Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters: The Rows and Romances of England's Great Victorian Novelists [Paperback]

Daniel Pool (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1998

Daniel Pool, author of the bestselling What Jane Ate and Charles Dickens Knew,  brilliantly turns his keen eye to England's great Victorian novelists themselves, to reveal the surprising private side of their human genius.From literary superstar Charles Dickens, whose domestic scandals were fodder for early gossip columnists to the shy, introverted Charlotte Bronte, who battled rumors about being Thackeray's mistress, Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters is a delightful book for anyone has been caught in the spell of Jane Eyre, Great Expectations or Middlemarch--and longed to peer behind the heavy drapery of Victorian propriety at the private lives of these master storytellers as they battled their publishers and won the devotion of an avid reading public.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With publishing empires swallowing smaller house for breakfast and agents swiping authors left, right, and center, the modern book industry might seem an insider's paradise, an aspiring author's nightmare, a reader's Goldberg contraption. Alas, according to Daniel Pool, 'twas ever thus. Money, advertising, publicity, blurbs, and the author's charisma were just as central to Victorian bookselling as they are now. Focusing particularly on Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Thackeray, the author builds up a portrait of cutthroat times and cutthroat measures. Readers will be particularly taken with the author's account of the rise of the serial novel--and Dickens's frustration with the form. (Something Flaubert quickly copped to. After finishing The Pickwick Papers, he commented to George Sand, "Some bits are magnificent, but what a defective structure.") And the quotations Daniel Pool presents, from the epigraphs to Virginia Woolf's assessment on the final page, make Dickens' Fur Coat essential social history. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

YA. Once again, Pool enters the literary world of Victorian England. He adeptly intertwines interesting moments in the lives of such renowned figures as Charles Dickens, the Brontes, and George Eliot with the history of the British book-publishing industry and the development of a newly emerging, educated middle class that became the market for the novel. The author includes several comparisons to modern-day life that are sure to put YAs in touch with this period. Photographs and portraits of authors and publishing locations appear throughout. A substantial bibliography of books and periodical articles is included. This book should appeal to those interested in these literary personalities and their work.?Barbara Arthur, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: Perennial (June 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006098435X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060984359
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,898,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Engaging and entertaining. Scattershot choice of topics., January 21, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Miami, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters: The Rows and Romances of England's Great Victorian Novelists (Hardcover)

A very fast read -- a book I haven't wanted to put down. I was tempted to skip class to read it -- and I'm the professor! Pool's other book (What Jane Austen Ate and Dickens Knew) is like a research summary. Although it's good also, and well written, it has less to offer to the nonspecialist than this book, which manages to extract good storytelling from what must be quite fragmentary source materials. For scholarly purposes, Pool's chapters could be better focused; also, in general, he seems vague and scattershot on time period. Writing about Victorian lending libraries, he gives pre-Victorian opinions on them (such as from Jane Austen). If he's going to verge into the Romantic period, there's some good scandalous literary and publishing history therefrom (esp. relating to Byron and Scott) that might fit in this book. I feel its absence.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A mistitled but informative and fun cultural study, April 1, 2001

By 

Jay Dickson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters: The Rows and Romances of England's Great Victorian Novelists (Paperback)

Let's get this straight right off the bat: Daniel Pool's book is purposefully mistitled to make you think that it would be a sequel of sorts to his extremely useful and popular compendium of facts important to Victorian fiction WHAT CHARLES DICKENS ATE AND JANE AUSTEN KNEW. This book is very different: it reads like a straightforward narrative, and it's an enjoyable, gossipy, and onformative account of the demands of the publishing market in the mid-Victorian world of the novel, and how it created the careers of Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, Thackeray, George Eliot, etc. The mistitling (undoubtedly to make the book sell better) is thus quite appropriate, in that the novel helpfully etails the ways in which publishing conventions of the time (the rise of Mudie's lending library, the convention of the three-decker) made and shaped literary careers.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The pioneers of English fiction., January 26, 2003

By 

Cipriano "www.bookpuddle.blogspot.com" (Planet Claire) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters: The Rows and Romances of England's Great Victorian Novelists (Hardcover)

Pool's book is a well-paced survey of the industry that produced the greater (well-known) Victorian novels. By "industry" is meant process. He covers the development of publishing houses, writers, lending libraries, serials, trans-atlantic markets, and the innovative way that enterprising book distributors managed to bring their product to the public. It all combines for a fascinating story, and Pool does it well.
It could be said that he focuses on three writers, these being Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, and William Makepeace Thackeray. These three (along with Marian Evans a.k.a. George Eliot) played a vital role in the development of the Victorian novel, and they comprise the bulk of Pool's discussion.
The interaction and intrigues between the main three authors make for National Enquirer-like fodder... with the difference that this stuff is TRUE! Truly, there were "rows and romances" as the subtitle suggests.
The Victorian era was an exciting, but very demanding (downright scary) time to be an author. There were the restraints of format (the serial novel had to be written in self-contained installments; the "triple-decker" had to be able to be neatly split in three), there was the gender prejudice (one ought not to be a woman writer), and there was the ubiquitous spirit of cut-throat competition and jealousy in this burgeoning literary world. Only the strong survived, and only the versatile were recognized at all.
The latter third of the book covers the rise of great writers like Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, and Henry James.
The author takes a subject having the potential of being dry as crackers and presents it as a sprawling and wonderfully connected story. Good work. Reading this book made me realize that there is a HISTORY to the easy access to good literature we enjoy in our day and age, and made me appreciate those many pioneers who cut the swath to it.