Sources for the Study of Victorian Writers and Their Publishers

Extract

In a recent study which is central to the theme of this volume, Robert L. Patten has remarked that despite all the scholarly activity in the Victorian period over the past fifteen years, there is still no “magisterial work” on Victorian publishing. In the introduction to his Charles Dickens and His Publishers (Oxford, 1978) Patten emphasizes the difficulty of assessing the extent to which the transactions and the relationship between Dickens and his various publishers were typical of the period and to what degree they were due to the force of Dickens' personality and to the position he occupied in the literary world. Even more pertinent are his reflections on the problems of separating an author's professional life from his total life, of extracting a picture of the writer qua writer from the rich and complex portrait of the whole man, without limiting or distorting his character.