ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that certain narratives can enrich efforts to construct a portrait of the late-Victorian reading public and its emerging demographics. It looks at notable contemporary metanarratives from fiction of the period that portrayed said readership’s print consumption. Surveying the representative commentary pieces from the contemporary periodical press, it is difficult to overlook the inclination of certain vocal critical observers to frame the diversification and growth in the post-1870 reading climate in a markedly unfavourable light. The view that literature’s recreational pleasures were a key factor driving the print consumption of the emerging audience was a prevalent theme within the critical comment surveying the reading climate of the period. At the heart of New Grub Street is the perspective that the rise of this ‘new audience’ precipitated an expansion in the ranks of ‘ordinary novel readers’.
