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

by Daniel Pool (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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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: Harper Perennial; illustrated edition edition (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.com Sales Rank: #1,556,399 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters: The Rows and Romances of England's Great Victorian Novelists
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Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters: The Rows and Romances of England's Great Victorian Novelists 3.7 out of 5 stars (7)
What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England
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What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England 4.3 out of 5 stars (71)
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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
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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
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)      
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.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Engaging and entertaining. Scattershot choice of topics., January 21, 1998
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.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The pioneers of English fiction., January 27, 2003
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Decline (and Fall) of the English Novel
I must admit that the title of this book instantly drew my curiosity. As a fan of many Victorian novelists, I was curious what so-called secrets and mysteries Daniel Pool would... Read more
Published on September 15, 2005 by R. Chaffey

3.0 out of 5 stars fun and informative, but ...
Daniel Pool undoubtedly enjoys his research and his topic, his enthusiasm is evident on every page. Unfortunately, that's the problem. Read more
Published on April 12, 2004

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but not enough info
This book was very informative, but there was not enough information about the less well known authors and almost too much about Dickens and Bronte.
Published on June 21, 2000 by Moe811

4.0 out of 5 stars Victorian Letters 101
This is a fun book to read. It is not too serious, not too cluttered, and has no footnotes. It wets one's appetite to go to that bookshelf and dust off the classics of times past... Read more
Published on September 15, 1997

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