TY  - BOOK
AU  - Wade,Karen
TI  - Mudie's Select Library and the shelf life of the nineteenth-century novel
T2  - Cambridge elements. Elements in publishing and book culture,
SN  - 9781009478991 (ebook)
AV  - Z792.M84 W34 2025
U1  - 027/.2/421 23
PY  - 2025///
CY  - Cambridge
PB  - Cambridge University Press
KW  - Mudie's Select Library
KW  - History
KW  - Libraries
KW  - Great Britain
KW  - 19th century
KW  - English fiction
KW  - History and criticism
KW  - Books and reading
KW  - Fiction
KW  - Appreciation
N1  - Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 23 Jan 2025); Open Access
N2  - Mudie's Select Library was a major nineteenth-century literary institution. Substantially larger than its competitors, the library leveraged regional and global distribution networks and close commercial ties with publishers which allowed it to maintain a key position within the British publishing industry. In its heyday, it was widely believed that novelists and publishers were required to conform to aesthetic, moral and formal standards established by Mudie's, or risk the rejection and consequent failure of their books. However, the lack of a comprehensive study of the library's holdings leaves open questions about what the library actually stocked, and to what extent the library could determine a novel's fate. This Element describes a data analysis of a collection of Mudie's catalogues spanning eighty years, in order to reassess understandings of the library's role in the nineteenth-century publishing industry. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009478991
ER  -