Charlotte Riddell’s Varying Forms: Volumes, Reprints and Serials

This essay uses two novels by the popular and prolific Victorian author Charlotte Riddell, as a means of demonstrating what the comparative analysis of different formats can reveal about the culture of reprinting stories for different readerships in the 1850s-90s. Tracing how novels were revised and repackaged in increasingly popular forms demonstrates the considerations, and care, taken by authors, publishers and editors. These changes could significantly alter, and often enhance, the reading experience in ways that challenged common assumptions about the connections between form and quality. The Rich Husband was first published anonymously in three volumes by Skeet in 1858, and then reprinted in 1867 in a single-volume “cheaper form”, as Riddell explained in her preface. While this was true, the comment also glossed over the fact that this was a new publication at the height of Riddell’s fame by the more influential Tinsley Brothers. While Riddell says that “no alteration has been attempted” beyond “some slight curtailment and the correction of typographical and grammatical errors” (p. v), the novel was actually thoroughly revised in a way that shows Riddell was preoccupied with her style and tempered the melodramatic moments in her work. Too Much Alone (1860) also moved from triple-decker to single-volume, and was later serialised in the family magazine Bow Bells (January - March 1890); the addition of illustrations and revisions to the text show editorial attentiveness to the content of the story and the needs of readers encountering it in multi-column print. This work sheds light on previously unexplored aspects of Riddell’s literary outputs throughout her developing career, from anonymity, to literary celebrity, to dated household name. It also exemplifies a useful method for further research into how Victorian popular fiction was published and proliferated.