I distinctly remember, as a child, hearing the “yellow-back railway novel” spoken of as the ultimate degradation in bookmaking. Yet, as applied to the early stages and heyday of the movement, this verdict is very unfair, as anyone will realize who has the patience and the good fortune to hunt out specimens in really fine condition from the earlier and better period.
—Michael Sadleir
The railroad brought many social and economic changes to Victorian society. Once the rail network was completed, book distribution to both large cities and outlying villages became cheap, simple and efficient. Postal service improved too so that ordering and paying for books became easier.
When Parliament in 1844 required every railroad in Britain to run at least one train along its entire route every day, making all stops, and charging a penny per mile, it afforded travel opportunities previously unavailable to large segments of Britain’s populace. Passengers found that reading was easier in a rail car than the bumpy coach so they brought candles on board for illumination.
Concurrently, a far-sighted entrepreneur, W. H. Smith, began opening bookstalls at the train stations to sell inexpensive reading matter to the traveler. By 1852, Smith’s stalls were commonplace; the company continues today to retail books, magazines and stationery in and near train stations, airports and bus terminals in the U.K.
Between 1853 and 1855, a new format for fiction appeared alongside the array of magazines, periodicals and part issues on display. Nicknamed the “yellow-back” because its glazed paper covers were often yellow, it made an immediate impression. The color illustration on the cover distinguished the yellow-back from any other book of the time and the concept was rapidly imitated by others.
FEATURES OF A YELLOW-BACK
- Work of fiction in one volume
- Costs 2 shillings or less
- Bound in colored glazed paper (yellow, or less often, pink, green, blue, grey)
- Cover shows a picture illustrating the story within, overprinted in 2-4 colors
- Spine features decorative titling and a picture or design
- Back cover mirrors its front cover or lists publisher’s titles and series and eventually it displays unrelated advertising
This 1854 edition of Pelham by Edward Bulwer-Lytton [3460-9] illustrates the features of the genre in the early stages. It is a work of fiction in one volume, bound in colored glazed paper, costing 2 shillings or less, with a decorative cover and spine, and, finally, the back cover lists Bulwer-Lytton’s title published in this series. This early yellow-back is bound in blue paper, but within a couple of years, the trade asked printers to use only yellow paper since it resisted soiling better than other colors.
Above are examples of early pink, blue, and green “yellow-backs.” All are novels by James Fennimore Cooper: The Two Admirals [3489-17], The Deerslayer [3489-3], and The Pathfinder [3489-11].
The firm of George Routledge published the earliest and greatest quantity of yellow-backs. Eventually Routledge imposed a uniform decoration on its Cooper series: for tales of the West, an Indian; for sea stories, a sailor.
The back cover (below) of the 1866 version of Bulwer-Lytton’s The Pilgrims of the Rhine [3460a-2] illustrates the advertising that began to appear later on the back covers, replacing publisher’s lists; this advertising is for security shutters.
Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans [3489-8] and Satanstoe [3489-14] with Routledge’s American Indian figure representing western tales.
Cooper’s The Pilot, 1855 [3489-12] illustrates Routledge’s standard seaman figure. Cooper’s The Sea Lions [3489-15] was published in 1854 with an illustration of Neptune.
One of the earliest yellow-backs known, Letters Left at the Pastrycook’s [3623-2], 1853 by Horace Mayhew also has the first colored pictorial cover by Edmund Evans.
Evans began his career at 15 years of age in a wood engraving firm and became England’s foremost Victorian color printer. UCLA has much of his correspondence and notebooks. Sadleir collected three copies of this book. One is bound in blue boards [3623-1], and the third copy [3623-3] has the same cover but is an earlier edition.
Sadleir identified the period 1855-1870 as the golden age of the yellow-back. During this interval the books were similar in overall appearance but differed in individual details. Thin, square boards, a uniform size (small crown octavo), and a harmonious design of picture and lettering showed the “elegance and effectiveness of the well-planned yellow-back.”
Russell, William. Leaves from the Diary of A Law Clerk, published in 1857 [3525, 3525a-II] Perhaps the popularity of the yellow-back covers prompted Routledge to issue Russell’s novel both in cloth at left (imitating the yellow-back style) and paper boards at right
After 1870, with few exceptions, the integrated design which gave the yellow-back its character and quality became a commonplace formula. Sadleir criticized its standardized spine patterns as “identical and repulsive;” the picture as “wholly irrelevant in style, and discordant in tone;” the front was “stiff” with its frame around the picture and with a margin at the top for the title; the type font didn’t harmonize with the pattern on the spine nor the coloring of the picture with its surround.
Mrs. Grey, Opera Singer’s Wife, 1860 [3755a-223] and Bulwer Lytton, Night and Morning, ca.1876 [3460b-3]. These covers support Sadleir’s points about the later yellow-backs. Despite the dramatic scene on the cover at the right, the overall design pales next to the rich details in the design of the cover on the left.