Internationalizing Authorship: Beyond New Grub Street to the Bookman in 1891

Abstract

The year 1891 saw two important publications crucial to the redefinition of authorship. In George Gissing’s novel New Grub Street , authorship was a local matter centered on the London-based world of journalism and book publishing, which had turned the profession of writing into a cut-throat Darwinian industry. A different vision underlay William Robertson Nicoll’s founding of a sixpenny monthly, the Bookman . His intended audience was unified and comprehensive--anyone (including women) who bought, read, collected, sold, or wrote books. Perhaps most important was the magazine’s promotion of authorship as an international enterprise occurring in a variety of locations worldwide. Both Gissing and Nicoll understood that writing had become an industry inseparable from the concerns of those who distributed and consumed literature. Only Nicoll, however, recognized that this industry increasingly would be global, and he encouraged that development.

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