The Michael Sadleir Collection of 19th Century Fiction

The Other Career: Occupations of Victorian Writers

Writing was a second or part-time career for many Victorians. It has been estimated that a fifth of the established writers came from the field of law, but sailors, clergymen, soldiers, physicians, teachers, politicians, business men, bankers, all turned to novel writing to satisfy the voracious appetite of the ever growing reading public. Sadleir noted alternative occupations of many of the authors in his collection.

Occupation: Sailor. Frederick Marryat 1792-1848

Before he was fourteen he had run away to sea three times. His father finally gave up and placed him aboard a frigate, and he went on with his naval career, winning rapid promotion and becoming a commander at the age of 23. He wrote his first novel, Frank Mildmay, in 1829 and was able to retire from the navy as a captain on its proceeds.

Frederick Marryat Peter Simple, London: Saudners and Olney, 1837 [1592c]. Peter Simple, published first in 1834, is considered to be his finest work of fiction.

Altogether he wrote 25 novels based on his some fifty naval engagements.

Occupation: Physician. Charles James Lever 1806-1872

Lever studied medicine at the University of Goetingen and in Heidelberg and Vienna and took his medical degree in 1831. He was in charge of the cholera hospital Coleraine through the cholera epidemic of 1833, but he then moved to Brussels to a private fashionable practice, writing short pieces and novels in his spare time. He continued his career as a doctor until 1842. Ultimately he wrote 37 novels and is best known for his Irish novels, although there was some criticism that he portrayed national caricatures rather than characters.

Illus 14.2 Charles James Lever Charles O’Malley, the Irish Dragoon, Dublin: W. Curry, 1841 [1396]

Michael Sadleir wrote in XIX Century Fiction: “ It has proved impossible to locate a copy of A Rent in a Cloud [1865]. This entry is otherwise a complete record of Lever’s fiction in British volume-form.”

Occupation: Lawyer. Samuel Warren 1807-1877

Warren studied medicine in Edinburgh but later turned to law and was called to the bar from the Inner Temple in 1837. He wrote a number of technical and legal works, became Queen’s Counsel in 1851, and received an honorary D.C.L. in 1853 from Oxford. From 1856 to 1859 he was a Conservative Member of Parliament, resigning to become Master of Lunacy (a special master appointed by a judge to conduct inquiries). Ten Thousand a Year [3304a], like most of his work, was published anonymously and was sensationally popular.

Occupation: Politician. Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lytton 1803-1873

Lytton’s father’s family had been ennobled since the Conquest. Raised by his mother, he was a Liberal M.P. from 1831 to 1842, returning to Parliament in 1852, by which time he was a Disraelian Tory. From 1858 to 1859 he was Secretary of State for the Colonies. He wrote highly successful plays, well-received poems, novels in a great variety of genres (political, historical, science fiction, silver fork, criminal mystical, domestic). He wrote fiction in order to support his furiously fashionable life during his disastrous and scandalous marriage.

Pelham [3460 9], originally published in 1828 by Colburn, with a huge advertising campaign, was a portrayal of the high society he knew so well. This copy is part of the Railway Library series, published by Routledge in 1854.

Lytton was created Baron Lytton in 1866.

Occupation: Business Man. Hugh Conway (pseudonym of Frederick John Fargus) 1847-1885

Fargus assumed the name Conway in memory of the happiest time in his life, on the frigate Conway. He inherited his father’s auction business after he had been articled to a firm of public accountants and remained in the family business until two years before his death. He wrote poetry, short stories, and novels in his spare time. Called Back [608], a one shilling hugely popular novel published in 1884, is a sensational story of murder, amnesia, assassination, and more.

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