continued dearness of books—useful knowledge society—modern epoch of cheapness—demand and supply—the printing-machine—the paper-machine—revival of woodcutting.

from the time when hume's 'history' was published at 5s. a volume, there appears to have been a steady advance in the price of books to the end of the century. in the eleven years from 1792 to 1802, there was an average publication of 372 new books per year. the number of new books had quadrupled upon the average of those published from 1701 to 1756. but the duodecimo had been increased in price from 2s. 6d. to 4s.; the octavo from 5s. or 6s. to 10s.; the quarto from 12s. to 1l. 1s. from 1800 to 1827 there were published, according to the london catalogue, 19,860 books, including reprints; for which reprints deducting one-fifth, there were 15,888 new books, being an annual average of 588. books were still rising in price. the duodecimo mounted up to 6s., or became a small octavo at 10s. 6d.; the octavo was raised from 10s. to 12s.. or 14s.; the quarto was very frequently two guineas. some of this rise of price was unquestionably due to the general rise in the value of labour, and to the higher price of paper. but more is to be ascribed to the determination of the great publishers not sufficiently to open their eyes {239} to the extension of the number of readers, and the absolute certainty, therefore, that a system of extravagantly high prices was an unnatural, bigoted, and unprofitable system. they paid most liberally for copyright, and they looked only to an exclusive sale for their remuneration. they did not apply the same system to periodical works. the two great reviews, the 'edinburgh' and the 'quarterly,' were as cheap, if not cheaper, having regard to their literary merit, than the cheapest books of the previous century. they were certain of their profit through that union of excellence and cheapness which could not fail to create a large demand. the publishers generally had not the same reliance upon the increase of readers of other popular works of original excellence. it has only been within the last twenty years that their unalloyed confidence in a narrow market has been first shaken, and then overthrown.

in looking back upon the changes of a quarter of a century, it is impossible, even for the writer, who was identified with this great movement in popular literature, to forbear speaking of what was accomplished by 'the society for the diffusion of useful knowledge.' one who has written contemporary history in a broad and liberal spirit says—"the institution of this society was an important feature of its times, and one of the honours belonging to the reign of george iv. it did not succeed in all its professed objects: it did not give to the operative classes of great britain a {240} library of the elements of all sciences—it omitted some of the most important of the sciences, and, with regard to some others, presented anything rather than the elements. it did not fully penetrate the masses that most needed aid. but it established the principle and precedent of cheap publication (cheapness including goodness), stimulated the demand for sound information, and the power and inclination to supply that demand; and marked a great ?ra in the history of popular enlightenment."[30] the society originated with mr. brougham, in 1826. he gathered around him some of the leading statesmen, lawyers, and philanthropists of his day. men eminent in letters and in science joined the association. and yet its success was so doubtful in the eyes of those who had been accustomed to consider high price as a necessary condition of excellence, that one of the greatest publishing houses refused to bring out the treatises without a guarantee. the society wisely went upon the principle, originally, of leaving all the trade arrangements to its publishers. it placed its 'library of useful knowledge,' its 'farmer's series,' its 'maps,' in the hands of messrs. baldwin, paying the literary and artistical expenses, and receiving a rent upon the copies sold. mr. knight originated the 'british almanac' and its 'companion,' 'the library of entertaining knowledge,' 'the penny magazine,' and 'the penny cyclop?dia;' and he bore the entire expense and risk of {241} these works, as he did also for 'the gallery of portraits,' and 'the journal of education,' paying upon all a rent when the sale reached a certain number of copies.[31] it is sufficient to mention these facts to show that the operations connected with this society were not upon an insignificant scale, or not fruitful of large results; and that they were essentially commercial operations. the cry that was raised against this society, by those who were interested in the publication of dear books, was that of "monopoly." that cuckoo cry was repeated on every side. fashionable publishers shouted it; the old conventional school of authors echoed it. those who wrote for the society were called, in derision, "compilers." scribblers who never verified a quotation ridiculed patient industry as dulness.

from the time when the society commenced a real "superintendence" of works for the people—when it assisted, by diligent revision and friendly inquiry, the services of its editors—the old vague generalities of popular knowledge were exploded; and the scissars-and-paste school of authorship had to seek for other occupations than paternoster-row could once furnish. accuracy was forced upon elementary books as the rule and not the exception. books professedly "entertaining" were to be founded upon exact information, and their authorities invariably indicated. no doubt this superintendence in some degree interfered with the {242} free course of original composition, and imparted somewhat of the utilitarian character to everything produced. but it was the only course by which a new aspect could be given to cheap literature, by showing that the great principles of excellence were common to all books, whether for the learned or the uninformed. in seventeen years the society accomplished its main objects. there were considerable gains connected with it, and there were great losses. these are evanescent. the good which it did remains. it supplied the new demand for knowledge in a way that had never before been contemplated; it supplied it at the cheapest rate then possible; it broke down the distinctions between knowledge for the few and knowledge for the many; it created a popular taste for art; it sent its light into the strongholds of ignorance and superstition, by superseding, for a time, a large amount of weekly trash, and destroying, for ever, the astrological and indecent almanacs. but, beyond its own productions, it raised the standard of all popular literature. it has had worthy co-labourers and successors. it ceased its work when others were in the field, honestly and successfully carrying forward what it had begun. he who writes this will ever think it an honour that he long worked in fellowship with henry brougham; and that he was a partaker, for some years, in the councils of an association of men more or less eminent, whose objects were never of a selfish, partial, or temporary nature. he has sate at those councils {243} with five cabinet ministers, who felt most deeply that the education of the people, in its largest sense, was as much their business as the imposition of taxes. where is that spirit now?

the modern epoch of cheap literature may be held to have commenced, however partially, in 1827, when constable issued his 'miscellany,' and the society for the diffusion of useful knowledge their 'library of useful knowledge.' in a few years followed 'the library of entertaining knowledge,' mr. murray's 'family library,' and lardner's 'cabinet cyclop?dia.' these books were properly published under a tentative system. not one of them rushed to that extreme cheapness which is indicated by quantity alone. they each had to feel their way to a demand proportioned to the expense of their production. that production was necessarily expensive. the cheapness consisted in the employment of the best writers to produce books of original merit at a price that was essentially low, by comparison with the ordinary rate at which books for the few were sold. though constable, in his grand style, talked of millions of buyers, he charged his little volumes 3s. 6d. each. he was right. the millions were not ready to buy such books at a shilling, nor even at sixpence. they are not ready now. 'the library of useful knowledge' was charged at the rate of 3d. a sheet. taking mere quantity of paper and printing into account, some of the penny journals of the present day are six times as cheap. {244} 'the library of entertaining knowledge' was 4s. 6d. a volume. the copyright of each volume ordinarily cost 200l., and the woodcuts as much, and even more. 'the family library,' at 5s., was, no doubt, equally costly. the same costliness applies to lardner's 'cyclop?dia,' published at 6s. in these new undertakings, conceived in a totally different spirit from anything which had preceded them, there were large expenses which have been surprisingly reduced by scientific discovery and extended competition at the present day. there were about twenty woodcutters in london in 1827, who were real artists, paid at artists' prices. woodcutting is now a manufacture. paper, then, paid the high rate of duty, and was 50 per cent. dearer. steam-printing was not universal, and was only applied to common works. each of these series was offered to the very numerous body of those who, having become better educated than the same classes in a previous generation, were desirous of real improvement. they had a certain success, but a variable one. every experiment of this sort has shown that such collections of separate and independent works cannot rely upon a sale as a series. they come to be bought, each work by itself, according to its attractions for individual purchasers. thence all those irregularities of sale, and consequent accumulations of stock, which press heavily upon the profits of those volumes which are successful. the republication of the 'waverley novels' in 5s. volumes was {245} an exception to this rule. they constituted an integral work. their sale was vast, although the total cost was 12l. scott and his publisher saw the immense field that was before them, in giving their books to the world at a price that would carry them into thousands of households, instead of limiting them to the circulating libraries. they originally appeared in seventy-four volumes, at an aggregate cost of 34l. 10s. had they remained in their original form, and at their first price, those heroic efforts which lifted a mountain of debt off the shoulders of that great man who, perhaps, more than all men, might have claimed the motto which burke said should be his—"nitor in adversum"—those labours which wore him out, would not have been successful. neither would the success have come so soon had the later publication in twenty-five volumes for 5l. been tried in the first instance. if the 'waverley novels' go through new phases of cheapness, it will be because there is now a larger public to buy; and because the first natural price for all works of extraordinary merit, that of authorship, has been already paid largely and liberally. the question of price is then mainly reduced to a question of paper and print. but miserable would it be for a nation whose "chiefest glory is its authors," at a time when the nature of that glory is properly understood, if a passion for premature cheapness, to be measured by mere quantity, were to possess the minds of the people, and to be the expression of the "vox populi." {246} there was a much larger public always ready to purchase these enchanting fictions than have been, at any time during the last quarter of a century, ready for the purchase of books of information, however agreeably presented. we doubt whether the family libraries, and the libraries of entertaining knowledge, and the cabinet cyclop?dias, would have sold better at the time of their publication, if they had been produced at half the original price. the experiment was tried, when the number of readers was largely increased, in 'knight's weekly volume'—a series published at one-third the price of constable's 'miscellany.' the majority of books in that series were, for the most part, of intrinsic merit; many also carrying the recommendation of popular names as their authors. "why mr. knight did not profit largely by the speculation is a problem yet to be solved," says the writer of a recent paper on 'literature for the people.' the solution is, that the people did not sufficiently buy them. so far from twenty thousand copies being sold of many volumes, as asserted, there were not twenty volumes, out of the hundred and forty, that reached a sale of ten thousand, and the average sale was scarcely five thousand. they were not cheap enough for the humble, who looked to mere quantity. they were too cheap for the genteel, who were then taught to think that a cheap book must necessarily be a bad book. it is impossible not to remember that, even ten years ago, the majority of publishers, and many of their supporters in the {247} public journals, hated cheap books. the 'weekly volumes' were welcomed very generally by those who were anxious for the enlightenment of the people. societies were set on foot for their circulation. but all experience has shown that no associations for recommending books, and forcing their sale, can be successful. the people, of every grade, will choose for themselves. it is useless to urge an adult, whether male or female, to buy a solid book when an exciting one is longed for. it is worse than useless to give books of improvement away to the poor. they always suspect the motive. very wisely did a witness before the "select committee on newspaper stamps," 1851, say, "there are classes which you cannot reach, unless you go to them with something which is the nearest thing to what they want." if they want fiction, they will not look at science or history. at the time of the issue of 'the weekly volume,' the sale of books at railway stations was unknown; and if it had been known, they scarcely presented sufficient attractions for the travelling readers for amusement. they were published also in too quick succession. it was a plausible theory of the editor, that, if good books, extremely cheap, were issued rapidly enough to form a little library, many such libraries would be formed. those who have to deal with 'literature for the people' must bear in mind that time as well as money has to be economised by those who of necessity must labour hard either by hand or head. what may be called furniture books may {248} be bought by the luxurious, to put upon their shelves, and looked at when wanted. the earnest workers buy few books that they are not desirous to read, and to read at once. they bought such a book in 1830, to the extent of 50,000 copies. 'the results of machinery,' written by the author of this volume, was addressed to great human interests. it was not professedly amusing; but it was the first attempt to take political economy out of its hard and logical track. it is now recorded, as a wonderful instance of the application of cheapness to a dry subject, that mr. m'culloch's 'essay on the rate of wages,' is republished at a shilling. it is in no spirit of self-laudation that we presume to think that the vaunted cheapness of 1854 had some previous examples.

in this principle, that the great mass of the people will read as they buy, lies the secret of the enormous success of the weekly sheets of that great epoch of cheapness which began about twenty years ago. it is the principle which is the foundation of the extensive demand, growing year by year, for all periodical literature. it made the essayists. it made the magazines. it made the newspapers. it caused a sale of three hundred thousand weekly sheets in 1834. it is causing a sale of fourteen hundred thousand weekly sheets in 1854. before we proceed in the examination of this remarkable epoch of popular literature, let us glance at the influence of mechanical and scientific improvement {249} on the cheapening of books during the last thirty or forty years.

those who have followed us in our notices of the early history of printing will scarcely have failed to see how the ordinary laws of demand and supply have regulated the progress of this art, whose productions might, at first sight, appear to form an exception to other productions required by the necessities of mankind. there can be little doubt, we think, that when several ingenious men were, at the same moment, applying their skill to the discovery or perfection of a rapid mode of multiplying copies of books, there was a demand for books which could not well be supplied by the existing process of writing. that demand had doubtless been created by the anxiety to think for themselves which had sprung up amongst the laity of catholic europe. there was a very general desire amongst the wealthier classes to obtain a knowledge of the principles of their religion from the fountain-head,—the bible. the desire could not be gratified except at an enormous cost. printing was at last discovered; and bibles were produced without limitation of number. the instant, therefore, that the demand for bibles could be supplied, the supply acted upon the demand, by increasing it in every direction; and when it was found that not only bibles but many other books of real value, such as copies of the ancient classics, could be produced with a facility equal to the wants of every purchaser, books at {250} once became a large branch of commerce, and the presses of the first printers never lacked employment. the purchasers of books, however, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were almost wholly confined to the class of nobles and those of the richer citizens and scholars by profession. it was a very long time before the influence of the press had produced any direct effect upon the habits of the great mass of the people. it was not till the system of periodical literature was fairly established, and that newspapers first, and magazines and reviews subsequently, had taken hold of the popular mind, that the productions of the press could be said to be in demand amongst the people generally. up to our own times that demand has been limited to very narrow bounds; and the circumstances by which it has been extended are as remarkable as those which accompanied the progress of the original invention of printing. the same principle of demand going before supply, and the same reaction of supply upon demand, will be found to have marked the operations of the printing-press in this country, during the last twenty-five years, as distinctly as they marked them throughout europe in the latter part of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth. we will shortly recapitulate these circumstances.

a few years after the commencement of the present century, a system of education, which is now known throughout europe as that of mutual {251} instruction, was introduced into this country. in whatever mode this system was called into action, its first experiments soon demonstrated that, through it, education might be bestowed at a much cheaper rate than had ever before been considered practicable. this success encouraged the friends of education to exertions quite unexampled; and the british and foreign school society, and the national society, had, in a very few years, taught some thousands of children to read and write, who, without the new arrangements which had been brought into practice, would in great part have remained completely untaught. a demand for books of a new class was thus preparing on every side. the demand would not be very sudden or very urgent; but it would still exist, and would become stronger and stronger till a supply was in some degree provided for it it would act, too, indirectly but surely, upon that portion of society whose demand for knowledge had already been in part supplied. the principle of educating the humblest in the scale of society would necessarily give an impulse to the education of the class immediately above them. the impulse would indeed be least felt by the large establishments for education at the other end of the scale; and thus, whilst the children of the peasant and the tradesman would learn many valuable lessons through the influence of a desire for knowledge for its own sake, and of love for their instructors, many of the boys of our great {252} public schools would long remain acquiring only a knowledge of words and not of things, and influenced chiefly by a degrading fear of brutal punishment. the demand for knowledge thus created, and daily gathering strength amongst the bulk of the people, could not be adequately supplied forty years ago by the mechanical inventions then employed in the art of printing. exactly in the same way as the demand for knowledge which began to agitate men's minds about the middle of the fifteenth century produced the invention of printing, so the great extension of the demand in england, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, produced those mechanical improvements which have created a new ?ra in the typographical art. these improvements consist in the process of stereotyping, and in the printing-machine, as distinguished from the printing-press.

as several approaches had been made before the time of faust to the principle of printing books from moveable types, so the principle of producing impressions from a cylinder, and of inking the types by a roller, which are the great principles of the printing-machine, had been discovered in this country as early as the year 1790. in that year mr. william nicholson took out a patent for certain improvements in printing, the specification of which clearly shows that to him belongs the first suggestion of printing from cylinders. but this inventor, like many other ingenious men, was led astray by a part of his project, which was highly {253} difficult, if not impracticable, to the neglect of that portion of his plan which, since his time, has been brought into the most perfect operation. nicholson's patent was never acted upon. the first maker of a printing-machine was mr. koenig, a native of saxony; and the first sheet of paper printed by cylinders, and by steam, was the 'times' newspaper of the 28th november, 1814. the machine thus for the first time brought into action was that of mr. koenig. it has been superseded by machines of improved construction.

let us imagine a state of things in which the demand for works of large numbers should have gone on increasing, while the mechanical means of supplying that demand had remained stationary—had remained as they were at the beginning of the present century. before the invention of stereotyping it was necessary to print off considerable impressions of the few books in general demand, such as bibles and prayer-books, that the cost of composition might be so far divided as to allow the book to be sold cheap: with several school-books, also, it was not uncommon to go to press with an edition of 10,000 copies. two men, working eight hours a-day each, would produce 1000 perfect impressions (impressions on each side) of a sheet per day; and thus, if a book consisted of twenty sheets (the size of an ordinary school-book), one press would produce the twenty sheets in 200 days. if a printer, therefore, were engaged in the production of such a school-book, who could only devote one {254} press to the operation, it would require very nearly three-quarters of a year to complete 10,000 copies of that work. it is thus evident, that if the work were to be published on a given day, it must begin to be printed at least three-quarters of a year before it could be published; and that there must be a considerable outlay of capital in paper and in printing for a long time before any return could be expected. this advance of capital would have a necessary influence on the price of the book, in addition to the difference of the cost of working by hand as compared with working by machinery; and there probably the inconvenience of the tedious progress we have described would stop. but take a case which would allow no time for this long preparation. take a daily newspaper, for instance, of which great part of the news must be collected, and written, and printed within twenty-four hours; calling into operation reporters at home, correspondents abroad, expresses, electric telegraphs. formerly, the number printed of the most popular daily paper would be limited to five thousand; and this number could not be produced in time without the most perfect division of labour aiding the most intense exertion, provided that paper were printed by hand. the 'times' newspaper now produces forty thousand copies in less than four hours, from one set of types.

if the difficulties that existed in producing any considerable number of newspapers before the invention of the printing-machine were almost insurmountable, {255} equally striking will the advantages of that invention appear when we consider its application to the cheap weekly sheets, of which the 'penny magazine' was the type. let us suppose that the education of the people had gone on uninterruptedly in the schools of mutual instruction, and that the mechanical means for supplying the demand for knowledge thus created had sustained no improvement. if the demand for knowledge had led to the establishment of the 'penny magazine' before the improvement of printing, it is probable that the sale of twenty thousand copies would have been considered the utmost that could have been calculated upon. one thousand perfect copies could only have been daily produced at one press by the labour of two men. the machine produces sixteen thousand copies. if the demand for a penny sheet, printed thus slowly by the press, had reached twenty thousand, it would have required two presses to produce that twenty thousand in the same time—namely, ten days—in which one hundred and sixty thousand are produced by the machine; and it would have required one press to be at work one hundred and sixty days, or sixteen presses for ten days, to effect the same results as the machine effects in ten days. but, in point of fact, such a sale could never have been reached under the old system of press-work. the hand-labour, as compared with the machine, would have added at least forty per cent. to the cost of production, even if the sixteen presses could have been set in motion. {256} without stereotyping for duplicates, no attempt would have been made to set them in motion; for the cost of re-engraving woodcuts, and of re-composing the types, would have put a natural commercial limit to the operation.

the invention of the paper-machine was concurrent with the invention of the printing-machine. without the paper-machine, the material of books, and newspapers, and journals, could never have been supplied with any reference to cheapness. chemistry, too, has converted the coarsest rags, and the dirtiest cotton-wool, into fine pulp. the material of which this book is formed existed a few month ago, perhaps, in the shape of a tattered frock, whose shreds, exposed for years to the sun and wind, covered the sturdy loins of the shepherd watching his sheep on the plains of hungary;—or it might have formed part of the coarse blue shirt of the italian sailor, on board some little trading-vessel of the mediterranean;—or it might have pertained to the once tidy camicia of the neat straw-plaiter of tuscany, who, on the eve of some festival, when her head was intent upon gay things, condemned the garment to the stracci-vendolo (rag-merchant) of leghorn;—or it might have constituted the coarse covering of the flock-bed of the farmer of saxony, or once looked bright in the damask table-cloth of the burgher of hamburgh;—or, lastly, it might have been swept, new and unworn, out of the vast collection of the shreds and patches, the fustian and buckram, of a london {257} tailor; or might have accompanied every revolution of a fashionable coat in the shape of lining—having travelled from st. james's to st. giles's, from bond street to monmouth street, from rag fair to the dublin liberty, till man disowned the vesture, and the kennel-sweeper claimed its miserable remains. in each or all of these forms, and in hundreds more which it would be useless to describe, this sheet of paper a short time since might have existed. no matter, now, what the colour of the rag—how oily the cotton—what filth it has gathered and harboured through all its transmutation—the scientific paper-maker can produce out of these filthy materials one of the most beautiful productions of manufacture. but he has a difficulty in obtaining even these coarse materials. the advance of a people in civilisation has not only a tendency to make the supply of rags abundant, but, at the same time, to increase the demand for rags. the use of machinery in manufactures renders clothing cheap; the cheapness of clothing causes its consumption to increase, not only in the proportion of an increasing population, but by the scale of individual expenditure; the stock of rags is therefore increasing in the same ratio that our looms produce more linen and cotton cloth. but then the increase of knowledge runs in a parallel line with this increase of comforts; and the increase of knowledge requires an increase of books. the principle of publishing books and tracts, to be read by thousands instead of tens and {258} hundreds, has already caused a large addition to the demand for printing-paper. science made paper cheap in spite of taxation. the government has worked against science to keep books dear.

we cannot pass over the mechanical and other scientific improvements in typography, which preceded and accompanied the great epoch of cheapness of the last quarter of a century, without more particularly noticing the revival, for so it may be called, of the art of woodcutting. in the 'penny magazine' of 1836, the editor says that no expense or labour has been spared to attain every improvement of which the art of woodcutting is susceptible—that the engravings of 305 numbers have cost 12,000l. (about 40l. a number)—that many difficulties have been overcome in adapting the character of the engravings to the rapid movements of the printing-machine—and that the art, in connexion with the cheapest form of printing, has been carried further than at one time was thought to be possible. this was written in 1836. let any one look at a common book with woodcuts, printed thirty years ago, and he will understand what difficulties had to be overcome before 'the penny magazine' could present successful copies of works of art. this 'penny magazine,' which some even now affect to sneer at, produced a revolution in popular art throughout the world. it created similar works, to which it supplied stereotype casts, in germany, france, holland, livonia (in russian and german), bohemia (in sclavonic), italy, ionian {259} islands (in modern greek), sweden, norway, spanish america, the brazils, the united states. it raised up imitators on every side, and directed the union of art and letters into new channels. it was the forerunner of 'punch,' and of 'the illustrated london news.' a great art-critic of 1836 proclaimed, with oracular solemnity, "as there is no royal road to mathematics, so we say, once for all, there is no penny magazine road to the fine arts—the cultivation of the fine arts must be carried on by a comparatively small and gifted few, under the patronage of men of wealth and leisure." many eminent designers—amongst whom are the honoured names of harvey, cruikshank, doyle, leech, tenniel, anelay, gilbert—have gone the "penny magazine road," and found it quite as sure a highway to distinction, and far more pleasant, than the old by-way of patronage, so weary to the gifted few. it is wonderful how long and how tenaciously, both in literature and art, men clung to that idol patronage. they are gone—the chesterfields who kept johnson seven years waiting in outward rooms,—and the mansfields who grudged wilkie thirty guineas for 'the village politicians:'—

"peor and ba?lim

forsake their temples dim."