Grub Street, or the “new” Grub Street of the late nineteenth century kept its inhabitants’ noses to its grindstones. The triple-decker was the established method of publishing novels in the nineteenth century, and the triple-decker took a lot of writing. But the subscription libraries liked them, insisted on them, because their subscribers would take out three subscriptions in order to be sure of getting all three volumes at once. Publishers serving this market tended to buy their novels outright.

Edwin Reardon may be read as George Gissing’s alter ego in his novel New Grub Street. He expatiates on the tantalizing gaze of the triple-decker: “For anyone in my position, . . . how is it possible to abandon the three volumes? It is a question of payment. An author of moderate repute may live on a yearly three-volume novel — I mean the man who is obliged to sell his book out and out, and who gets from one to two hundred pounds for it. But he would have to produce four one-volume novels to obtain the same income; and I doubt whether he could get so many published within the twelve months. And here comes in the benefit of the libraries; from the commercial point of view the libraries are indispensable. Do you suppose the public would support the present number of novelists if each book had to be purchased? A sudden change in that system would throw three-fourths of the novelists out of work.” [Ch. 15]

The catch of course is that it takes a certain type of mind to be able to keep going on three-volume after three-volume novel — well, on any kind of novel I guess — but if you must write to live, this struggle becomes all-consuming. Another character, Marian Yule, working as a research assistant for her father Alfred, “kept asking herself what was the use and purpose of such a life as she was condemned to lead. When already there was more good literature in the world than any mortal could cope with in his lifetime, here she was exhausting herself in the manufacture of printed stuff which no one even pretended to be more than a commodity for the day’s market.” Later “her startled eye had caught an advertisement in the newspaper headed ‘Literary Machine’; had it then been invented at last, some automaton to supply the place of such poor creatures as herself, to turn out books and articles? Alas! the machine was only one for holding volumes conveniently, that the work of literary manufacture might be physically lightened. But surely before long some Edison would make the true automaton; the problem would be comparatively such a simple one. Only throw in a given number of old books, and have them reduced, blended, modernised into a single one for today’s consumption.” [Ch. 8] Now of course, a hundred and thirty years later, we have indeed created this automaton.

Without ChatGPT however, the author was on his own and had to write as fast as he could in order to provide food and lodging for himself and his family. Sickness would get in the way, but “there came a day when Edwin Reardon found himself regularly at work once more, ticking off his stipulated quantum of manuscript each four-and-twenty hours. He wrote a very small hand; sixty written slips of the kind of paper he habitually used would represent — thanks to the astonishing system which prevails in such matters: large type, wide spacing, frequency of blank pages — a passable three-hundred-page volume. On average he could write four such slips a day; so here we have fifteen days for the volume, and forty-five for the completed book.” [Ch. 9]

Keeping on thereafter was a different problem though. You can’t just keep telling the same story over and over. Dialogue was an important resource, the lines can be short, and each speaker gets you a fresh line break. Second volumes of triple-deckers were notoriously padded, and New Grub Street‘s second volume does contain a lot of talk, but it’s not one of the culprits in second volume vaporing.

This writing rate which Gissing may himself have been able to maintain, was of course an ideal. Reardon admits: “‘On Neutral Ground’ took me seven months; now I have to write three volumes in nine weeks, with the lash stinging on my back if I miss a day.” [Ch. 15] Gissing wrote New Grub Street, a three-volume novel itself, in two months in the autumn of 1890, at the pace of nearly 4,000 words a day, the rate ascribed to Reardon above — so it could be done. Forty-five days’ worth of 4,000 words would get you three volumes of 60,000 words, which with judicious typography could yield three books of 300 or more pages each. Which, if you were a workaday hack might get you £100 if you were lucky. Talking of the successful authors of the day, Reardon asserts “They are public-school men, University men, club men, society men. An income of less than three or four hundred a year is inconceivable to them.” [Ch. 27] The big-name authors of the day would be getting £200 or £300 a book. See my recent post “New Grub Street” for further financial details.

The numbers will be bigger, but the pressures on today’s career writer will be similar to those facing the Victorian author. We are all the beneficiaries of their dedication, because in spite of what Ms Yule may say we don’t really believe that having “more good literature in the world than any mortal could cope with in his lifetime” is enough.