SOURCE: Tuchman, Gaye. “Writers and the Victorian Publishing System.” In Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers, and Social Change, by Gaye Tuchman with Nina E. Fortin, pp. 22-44. Binghamton, N.Y.: Vail-Ballou Press, 1989.

In the following excerpt, Tuchman explores the Victorian writer's dependence on publishers, some of whom were interested in appealing to the masses and earning short-term profits, and others who were devoted to the production of high-culture texts that would amass profits over a long period of time.

To grasp the opportunities and obstacles that women novelists confronted, one must understand the position of all Victorian authors, especially their dependence on publishers. Then as now, authors needed to locate a publishing house willing to invest its capital to transform their manuscripts into books.¹ Especially when not well established, an author may be financially at the publisher's mercy, for publishers do not issue books for the sheer...