→ Print made novels to be read widely and become popular
quickly.
→ Novels produced a number of common interests and a
variety of readers.
→ Readers were drawn into the story and identified themselves
with the lives of fictitious characters. They now could think
about issues like love and marriage, proper conduct for men and
women.
→ Prosperity, due to industrialization, made new groups join the
readership for novels. Besides the aristocratic and gentlemanly
classes, new groups of lower-middle-class people such as
shopkeepers and clerks joined in.
→ The rise in the earnings of authors freed them the from the
patronage of aristocrats. They could now experiment with
different literary styles. Epistolary novel – Samuel Richardson’s
Pamela – written in the 18th century was the first of its kind. It
was a story told through letters.
→ Books became cheap and even the poor could buy them.
Circulating libraries made books easily accessible. Publishers also
started hiring out novels. Books could now be read in private or
could be heard by more people, while one of them read it out.
→ Magazines serialised stories (Charles Dickens’ Pickwick
Papers was the first), illustrated them and sold them cheap.
All these changes increased the number of readers.
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