In 2006 Dr. Ross Alloway was
awarded a three year British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship
in order to transcribe the diaries of the Scottish Publisher
Robert Cadell.
In the early
decades of the nineteenth century, technological developments
in printing, expanding systems of communications and
transportation, and an increasingly literate and prosperous
population facilitated the transformation of literary
texts from accoutrements of the wealthy to items that
could be afforded by a much wider readership. Perhaps
more so than any other publisher of his time, Robert
Cadell (1788-1849) anticipated the changing situation.
In addition to his famous ‘Magnum Opus' edition of the
Waverley novels, published at monthly intervals at 5
shillings a volume, Cadell brought out a number of other
sets of Scott's fiction, ranging from the copiously
illustrated Abbotsford edition to a ‘People's Edition'
which sold for just £2.10s. on completion.
Cadell proved
that in an age where conventional three-decker novels
retailed at 31s. 6d., and were often only printed in
their hundreds, low-priced fiction could eventually
attract a readership in the hundreds of thousands; a
strategy that became a hallmark of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century publication of fiction.
Despite his significance, only a limited amount of research
has focused on Cadell's career, most notably Jane Millgate's
Scott's Last Edition (1987) and a recent revised
entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(2004).
One reason
for the paucity of research is the relative inaccessibility
of the manuscript sources. With funding from the British
Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme Dr. Alloway is
transcribing a set of diaries which Cadell wrote between
1824 and 1849 in order to publish them on the world
wide web. Every evening Cadell committed events of the
day to a diary, detailing his interactions with authors,
publishers, papermakers, printers, members of the wider
business community, as well as his family. Because nearly
every day is described, the diaries provide a continuous,
first-hand account of the nineteenth-century publishing
world by one of its most skilled practitioners.
The diaries will help illuminate the day-to-day realities
that an innovative publisher faced in a rapidly changing
environment. These include the management of relationships
with such notable authors as Scott and John Lockhart;
the negotiation of business networks with printers,
a multitude of other publishers, and distributors at
a time when many in the trade were transforming common
practices as the result of an economic collapse; shifting
intersections between the financial and the literary.
Furthermore, the diaries will serve as a unique focal
point where the complexities of the nineteenth-century
publishing world can be seen to play out. In their transcription
a valuable resource will be made available to a wide
range of scholars in the academy including literary
critics, sociologists, and book, social, business, and
economic historians.
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