George Eliot's Middlemarch and Mudie's Select Library

Only a well- established novelist could challenge the orthodoxy of the "three-decker" novel at 10/6 per volume in the mid-nineteenth century. A novel was an expensive purchase, and for most Victorians, the alternative was to rent. The great circulating libraries, especially Mudie's, subverted the fiction publishing market. Mudie's business model preferred three volumes and a large order from Mudie made a decent print-run viable; to be ignored by his "Select Library" seriously threatened an author's livelihood.

Charles Dickens' alternative was to publish initially in monthly parts at a shilling an issue, with a special two-part number to conclude. Total cost one pound, instead of a guinea and a half, and an outlay spread over nineteen months. Additionally, there was the opportunity with this mode of publication to pad out the parts with paid advertisements. Then, a bound edition could follow for the patient renters.

George Eliot's Middlemarch was another attempt at beating the tyranny of the libraries. Conceived as a longer form narrative than could be contained in three volumes, it appeared first in eight books, published at two-monthly intervals, at 5/- a book. Initially, Mudie threatened a boycott, but with George Eliot at the height of her powers and popularity, he relented and took 1000 copies of Book I, or 20% of the print-run.

The Institute's collection includes among its treasures a set of Middlemarch in the eight-book first edition (1871-72), and to a bibliophile, the copy is full of interest.

The first thing to be noted is that it carefully retains all of the original green wrappers and advertisements, but has been rebound in green cloth with cream endpapers. On the cover of each book is the applied yellow plate of Mudie's Select Library. On Book I only, this plate is casually overlayed on the plate of The English and Foreign Library Company (Late Hookham's.) Thus this volume marks the exact moment that Mudie finally swallowed up his competitor, Thomas Hookham, whose company had been in the circulating library business since 1784.

Mudie's label on 'Middlemarch'. Book VI.

 On the front free endpapers of each book is the blind stamp of Hudson & Hopwood, Booksellers and Stationers, Launceston. This suggests that Messrs. Hudson and Hopwood had imported this copy of Middlemarch, probably through a purchase of Mudie's excess stock.

From Hudson & Hopwood, the books were transferred to the Launceston Public Library, at some time before 1875 when they appeared in that institution's printed catalogue. Each volume is marked with their oval stamp, and subsequently plated Mechanics' Institute and Public Library, following the transfer of the LPL's stock to its rival around 1890.

Blind stamp of Hudson & Hopwood

This, now rare, first edition of Middlemarch is described in detail from his own copy by M I Parrish in Victorian Lady Novelists (1933). The Institute's copy, which appears to be the only copy held in an Australian library, is as described by Parrish, but with some additional material.

Book I has a different set of advertisements on the back wrapper – an advertisement for Jenner & Knewstub's Patents and Inventions, not The Crown Perfumery Company, inside, and an advertisement for George Eliot, Wise, Witty and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse, "in the Press", not the advertisement for Works of George Eliot and Lord Lytton's Novels described by Parrish.

Book II contains additional advertisements pasted inside Mudie's covers - at the front for Bontor & Collins and Rowland's Kalydor, and George Roberts' Wedding Trousseau, and at the back Phillips, China and Glass Manufacturers.

The Middlemarch experiment must have been a commercial success because Daniel Deronda was published in a similar form in 1876; and a four volume edition of Middlemarch appeared in 1872 (there is also a copy of this edition in the Institute collection), suggesting the eight book edition had been completely sold in less than a year.

The large number of volumes in the Institute collection bearing Mudie's bright yellow label indicates that his Select Library was a most useful source of books for colonial libraries, and that Mudie was astutely selling off his excess stock as demand for titles waned in his English branches. For the interested reader, Guinevere L. Griest's Mudie's Circulating Library and the Victorian Novel (1970) is recommended.