ABSTRACT
Allow me to begin by deferring all questions concerning the value of the archive, the uses and abuses of historical materialism, and problems of method in general; these questions will return, no doubt, but for now I would like to posit, pro visionally, a contemporary reader-a naive reader: myself, for example. This naive reader, let us say, wanders into a special collections library and sees for the first time something that many other (less naive) readers have undoubtedly seen over the past century and a half: a copy of the first edition of a well-known Victorian serial novel. She had probably read somewhere or other that this novel, like so many of the most famous Victorian novels, was originally published in parts-but perhaps this fact never struck her as particularly significant. Upon opening to the first printed page, however, our reader is startled to note something she had not read: the text of the novel is preceded by pages upon pages of advertisements. Not being a Victorian her self, she is unlikely to turn past these ads as she might turn past a page of ads in a contemporary magazine; like messages addressed to someone other than the reader, the ads present at once an obstacle to reading and an inducement to read on, or to read differently. Poring over the advertising section, she is overtaken with the odd sense she had somehow misunderstood what this novel was-maybe even to the point of beginning to suspect that the entire category of the novel might require some reevaluation. But now I am getting ahead of myself.
