Question 16

While we often associate the Victorian era with the rise of the novel, the actual consumption of these books was dictated largely by a single commercial entity: the circulating library. For much of the 19th century, purchasing a new novel was a luxury far beyond the means of the average reader, often costing a guinea and a half-roughly the weekly wage of a skilled laborer. Consequently, readers turned to subscription services, the most dominant being Mudie's Select Library. Mudie's influence was so profound that it effectively shaped the physical format of literature itself. To maximize profits, Mudie favored the 'triple-decker' system, where a single novel was published in three separate volumes. This structure forced subscribers to borrow one volume at a time, ensuring a constant rotation of stock and encouraging families to pay for multiple subscriptions if they wished to read the book simultaneously. Authors, in turn, were compelled to pad their narratives to fill these three volumes, leading to the sprawling, lingering plots characteristic of the period. It wasn't until the 1890s that this model collapsed, finally allowing the affordable, single-volume novel to take over.