ABSTRACT
As successive editions of the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature have noted, ‘the bibliography of Reynolds is extremely obscure’1 and ‘the publication dates of Reynolds’s fiction are difficult to determine’ with the various titles ‘issued and re-issued in volume form by various publishers for decades’,2 usually after serialized first publication in magazines. The difficulties posed by such levels of unknowing are discussed elsewhere in this volume, but the fecundity, obscurity and popularity of Reynolds’s work causes particular problems for even a brief general discussion of the illustrations which invariably accompanied, and on some occasions even structured, the texts. This chapter depends on many years of acquaintance with a good range of Reynolds’s texts in various editions, and on some attempt to survey the periodical ur-texts of the novels. Yet only relatively little of Reynolds’s output can be viewed in public collections in a range of editions. Additionally, survival of his work has largely depended on either the binding up of part issues into volume format or on hardback reissues. Many scholarly libraries have been reluctant to give shelf space to such apparently trivial and lowbrow ephemeral fiction, sharing the views of the anonymous author of James Bright the Shopman that ‘cheap shilling novels … issue from the press like fumes from the mouth of hell’ and destroy ‘all relish from anything less hurtful than themselves’.3
