Question 43

For much of the 19th century, the prestige format for fiction in Britain was the so-called 'three-decker'-a novel split into three substantial volumes. The standard price for a set was exorbitant, often amounting to an entire week's wages for a skilled worker, which naturally restricted direct sales. However, this high price point was actually sustained by a specific ecosystem: the circulating library. Institutions like Mudie's Select Library bought these expensive volumes in bulk and lent them to subscribers for a modest annual fee. This arrangement gave library owners like Charles Mudie immense leverage over the literary marketplace. To secure a lucrative order from Mudie, publishers often forced authors to stretch their plots to fill three volumes, leading to somewhat 'padded' narratives. Furthermore, authors had to sanitize their themes to satisfy the library's strict demand for morally unobjectionable, family-friendly reading material.