Boots Book-lovers' Library and the Novel: The Impact of a Circulating Library Market on Twentieth-Century Fiction.

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Bibliographic Details
Title:	Boots Book-lovers' Library and the Novel: The Impact of a Circulating Library Market on Twentieth-Century Fiction.
Authors:	Wilson, Nicola
Source:	Information & Culture. 2014, Vol. 49 Issue 4, p427-449. 23p.
Subject Terms:	*Revision (Writing process), Subscription libraries, Libraries & authors, Book promotions, History of publishing
Reviews & Products:	Furys, The (Book)
People:	Hanley, James, 1901-1985
Abstract:	In a report for the Society of Bookmen in 1928, British publishers estimated that between a quarter and two-thirds of all the books they published went to the big four circulating libraries: Boots, W. H. Smith, Mudie's, and the Times Book Club. This article examines the literary impact of one of the largest of these, Boots Book-lovers' Library (1899-1966), which by 1935 had around four hundred libraries attached to its high-street pharmacies catering for the literary tastes of over one million subscribers a year. The article considers the impact of the Boots Booklovers' Library on authors' practices of writing and revision and on literary marketing and censorship, focusing in particular on James Hanley's The Furys (1935) and using unpublished correspondence in the Chatto & Windus archive at the University of Reading to demonstrate how the publisher's sense of the tastes and expectations of the Boots library reader influenced the revisioning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Database:	Education Research Complete

Description
Abstract:	In a report for the Society of Bookmen in 1928, British publishers estimated that between a quarter and two-thirds of all the books they published went to the big four circulating libraries: Boots, W. H. Smith, Mudie's, and the Times Book Club. This article examines the literary impact of one of the largest of these, Boots Book-lovers' Library (1899-1966), which by 1935 had around four hundred libraries attached to its high-street pharmacies catering for the literary tastes of over one million subscribers a year. The article considers the impact of the Boots Booklovers' Library on authors' practices of writing and revision and on literary marketing and censorship, focusing in particular on James Hanley's The Furys (1935) and using unpublished correspondence in the Chatto & Windus archive at the University of Reading to demonstrate how the publisher's sense of the tastes and expectations of the Boots library reader influenced the revisioning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
ISSN:	21648034
DOI:	10.1353/lac.2014.0021