looked like when it first appeared. This knowledge is herein set out for the possible assistance of all and sundry.
The relative value as literature or as story-telling of their many books makes more perilous judgment. I am no expert in comparative literature. I cannot even claim to have read all or nearly all the books that are, in the pages following, materially dissected. I have preferred therefore to make no pretence to serious literary criticism, but have contented myself with indicating at the beginning of each section the general character of the work of the writer in question, into what groups (if any) his novels fall, and have called attention here and there to certain little known or unknown stories that have pleased me and may, though hardly for that reason, please some of my contemporaries. Where an author has little attraction for me, I have said so. Books of all kinds are listed between these covers, and no single being will enjoy them all. But this is certain: that among them the inquirer, be his tastes what they may, will find reading to soothe him and to stimulate; will come to seek in the solidity, whether downright, fantastic, or lurid, in the quiet charm, in the dexterous sincerity of good Victorian fiction, a satisfaction of spirit produced by the novels of no other period of English literature.
Those who for years have known and pondered these Victorian tales will smile contemptuously at such pompous revelation of a stale secret. To them, in scorn of self and lest they lose any of that pleasurable pride allowable to old initiates who watch a novice at his scourgings, I offer the apology that is my book. Others, arrogant in knowledge of Dickensiana, in possession of priceless Borrows, of Jane Austen perfect in her boards, will turn from this humble chronicle of humble writers with the bored serenity of a brass hat on his way to conference. To them I make obeisance, wondering secretly whether great collections were amassed more joyfully than my little one. Last of all, however, may come a few, to whom, as to me, Trollope is balm and meat at once, who love three volumes of a novel for their very spacing and ornate expansiveness, who find shelves of cloth or labelled triplets more beautiful than any other shelves, to whom, in short, the collection and the reading of Victorian first editions is romance and quiet happiness. To them my book with all its faults will come kindly and joyfully, for they will welcome in it the voice of one who thinks and loves, as they do, the plaint of one suffering from the same sweet sickness as themselves.
A NOTE ON THE TERMS USED IN THE BIBLIOGRAPHIES WHICH FOLLOW
TOGETHER WITH OBSERVATIONS RELATIVE TO VICTORIAN BOOKMAKING, RECOMMENDATIONS TO COLLECTORS, AND AN APPEAL TO THE EXPERIENCE OF OTHER STUDENTS FOR ASSISTANCE AND CORRECTION
(i) I am aware that bibliographers proper designate by means of upright strokes the alignment of wording on the title-pages of books subject to their analysis. This mannerism I have eschewed, and for two reasons. In the first place, a bibliography so displayed baffles the inexpert reader by a suggestion of mathematical obscurity. Tempted by the desire to attract a few such readers to a book that, for all its overplus of sinew and lack of flesh, is in intention a tribute to a group of very human and consoling writers, I have sought an appearance of readability at the cost of a small technical sacrifice. The sacrifice is small—and here lies the second justification of my heterodox technique—because no variety of any one of the books hereafter listed depends either on the alignment of title-page wording or (save in a single case to which attention is specially drawn) on the phrasing, absence or presence of a note of reservation of foreign or dramatic rights. In short, that which is required for the identification of a first edition I have given; but beyond that—nothing.
(ii) The first editions of almost any author include, in addition to books written wholly by him, a number of works for some part of which only he is responsible. These secondary items cannot be neglected by collectors, for any book in which for the first time is published an essay, a story, a poem, or what not by one particular writer ranks as a first edition of that writer. Naturally, however, complete works take precedence over partial works, and I have grouped at the end of each section of this book such partial or minor first editions as I have been able to identify.
It must be clearly understood that first magazine publication is not here referred to. The only periodical issue of a book that can rank with book issue is that in parts, according to which the text of a novel made its appearance in monthly or weekly sections, separately wrappered, under its own title and unaccompanied by any extraneous matter save advertisements. Part issues are essential to a collector; on the other hand, the numbers of magazines in which this story or that made serial appearance may be ignored. In many cases I have stated where (if anywhere) novels were serialized, but such information is of general rather than of collecting interest, save to those whose catholicity of taste and house-room permit them the luxury of adding sets of magazines to those of actual books.
(iii) The terms used to-day to describe sizes in uncut books vary from those of an earlier period. For example, the terms “Post 8vo” and “12mo” are now rarely met with, whereas prior to 1880 they were in regular and common currency. Fearing that the modern buyer or seller of books would be puzzled by too frequent an encounter with technicalities virtually obsolete, I have expressed book sizes in terms familiar to present-day ears and as nearly equivalent to those replaced as makes no matter. The “8vo” book of the fifties is the “Demy 8vo” of the nineteen-twenties; “Post 8vo” has become “Extra Crown 8vo”; “12mo” has become “Foolscap 8vo.” The phraseology adopted, being familiar, will give an immediate general idea of a book's