Circulating Libraries Promote the Three-Decker
“Popular New Novels, at all the libraries, each in 3 volumes,” ran the publishers’ advertisements. This format, established after the enormous success of Sir Walter Scott’s three-volume novels in the 1820s, remained the standard one for new fiction until 1894. J. A. Sutherland compares its stability to “the other grand durables of the British Empire—the Queen, the Constitution and the Navy.”
Three examples of the Three-Decker
Mrs. Henry Wood, Pomeroy Abbey, Bentley, 1878 [3356]
Florence Marryat, Petronel, Bentley, 1870 [1569]
Mrs. Henry Wood, Within the Maze, Bentley, 1872 [2267]
Nicknamed the “three-decker” after an eighteenth-century battleship which carried guns on three decks, this format did not suit all writers. Often the publisher asked the author to pad the text or the printer to employ generous spacing, wide margins, and to add page divisions between chapters to stretch a thin work. Each volume averaged 320 pages.
Trollope objected to extending his one volume work Lotta Schmidt to three: “I have always endeavored to give good measure to the public—The pages, as you propose to publish them, are so thin and desolated, and contain such a poor rate of type meandering thro’ a desert of margin, as to make me ashamed of the idea of putting my name to the book.”
Circulating Library Three- Deckers
No other library was as successful as Charles Edward Mudie’s Select Circulating Library, where subscriptions began at 1 guinea (21 shillings) per year for one volume which could be exchanged repeatedly. With one title Mudie could double or triple his profit by circulating a novel among three subscribers. He stocked works of history, biography, religion, and travel, but fiction, “suitable for family reading,” represented over 40% of his stock. His organizational skill enabled him to dominate the scene not only in London but also in the provinces and overseas. He bought in such volume that he obtained discounts of up to 50% for a three-decker.
Cooperation between the circulating libraries and the publishers kept the price of the novel artificially high. If a renegade publisher tried to cut the price, his titles weren’t reviewed or stocked by the libraries and he might have trouble obtaining supplies. The middle classes who couldn’t afford to pay 31 shillings 5 pence a title enjoyed a constant supply of the latest fiction from their library for 21 shillings a year.
Marie Corelli, Wormwood, Bentley, 1890. [630]
Library books lasted longer in sturdy bindings. There were no red ribbons on circulation library copies of Wormwood, as in this private copy.
Rhoda Broughton, Belinda, Bentley, 1883 [356, 356a]
Although Broughton’s first and second novels came out in attractive calico cloth bindings, Belinda [356 and 356a] was promptly reissued in plain cloth. Subsequent works by this author were all published in plain cloth. Sadleir says, “I think it may be taken for certain that the Circulating Libraries objected to the clinging quality of chintz bindings, and that these were abandoned under pressure from important customers.
Birket Foster’s “Dividing the Profits”
A contemporary artist, Birket Foster depicts a rotund well-to-do publisher with his bag of gold “dividing the profits of a book.” For publishers the three- decker was a commercially safe investment when printed in small editions (500, 750, 1000 copies for a new author) despite its high price of 1½ guineas. Prearrangement with circulating libraries guaranteed an adequate proportion of sales even for a literary flop. If the work became a success, the publisher increased his profit by issuing a reprint within the year or even within a few months of the original publication.