Periodical Literature—Prices of Books; 18th Century—Two classes of Buyers—The Magazines—Collections of the Poets—The Circulating Library—Cheap Book-Clubs.  
On the 8th of February, 1696, our friend John Dunton completed the nineteenth volume of 'The Athenian Mercury, resolving all the most nice and curious questions proposed by the ingenious.' This penny tract, published twice a-week, consisted of a single leaf. "The ingenious" ceased to question, and "The Athenian Society," as the bookseller called his scribes, ceased to answer, after six years of this oracular labour. There came an irruption of the barbarians, in the shape of "nine newspapers every week." John proposed to resume his task "as soon as the glut of news is a little over." The countryman waiting for the river to roll by was not more mistaken. In 1709 there was one daily paper in London; twelve, three times a-week; and three, twice a-week. Amongst those of three times a-week was 'The Tatler,' which commenced April 12, 1709. The early Tatlers had their regular foreign intelligence. They were as much newspapers as 'The Flying Post' and 'The Postboy.' But Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., very soon discontinued the information which he derived from letters from the Hague and advices from Berlin. He had something of a more {219} original character to offer his readers. The state of popular enlightenment at this period has been described by Johnson in his Life of Addison:—"That general knowledge which now circulates in common talk was in his time rarely to be found. Men not professing learning were not ashamed of ignorance; and in the female world any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured." Steele and Addison had to form the taste of the new generation that they were addressing. They knew that there was a large class craving amusement, who might at the same time be refined and instructed without the pretensions of "the budge doctors of the stoic fur." They meddled little with politics. They left the furious discussions about Church and State to papers with an earnest political purpose, of which Charles Leslie, a violent Tory, thus spoke in his 'Rehearsals:'—"The greatest part of the people do not read books; most of them cannot read at all: but they will gather together about one that can read, and listen to an Observator or Review, as I have seen them, in the streets." The Tatler has been described as a great success; but we may measure that success by that of the more popular Spectator. In No. 555 of that work Steele says,—"The tax on each half-sheet has brought into the Stamp-Office, one week with another, above 20l. a-week, arising from the single paper, notwithstanding it at first reduced it to less than half the number that was usually printed before the tax was laid." The tax being a halfpenny, {220} this would only show a daily circulation of 1600, and of about 3000 when it was unstamped. But the sale in volumes, according to the same statement, was as high as 9000 of each volume. This fact gives us a higher notion of the popularity of these charming papers, and of the consequent extent of general reading, than any other circumstance in the literary history of that period. But even the comparatively small daily sale was of importance, as showing that the great middle class was beginning to seek something better than could be found in the coarse and meagre news-sheets. The annals of 'The Gentlemen's Society at Spalding' record that in April, 1709, some residents there heard of the Tatlers, and ordered them to be sent to the coffee-house in the Abbey-yard:—"They were accordingly had, and read there every postday, generally aloud to the company, who could sit and talk over the subject afterwards." The narrative goes on to say that "in March, 1711, the Spectator came out, which was received and read here as the Tatler had been." Such are the beginnings of popular knowledge. What the Tatler and Spectator were to the gentlemen of Spalding, the Penny Magazine and Chambers' Journal were to many a mechanic a hundred and twenty years after. One of this class has recorded the influence of such works, which addressed a far larger number than could be addressed at the beginning of the eighteenth century:—"The Penny Magazine was published. I borrowed the first volume, and determined {221} to make an effort to possess myself with the second. Accordingly, with January, 1833, I determined to discontinue the use of sugar in my tea, hoping that my family would not then feel the sacrifice necessary to buy the book.... I looked as anxiously for the issue of the monthly part as I did for the means of getting a living."[27] It is this spirit in the great mechanical class of this country that, in spite of some popular reading that is corrupting, and much that is frivolous, will ultimately raise and purify even the meanest sheet of our cheap literature, and compel those who have the responsibility of addressing large masses of the people to understand that an influential portion do feel that the acquirement of knowledge is worth some sacrifice.
The 'Complete Catalogue of Modern Books, published from the beginning of the century to 1756,' contains 5280 new works. In this Catalogue "all pamphlets and other tracts" are excluded. We can scarcely, therefore, compare this period, as to the number of books published, with that of 1680. The average number of the first 57 years of the 18th century was 93 new works each year. At the beginning of the century, the price of a folio or quarto volume ranged from 10s. to 12s.; an octavo from 5s. to 6s.; and a duodecimo from 2s. 6d. to 3s. We have the original 'Tatler' before us, with its curious advertisements of books, sales by the candle, cordial elixirs, lotteries, and {222} bohea tea at 24s. a-pound. Whitelocke's 'Memorials,' folio, is advertised at 12s.; Rowe's edition of Shakspeare, 8vo., is 5s. per volume; 'The Peerage of England,' 8vo., 6s.; Shakspeare's Poems, 12mo., 1s. 6d.; 'The Monthly Amusement,' each number containing a complete novel, is 1s.; Sermons are 2d. each. We learn, from other sources, that the first edition of 'The Dunciad' was a sixpenny pamphlet; whilst 'The Governor of Cyprus, a Novel,' and 'The Wanton Fryar, a Novel,' were each 12s. The number printed of an edition was, no doubt, very moderate, except chiefly of books that were associated with some great popular excitement. Sacheverell's Trial is said to have sold 30,000; as, in a later period, 30,000 were sold of Burke's 'Reflections on the Revolution in France.' The old booksellers were cautious about works of imagination when they were expected to pay handsomely for copyright. The manuscript of 'Robinson Crusoe' was pronounced dangerous by the whole tribe of publishers, till one ventured upon an edition. The demand was such that the copies could only be supplied by dividing the work amongst several printers. One of Defoe's numerous assailants, in attempting to ridicule him, gives the best evidence of his popularity: "There is not an old woman that can go to the price of it but buys 'The Life and Adventures,' and leaves it as a legacy with the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'" Richardson's 'Pamela,' published in 1741, sold five editions in one year. There are fabulous accounts of Millar, the publisher, clearing {223} 18,000l. by 'Tom Jones.' In those times the Dublin pirates were as assiduous in their plunder of English copyrights as the American publishers have been in plundering the English, and the English the American, in our days. Richardson was driven wild by the publication of half 'Sir Charles Grandison' in Ireland, in a cheap form, before a single volume was issued in England. There was a regular system of bribery in the English printing-offices, through which the Dublin booksellers organised their robberies. They sold their books surreptitiously in England and Scotland; and from their greater cheapness they had the command of their own market. This system lasted till the union.
The prices of books do not appear to have much increased at the beginning of the reign of George III. In some cases their moderation is remarkable. We have seen how small was the demand for the first volume of Hume's 'History' in 1754. We have a number of 'The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser' at hand, May 9, 1764; and there we learn, from an advertisement, what a change ten years had produced. A new edition of the third and fourth volumes, in quarto, is advertised at 1l. 5s.; but "the proprietor, at the desire of many who wish to be possessed of this valuable and esteemed history, is induced to a monthly publication, which will not exceed eight volumes." These volumes were 5s. each. It is manifest that the bookseller had found a new class to address {224} when he issued the monthly volumes. Hume says, "Notwithstanding the variety of winds and seasons to which my writings had been exposed, they had still been making such advances that the copy-money given me by the booksellers much exceeded anything formerly known in England." He had complained of the neglect of the "considerable for rank or letters." His publisher saw that a history with such charms of style—so freed from tedious quotations from state-papers and statutes—so unlike the great folios of Carte and Rapin—was a book for a new race of readers. Coleridge humorously enough says—"Poets and philosophers, rendered diffident by their very number, addressed themselves to 'learned readers;' then, aimed to conciliate the graces of 'the candid reader;' till, the critic still rising as the author sank, the amateurs of literature collectively were erected into a municipality of judges, and addressed as 'the Town.' And now, finally, all men being supposed to read, and all readers able to judge, the multitudinous 'Public,' shaped into personal unity by the magic of abstraction, sits nominal despot on the throne of criticism."[28] There is a great truth beneath the sarcasm. The enduring patronage of the public was beginning when Andrew Millar was bold enough to publish Hume's History in monthly five-shilling volumes. But there are still many evidences that the commerce of books at that period, and subsequently, did not contemplate the {225} existence of a large class of buyers, beyond those who were at ease in their fortunes. In that farrago of sense and absurdity, 'The Life of James Lackington, the present Bookseller, Finsbury-square, London, written by himself' (1791), there is a remarkable disclosure of the mode in which books were prevented being sold cheaply, after the original demand had been satisfied:—"When first invited to these trade-sales, I was very much surprised to learn that it was common for such as purchased remainders to destroy one-half or three-fourths of such books, and to charge the full publication price, or nearly that, for such as they kept on hand. And there was a kind of standing order amongst the trade that, in case any one was known to sell articles under the publication price, such a person was to be excluded from trade-sales—so blind were copyright holders to their own interest." In the same manner, it is within the memory of many living persons that there was an invariable high price for fish in London, because the wholesale dealers at Billingsgate always destroyed a portion of what came to market, if the supply were above the average. The dealers in fish had not recognised the existence of a class who would buy for their suppers what the rich had not taken for their dinners; and knew not that the stalls of Tottenham Court Road had as many customers ready for a low price as the shops of Charing Cross for a high price. The fishmongers had not discovered that the price charged to the evening {226} customers had no effect of lowering that of the morning. Nor had the booksellers discovered that there were essentially two, if not more, classes of customers for books—those who would have the dearest and the newest, and those who were content to wait till the gloss of novelty had passed off, and good works became accessible to them, either in cheaper reprints, or "remainders" reduced in price. But books and fish have one material difference. Good books are not impaired in value when they are cheapened. Their character, which has been established by the first demand, creates a second and a larger demand. Lackington destroyed no books that were worth saving, but sold them as he best could. We have no quarrel with his self-commendation when he says, "I could almost be vain enough to assert that I have thereby been highly instrumental in diffusing that general desire for reading now so prevalent among the inferior orders of society."
What Lackington thought "a general desire for reading" was, nevertheless, a very limited desire. "The inferior orders of society" who had the desire did not comprehend many of the mechanics, and none of the husbandry labourers. It may be doubted whether the Magazine Literature that the eighteenth century called forth ever went beyond the gentry and the superior traders. Kippis says of the magazines, "they have been the means of diffusing a general habit of reading through the nation." There appears to have been a sort of {227} tacit agreement amongst all who spoke of public enlightenment in the days of George III. to put out of view the great body of "the nation" who paid for their bread by their weekly wages. The magazines were certainly never addressed to this class. But for the general book-buyers of the time, Cave's project of 'The Gentleman's Magazine' was a great step in popular literature. The booksellers would not join him in what they held to be a risk. When he had succeeded, and sold 10,000, then they set up the rival 'London Magazine.' Cave threw all his energy into the magazine, and was rewarded. "He scarcely ever looked out of the window, but with a view to its improvement," said Johnson. 'The Gentleman's Magazine' commenced in 1731. Then came, year after year, magazines "as plenty as blackberries:"—'The London,' 'The Universal,' 'The Literary,' 'The Royal,' 'The Complete,' 'The Town and Country,' 'The Ladies',' 'The Westminster,' 'The European,' 'The Monthly.' The first popular review, 'The Monthly,' was published in 1749, and 'The Critical' in 1756. The public were now firmly established as the real patrons of letters. There was an end of poor authors knocking at great men's doors with a bundle of books. There was an end to paid Dedications and gratulatory Odes. Johnson could afford to launch his Dictionary without the help of the Earl............