≫ Libro Gratis Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte Unanswered Letters The Rows and Romances of England Great Victorian Novelists Daniel Pool Books

Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte Unanswered Letters The Rows and Romances of England Great Victorian Novelists Daniel Pool Books

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Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte Unanswered Letters The Rows and Romances of England Great Victorian Novelists Daniel Pool Books

I LOVE this type of book. I wish other authors would write books like this one.


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Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte Unanswered Letters The Rows and Romances of England Great Victorian Novelists Daniel Pool Books Reviews

Let's get this straight right off the bat Daniel Pool's book is purposefully mistitled to make you think that it would be a sequel of sorts to his extremely useful and popular compendium of facts important to Victorian fiction WHAT CHARLES DICKENS ATE AND JANE AUSTEN KNEW. This book is very different it reads like a straightforward narrative, and it's an enjoyable, gossipy, and onformative account of the demands of the publishing market in the mid-Victorian world of the novel, and how it created the careers of Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, Thackeray, George Eliot, etc. The mistitling (undoubtedly to make the book sell better) is thus quite appropriate, in that the novel helpfully etails the ways in which publishing conventions of the time (the rise of Mudie's lending library, the convention of the three-decker) made and shaped literary careers.
Pool's book is a well-paced survey of the industry that produced the greater (well-known) Victorian novels. By "industry" is meant process. He covers the development of publishing houses, writers, lending libraries, serials, trans-atlantic markets, and the innovative way that enterprising book distributors managed to bring their product to the public. It all combines for a fascinating story, and Pool does it well.
It could be said that he focuses on three writers, these being Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, and William Makepeace Thackeray. These three (along with Marian Evans a.k.a. George Eliot) played a vital role in the development of the Victorian novel, and they comprise the bulk of Pool's discussion.
The interaction and intrigues between the main three authors make for National Enquirer-like fodder... with the difference that this stuff is TRUE! Truly, there were "rows and romances" as the subtitle suggests.
The Victorian era was an exciting, but very demanding (downright scary) time to be an author. There were the restraints of format (the serial novel had to be written in self-contained installments; the "triple-decker" had to be able to be neatly split in three), there was the gender prejudice (one ought not to be a woman writer), and there was the ubiquitous spirit of cut-throat competition and jealousy in this burgeoning literary world. Only the strong survived, and only the versatile were recognized at all.
The latter third of the book covers the rise of great writers like Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, and Henry James.
The author takes a subject having the potential of being dry as crackers and presents it as a sprawling and wonderfully connected story. Good work. Reading this book made me realize that there is a HISTORY to the easy access to good literature we enjoy in our day and age, and made me appreciate those many pioneers who cut the swath to it.
I must admit that the title of this book instantly drew my curiosity. As a fan of many Victorian novelists, I was curious what so-called secrets and mysteries Daniel Pool would uncover. "Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters" may not be an appropriate title since Pool covers much more ground than just these two authors; he examines the rise of the novel in England during the nineteenth century with great care and thoroughness.

While Pool does focus a great amount of time on the writings of Dickens and Charlotte Bronte (and briefly on her sisters) this book is not just a mere examination of authors. Mixed in with the mini-biography, and gossip-page fodder scandals these authors created, is the detailed explanation of the popularity of the novel. Pool iterates the progress novels made from three-decker behemoths to readily available cheap one-volume novels. Another way that the popularity of novels expanded in England was due to serialization; the publishing of novels in installments in literary magazines made these stories available to a wider audience in an age when novels could only be accorded as a luxury to the richest society members.

Throughout the course of the book, readers are treated to mini-biographical sketches of writers such as Trollope, Thackerary, Hardy, Henry James, and George Eliot. These sketches are intermingled with almost too much information at times and the book is supplemented with numerous pictures. At times it seems as if Pool is trying to cram too much information into too little space; and sometimes it seems as if the same information is being repeated with no overall plan as to the direction of his writing. However, "Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters" is a delightful read for any fan of Victorian novelists, or novels and the rise of literature in general.
I had thought, judging from the title and dust jacket description, that this would just be a book of juicy, entertaining gossip about Victorian novelists. Well, certainly there was a lot of that in there -- did you know William Thackeray had a crazy wife he had to keep locked up? -- but this book is ever so much more than that.

It covers the development of the Victorian novel and the publishing industry over the 19th century. In the early 1800s, public libraries in England were nonexistent. Books were so rare and expensive that only wealthy people actually owned them and instead they were rented from circulating libraries (sort of like Blockbuster for books). The circulating libraries were very powerful and had an iron grip on the publishing industry. By the end of the century, books had become cheap and were sold at railroad stalls, and everyone was reading them. And it was a long, sometimes dramatic ride in between.

I learned a great deal more from this book than I had expected to. I feel richer for having read it.
I LOVE this type of book. I wish other authors would write books like this one.