The Press. — London, England, 1854-07-15 00:00:00

666 The middle class of society is not the best for a fictionist, as it wants strong contrasts, and its life is monotonous. We feel that in " Katharine Ashton" we are kept too long in a small circle ; but, nevertheless, it is a novel calculated to please female readers by its elaborate portraiture of certain social phases which only a feminine pen can describe. It will decidedly add to its writer's reputation. The Old Printer and the Modern Press. By Charles Knight. London Murray. IN this work, which is " affectionately" dedi cated to Mr. Charles Dickens, Mr. Knight has given us a history of printing from the earliest down to the present times; and, although it necessarily contains nothing very new, much interesting matter relating to authors, books, and readers, is brought together within the compass of a volume of 300 pages. The work is divided into two parts, the first narrating the progress of printing and " bookmaking" down to the death of Caxton at the close of the fifteenth century; the second•briefly sketching the his tory of popular literature from the days of Elizabeth to the present period. As the his torical portion has been published before,• we confine our notice to the commencement of the new or cheap publishing system. Mr. Knight dates its origin from the rise of " magazines," the precursors of literary reviews, in the reign of the first Georges, when booksellers began to supersede patrons, and dedications ceased to be a source of pecuniary profit. The next step was the establishment of • circulating libraries, concerning the early history of which we should have been glad of more information than Mr. Knight supplies. He neither tells us the date of their foundation, the success or failure of the first experiments, nor their gra dual growth and increase up to the present day. Surely in a history of popular literature these things should not be omitted. The last advance was made contempora neously by the Scotch publisher Constable, and by Lord Brougham's " Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." For many years previously, according to Mr. Knight, the price of books had been gradually rising. "In the eleven years between 1792 and 1802 " there was an average publication of 372 new " books yearly," being a multiplication four fold of the average number published half a century earlier. But this increase was not due to any reduction of cost. The octavo volume had risen from ss. to 108.; the quarto from 12s. to 215.; the duodecimo from 2s. 6d. to 4s. And singularly it happened that this double increase in production and price conti nued simultaneously for many years longer. Between 1800 and 1827 the annual average of publication was 588 books, not including re prints ; yet at the close of that period the quarto cost 425., the octavo 145., the duode• cimo not less than 6s. Copyrights were largely paid for, the wages of labour had risen, and the great publishers could not make up their minds to try the experiment of small profits and large sales. It was tried at last, with ample success, so far as the world was con cerned, but with little reward to the origina tors except the consciousness of utility. Con stable, as all the world knows, failed in busi ness: the Penny Cyclopedia was a dead loss; the " weekly volumes " of Mr. Knight, as he himself allows, did not sell as expected, twenty only reaching a sale of 10,000, and the average being below 5,000. There is much exaggera tion, if there be some truth, in our modern way of talking about the universal desire for knowledge. Yet a vast advance has been made, of which the proof is here. We have seen what was the yearly amount of publica tion during the middle of the last century, at its close, and in the period between 1800 and - now trace its increase in later Knight shall supply the facts : came out 312 books, in 1,105 volumes. 2,530 books, in 2,934 volumes. an increase of nearly three to one. 'erage cost per volume of each on was 12s. ; in 1853 it is a little above estimate no account is taken I, which have multiplied at a rapid rate ; nor yet of the railway which cannot yet be estimated. 1825. Let us years. Mr. Kn In 1828 there en . In 1858 Showing at In 1828 the avi new publicatio over 7s. In the abov of periodicals, much more rai publications, 1 THE PRESS Mr. Knight speaks of these rather discou ragingly, opines that the risk is greater than the profit, and calculates that the publisher of 10.000 copies of a shilling volume cannot reckon on more than 201. clear gain. He argues energetically in favour of international copyright, having an eye to the American market. We are not sanguine of his success in persuading transatlantic publishers to tax themselves or their readers for the benefit of English authors. Nor do we go along with him in thinking that the publication by the Irish Government of a few school books below the remunerative priee—whether that were a wise aot or no—was an " attempt to inflict " direct injury upon literature and learning." So trifling a grievance scarcely merited men• tion in a work meant to be permanent. Here are the statistics of journalism, shortly and clearly condensed from the official re- turns : - In 1801 the annual circulation of newspapers in ,England and Wales was 15 millions, and in Scotland 1 million. In 1853 the annual circulation of England and Wales was 72 millions, and of Scotland 8 millions, that of 'relined being also about 8 millions. In September, 1836, the stamp-duty on newspapers was reduced to one penny. Immediately previous to the reduction the annual circula tion of newspapers in Great Britain was about 29 millions. The increase, therefore, in seventeen years, has been 51 millions. We have cast up the twenty-two folio pages of the " Return of the Number of Newspaper Stamps, at one penny, issued in 1853," and we find these results, as derived from the stamps, excluding supplements, used by 913 newspapers in England, 18 in Wales, 146 in Scotland, and 121 in Ireland, making a total number of 1,198. But it must be borne in mind that about one-half of the publications in this return called newspapers are not news papers in any sense of the word. Every publication can be stamped as a newspaper for which the proprietor and printer give the necessary legal securities ; and thus hun dreds of price-currents, catalogues, and circulars—and many literary journals which are only partially stamped, and which none but political pedants, calling for a defini tion, term newspapers—find their way into this official return. There are, in round numbers, 000 newspapers proper in the United Kingdom. There are in London 14 daily papers, 6 twice and thrice a week, and 71 weekly ; and about 500 provincial papers in the United Kingdom. Of the London daily papers about twenty-four millions are annually circulated, of which the Times has the lion's share of 14 millions. There are four weekly papers, published at the surpassingly cheap rate of threepence, which circulate 13 millions. The Illustrated Lundoe News has a circulation of 4 millions; and eleven other leading weekly papers issue, annually, 0 millions. There are 6 religious papers, which have a circulation of about a million and a quarter. Thus, 36 London publications engross 48 million stamps, out of 71 millions. Ot the provincial English press there are 26 great towns which number 80 papers, and these 80 consume 13 millions of stamps. We have, therefore, only 10 millions more to distribute amongst the entire newspaper press of England. The Welsh annual circulation is under a million. - ----- Mr. Knight avoids the subject of stamp duty, yet seems to argue in favour of its retention, hinting at the inexpediency of substituting local and provincial for national journalism. He vehemently assails the decision of the House of Commons against Mr. Ewart's bill for the extension of free libraries, and supplies some useful hints for their formation and management. In the historical portions of this volume Mr. Knight should have cited authorities for his statements more frequently than he has done. He has fallen into one strange error. At page 73 Froissart is spoken of as " the accomplished knight Sir John Froissart." Froissart was a priest, and, although there was some defect about his ecclesiastical orders, a canon of a cathedral. Blemishes of this kind should be removed ; but, on the whole, we can safely recommend the book as terse, interesting, and full of matter. REPRINTS. CHEAP republications continue to be a chief feature in our current literature. Mr. Bryce has commenced a series of the novels of Samuel Lover, commencing with He Would be a Gentleman; or, Treasure Trove. It is one of the best of its writer's, though it aims too much at the historical form. The scene varies be tween Paris and Dublin, and the times of Lord Chesterfield in Ireland are described with much vivacity.—ln Mr. Bohn's " British Classics " the new volume contains Captain Singleton and Colonel Jack. There is great difference of opinion in some of the provincial literary institutions as to whether all of De Foe's works ought to be circulated. In the pre sent volume there is no objectionable matter. — The Last of the Barons has made its appearance in " The Railway Library," in Routledge's cheap series of Sir Edward Lytton's novels. Its beauties cannot SATURDAY, fail of being appreciated by a wide circle, and it well stands the test of reperusal.— The success of "Digby Grand" has induced its author to republish Tilbury Nogo, from the pages of the Sporting Magazine. It now appeals in the form of an original novel, in two octavo volumes, published by Chapman and Hall. Addressed to a more narrow class than "Digby Grand," it describes life about town by sporting men. It has some very clever sketching in Harry Lorrequer's style, but its subject is too overdone.—The fifth edition of the lamented Mr. Warburton's Hochelaga has been published in a cheap form by Routledge. Its facts and anecdotes are worth perusal, and its matter is various, but its reflections only echo the philo sophy of previous observers of American society. Its chapters relating to Canada will be interesting at the present time.—Routledge also issues in a neat volume We're all Low People There, and other tales, by the author of "Caleb Stukeley." These stories are reprinted from Blackwood's Maya. zine, and belong to the "real" school. They are mostly of a tragic cast. Suggested probably by Mr. Warren's " Diary of a Late Physician," they strike us as reflecting both the merits and defects of that celebrated work, grest eloquence and pathos being displayed in depicting incidents of domestic life, but with a tendency towards exaggeration.—Popular Lectures on Astronomy, by the late M. Arago, is another issue front Mr. Routledge's press. These lectures, which were originally translated by Mr. Walter Kelly, 8.A., are revised to the present time by the Bev. L. Tomlinson, M.A. Their chief merits are simplicity, and an absence of technical phrase ; but, lest the reader should be at a loss to com prehend mathematical terms, an explanation of those most in use is given in an appendix. The work is further made intelligible by numerous diagrams.— A cheap edition of the clever and sarcastic novel, The Bachelor of the Albany, which originally ap peared about six years ago, is issued by Chapman and Hall. The incidents—not in themselves impro• bable—are narrated with lively allusions to passing events. Amongst the petty annoyances which plague the hero when in his bachelor state, he complains to a friend that he had been asked to accept the office of vice-president of the Animals' Friends' Society, and his friend suggests that an influential person is required to fill the post, because the society contem plated sending a "deputation to the Pope to interest " his Holiness to put down bull-baiting in Spain." From a footnote we learn that the respectable society in question has adopted and taken the step which in the fiction was intended as a ludicrous impossibility. —The proprietors of the Illustrated People's Paper have published in a volume the first quarterly part. Its conductors appear to be satisfied with their success; its contents are original and selected, and it is one of the cheapest serials of the day. England and Russia. By Dr. J. Hamel. London: Bentley. Tins volume has not, as its leading title would indi cate, any connection with the present state of affairs. It belongs wholly to the past, and consists simply of a collection of voyages made to Northern Russia — those of Chancellor and Willoughby among them — from the ninth century, when Other the Norman presented our King Alfred with some walrus teeth from the White Sea, to a comparatively recent date; and thus includes an account of the establishment of commercial relations between England and Russia. rhe author, Dr. Hamel, came to this country in the train of the Emperor Alexander in 1814, and searched our public collections for materials for his work, comparing and combining the details they supplied with Russian records. Though of limited scope, therefore, the work is complete of its kind, mole care being taken to verify facts even when minute than to make up an attractive narrative. One pas sage is curiously illustrative of the vanity of political speculations. We quote from the translator's pre face : " One of the most striking points in the whole work is to be found in the first page, where the author recommends that in order to commemorate the long duration of amica ble intercourse between England and Russia, which at the time he wrote (Ir 4-16) had existed uninterruptedly for nearly three centuries, there should be a jubilee in 1833, when that period would be completed, and which, owing to a curious coincidence, proved to be the very year in which diplomatic relations ceased between the two coun tries, followed by the war in which we are at present engaged." Crewe Rise. A Novel. London : Hurst and Blackett. THE author has taken a large canvas for his compo sition. He aims at shadowing forth life and its trials. A youth, generous, ardent, and ambitious—for a time led astray by phantasy, or passion, but working out for himself a noble station in the end—occupies the foreground, while numerous groups of the society of country and town are ranged about him. We are inclined to regard the story as a first attempt. Many of the characters are well sketched, and the details well imagined, but chiefly, through want of training