{"id":8001,"date":"2025-04-28T20:42:38","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T20:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/?p=8001"},"modified":"2025-04-28T20:42:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T20:42:40","slug":"stepping-into-the-bustling-world-of-bleak-houses-first-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/2025\/04\/28\/stepping-into-the-bustling-world-of-bleak-houses-first-readers\/","title":{"rendered":"Stepping into the bustling world of Bleak House\u2019s first readers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“From the Classroom\u201d is a series that features some of the great work and research from students who visit Special Collections and Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries. Below is a blog by Casie Minot from Dr. Jennifer Burek Pierce\u2019s class \u201cReading Culture History & Research in Media\u201d (SLIS:5600:0EXW).\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minot explores the paratext of the serialized version of Bleak House <\/a>found in Special Collection and Archives. The novel by English author Charles Dickens follows\u00a0a family who become embroiled in a long-running lawsuit over a disputed inheritance and is one of the author’s most acclaimed novels.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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Front Cover of the February 1853 Edition of Bleak House<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

By the time the serial edition of Charles Dickens\u2019 Bleak House <\/em>concluded in September of 1853, the Illustrated London News<\/em> reported that, \u201c\u2018What do you think of Bleak House<\/em>?\u2019\u201d was about as regular a question as \u201c\u2018How are you?\u2019\u201d (Hayward 31). The main difference between the two was that \u201ca great number of people who ask how you do, make a practice of neither waiting for, nor listening to, your reply.\u2026 But, on the contrary, those who inquire for your ideas about Bleak House<\/em>, think of Bleak House<\/em>; and, if they do not really want to know your opinion, want you to at least listen to theirs\u201d (Hayward 31). Throughout its release, newspapers and readers alike agreed that Bleak House <\/em>was London\u2019s premiere literary social event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, one need not be a Victorian reader to experience the Bleak House <\/em>buzz. By flipping through the original Bleak House <\/em>serials, current readers can catch a glimpse at how the pamphlets functioned as a town square of sorts, where communities of readers from different class and gender backgrounds shopped through, learned from, and consumed novels and goods alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nineteenth-century readers listened to Dickens\u2019 stories read aloud in social settings, such as amongst family, neighbors, and friends of all sorts of classes. This especially enhanced the reading experiences of lower classes. At one shilling a piece, Dickens\u2019 serials radically made historically expensive novels widely accessible to lower-class readers. Still, a shilling was a full day\u2019s worth of wages for some readers, which led many lower-class families and communities to buy one representative pamphlet and hold communal recitations (Hayward 35). Moreover, literacy levels were low amongst lower class readers, making \u201clisten[ing] to recitals of texts\u201d an especially viable reading option (Lai-Ming 185). The prevalence of recitation even influenced Dickens\u2019 craft: by using phonetic spellings and punctuation to emphasize speech patterns, Dickens\u2019 prose enhanced the oral performance of the \u201creader-aloud\u201d and catered to the aural entertainment of \u201creader-listeners\u201d (Lai-Ming). From Dickens\u2019 writing desk to the homes of readers, serialized novels like Bleak House <\/em>encouraged communities from diverse class and literacy backgrounds to read each monthly installment.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Marsland, Son, & Co.\u2019s Doily Template and Advertisement in the December 1852 Edition of Bleak House<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The original 1852 and 1853 serials of Bleak House<\/em>, a part of the Leigh Hunt collection<\/a>, further animate how Dickens\u2019 first readers might have participated in this highly social reading process. While the pamphlet\u2019s latter half contains four Bleak House <\/em>chapters, the first half features a wealth of advertisements, such as funeral services, toupees, pills for ailments, and dress fashions. The array of advertisements encouraged readers to leisurely \u201cloiter\u201d through ad after ad as if readers were window shopping (Andrews 24). One notable advertisement is Marsland, Son, & Co.\u2019s crochet cotton thread. Each monthly advertisement featured one new doily pattern adorned with avian, floral, or even royal motifs. Readers could easily collect the patterns for themselves or offer them to loved ones. Perhaps a reader perfected their stitching while listening to protagonist Esther and her friend, Caddy, perfect theirs in the story. Advertisements like the Marsland, Son, & Co. doily patterns illustrate the \u201carcade\u201d of leisurely activities at readers\u2019 disposal inside Bleak House <\/em>serials (Andrews 24).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bleak House<\/em>\u2019s advertisements also offer insights into Dickens\u2019 diverse reading demographics. The inclusion of crochet advertisements gestures towards Dickens\u2019 female readership, but many of the advertisements also targeted their respective families, which included a wide variety of socioeconomic classes. On their way to Bleak House,<\/em> parents and children strolled through advertisements for expensive waterproof overcoats for their family patriarch as well as lists suggesting Christmas gifts for family reading. While such lists feature more costly novels, the overall serials also offer a variety of newspapers and reading lists advertised at cheaper prices.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin<\/em> Advertisement in the November 1852 Edition of Bleak House<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Not only did the advertisements appeal to women and their families across class boundaries, but they also appealed to women active outside the home. For instance, published one week after Bleak House<\/em>\u2019s first release in March of 1852, readers saw Harriet Beecher Stowe\u2019s sentimental protest novel against enslavement\u2014Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin\u2014<\/em>explode both in popularity and in the number of advertisements. Stowe\u2019s blockbuster novel meant to stir sympathy in its female readership while mobilizing readers to take action to support the Abolitionist movement in the United States, and that stirring rippled to Victorian England (Fekete Trubey 62). Selling one million copies across the pond within its first nine months of publication, the novel inspired English women to organize the \u201clargest-scale, traditionally political mobilization\u201d in the form of the Stafford House Address (Fekete Trubey 64-65). Signed by 563,000 British women and gifted to Stowe herself, the 1853 petition implored American women to take action against enslavement in the United States, where the novel only sold 300,000 copies in its first year (\u201cStowe\u2019s Global Impact\u201d). However, one wonders what these British women readers experienced when confronted with Bleak House<\/em>\u2019s Mrs. Jellyby and Mrs. Pardiggle, whose respective portrayals expose their inability to address complex social issues as well as their consequential distractedness from domestic duties, such as the sewing tasks Esther and Caddy perform. Thus, the advertisements of Dickens\u2019 serials appealed to certain demographics, though these demographics, at times, clashed with the social themes of Dickens\u2019 novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contemporary readers can come in today to leisurely peruse through the same avenues of advertisement that entertained readers of the past. Moreover, current readers can indulge in the \u201carcades\u201d of activities within Bleak House<\/em>\u2019s narrative (Andrews 24). As a part of the University of Iowa\u2019s Leigh Hunt collection<\/a>, present-day readers can gawk at Dickens\u2019 defamatory caricature of Leigh Hunt and his decadent lifestyle in the form of Bleak House<\/em>\u2019s Harold Skimpole. Readers can learn more about the complicated friendship between Hunt and Dickens through this caricature alongside other artifacts within the collection, such as Dickens\u2019 correspondence with Hunt prior to and after Bleak House<\/em>\u2019s publication. Researchers can also explore the exciting, new avenues of research present in these serials. Each advertisement acts as a window into the past, unlocking new insights into readership demographics and reading practices of Dickens\u2019 time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original serialization of Bleak House <\/em>and its advertisements invites scholars and enthusiastic readers alike to explore the avenues of readership it inspired. In doing so, readers of today can learn more about the endless possible ways readers might have listened to, read aloud, multi-tasked along to, shopped through, gawked at, and tore parts out of arguably Dickens\u2019 best novel.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cLloyd\u2019s Weekly London Newspaper\u201d Advertisement in the July 1852 Edition of Bleak House<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrews, Malcolm. \u201cDickens and the Serial Fl\u00e2neur.\u201d The Dickensian<\/em>, vol. 114, no. 504, 2018, pp. 21-25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fekete Trubey, Elizabeth. \u201c\u2018Success Is Sympathy\u2019: Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin<\/em> and the Woman Reader.\u201d Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present<\/em>, edited by Janet Badia and Jennifer Phegley, University of Toronto Press, 2005, pp. 53\u201376.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hayward, Jennifer. Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Serial Fictions from Dickens to Soap Opera, <\/em>University of Kentucky Press, 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lai-ming, Tammy Ho. \u201cReading Aloud in Dickens\u2019 Novels.\u201d Oral Tradition<\/em>, vol. 23, no. 2, 2008, pp. 185-199.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLeigh Hunt Online: The Letters \u2013 The Brewer-Leigh Hunt Collection at Iowa.\u201d University of Iowa Special Collections and Archives<\/em>. https:\/\/www.lib.uiowa.edu\/sc\/leighhunt\/collection\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStowe\u2019s Global Impact.\u201d Harriet Beecher Stowe Center<\/em>. https:\/\/www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org\/harriet-beecher-stowe\/her-global-impact\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further Reading:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burek-Pierce, Jennifer. \u201c\u2018Knit and the World Knits with You\u2019: Studying Participatory Culture in the U.S. Newspapers through World War I.\u201d  Annual Review of Cultural Heritage Informatics<\/em>, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2015, pp. 73-83.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Price, Leah. How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain. <\/em>Princeton University Press, 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thornton, Sara. \u201cReading the Dickens Advertiser: Merging Paratext and Novel.\u201d Advertising, Subjectivity and the Nineteenth-Century Novel<\/em>, Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 119-171.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“From the Classroom\u201d is a series that features some of the great work and research from students who visit Special Collections and Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries. Below is a blog by Casie Minot from Dr. Jennifer Burek Pierce\u2019s class \u201cReading Culture History & Research in Media\u201d (SLIS:5600:0EXW).\u00a0 Minot explores the paratext ofContinue reading “Stepping into the bustling world of Bleak House\u2019s first readers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":219,"featured_media":8003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,551],"tags":[39,827,826,552,674],"syndication":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/219"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8001"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8008,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8001\/revisions\/8008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8001"},{"taxonomy":"syndication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/syndication?post=8001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}