The Common Writer Life in Nineteenth-Century Grub Street

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 middle-class culture; 5. The female drudge: women novelists and their publishers; 6. Gissing's new Grub Street, 1880–1900; Notes; Index.

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.