Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks and Shilling Shockers, 1797–1830 by Franz J. Potter (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks and Shilling Shockers, 1797–1830 by Franz J. Potter Jimmy Packham Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks and Shilling Shockers, 1797–1830. By Franz J. Potter. (Gothic Literary Studies) Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 2021. xi+ 257 pp. £70. ISBN 978–1–78683–670–0. Ghosts! Spectres! Apparitions! The New Life after Death; or, Secrets of the Grave Laid Open (n.d.). What reader would not be enticed by such a lurid title? It is this and 399 other Gothic pamphlets and chapbooks that underpin Franz J. Potter's detailed and informative account of the rise and fall of these short-form tales. Gothic Chapbooks, Bluebooks and Shilling Shockers, 1797–1830 takes as its primary line of enquiry the emergence, proliferation, and decline of these cheap (and perhaps not so cheerful) texts—a combination of original tales and, more frequently, adaptations and abridgements of popular Gothic novels and dramatic works, often extracting the most thrilling and horrid passages from these longer forms. Potter has digested an absolute wealth of information pertaining to the publication history of Gothic chapbooks, enabling the study to unfold in two interrelated directions: first, as Potter outlines, the book offers an empirical and statistical analysis focusing on the publishers, printers and circulating libraries (including readers)' involved in some form with these media; second, it offers a series of short 'biographical case studies' of key figures in this business to 'illustrate the mechanism of the Gothic chapbook trade' (pp. 3,4). Gothic Chapbooks is in consequence a book primed to offer valuable material for scholars working in a number of different critical fields: Gothic studies is the most obvious beneficiary, but this is a study that also has a great deal to say to book historians, scholars of short-form fiction, and—especially in the monograph's most compelling final two chapters—scholars of nineteenth-century children's literature. Gothic Chapbooks presents a useful account of the network of writers, publishers, printers, and distributors—primarily London-based but also 'extending] their reach to the provinces' (p. 133)—who were responsible for circulating the pamphlets and the volumes into which they were frequently collected. Potter reminds us to think of these networks above all as mutually beneficial collaborations rather than real partnerships, and there is something appropriately incestuous about the dazzling combinations and recombinations of publisher and printer names affixed to title-pages: The Veiled Picture… (1802)—a version of Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)—contains a colophon indicating 'twenty-two firms across the United Kingdom collaborating on the project' (p. 81). This suggests something of the murkiness of these networks, but Potter's succinct histories of individuals do much to make this manageable for his readers and a few names stand out as particularly important players in this game: Thomas Hurst, Ann Lemoine, Thomas Tegg, the Bailey family, and Sarah Wilkinson, who receives the most sustained and sympathetic treatment. The brevity of some of these sketches belies the substantial amount of research that clearly underpins Potter's approach here. It is perhaps inevitable that there is a certain amount of repeated information and data across the potted histories of so many interconnected people; the advantage of this, of [End Page 613] course, is that each section functions as a stand-alone biography for anyone with particular interest in a single figure. The economics of the pamphlet market emerge as another engaging area of Potter's study. He demonstrates how publishers might present multiple versions of the same Gothic text in order to appeal to both middle- and working-class readerships while exploiting] the public's transitory commercial interests' (p. 86). Gothic Chapbooks also highlights the economic difficulties faced by key authors, particularly the prolific Wilkinson, who depended on income from Gothic pamphlets even as she was 'desperately seeking alternative means to support herself—anything to avoid living by the pen' (p. 98). The economics of the market—and waning public interest—also account for the ultimate decline of the Gothic pamphlet. This makes for one of the most intriguing discussions in this study: as Potter notes, when the market shifted from the Gothic towards, in part, 'children's toy books', some publishers...