Title: Dickens' fur coat and Charlotte's unanswered letters
First published: 1997
Description: In his bestselling What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, Daniel Pool brilliantly unlocked the mysteries of the English novel. Now, in his long-awaited Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters, Pool turns his keen eye to England's great Victorian novelists themselves, to reveal the surprisingly human private side of their public genius.

Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters explores the outrageous publicity stunts, bitter rivalries, rows, and general mayhem perpetrated by this group of supposedly prudish - yet remarkably passionate and eccentric - authors and publishers.

Against a vividly painted backdrop of London as the small world it once was, the book brings on the players in the ever-changing, brave new world of big publishing - a world that gave birth to author tours, big advances, "trashy" fiction, flashy bookstalls in train stations (for Victorian "airport fiction"), celebrity libel suits, bogus blurbs, even paper recycling (as unsold volumes reappeared as trunk linings, fish wrappings, and fertilizer).
Subjects: Authors and publishers, Authors and readers, Authorship, Books and reading, Economic aspects, Economic aspects of Authorship, Economic conditions, English Novelists, English fiction, History, History and criticism, Intellectual life, Literature and society, Literature publishing, Novelists, English, Social conditions, Fiction, English fiction, history and criticism, 19th century, Publishers and publishing, great britain, Fiction, authorship, Great britain, intellectual life, Authors, english, Books and reading, history, Dickens, charles, 1812-1870, Authors, correspondence
Places: England, Great Britain
Time periods: 19th century
LC classification: PR878.P78 P66 1997