Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/471

429 CHARLES EDWARD Mb DIE. 429 bers should be considered as responsible judges of what books they do, and do not, desire to read. However, as it is, Mr. Mudie's principles of selection are broad enough to satisfy very various classes of readers. Of course the largest class of all are the novel-devourers, and it is said that, as the coarser novels of the day are almost exclusively written by women, so it is by women that they are chiefly patronised. The large field opened to female labour in the manufacture of library fiction is worth a moment's consideration, for the road has been cleared towards it, not by platform gatherings of stentorian amazons, but simply by the ordinary laws of supply and demand. On analysing Mudie's clearance catalogue for August, 1871 (and this catalogue is one of the best guides to the popular novel literature of the last few years), we find that there are 441 works of fiction written by authors under their own names, or by authors whose pseudonymes are perfectly well known. Of these 441 distinct works, 212 are written by men, and 229 by women ; so that, by what seems to us a not unfair test, actually more than half the novels of the day are written by female authors. To another large class of readers (the good people who go to Mr. and Mrs. German Reed's entertainments, and not to the theatre), the ordinary novels are caviare ; and they require their fiction seasoned, not by sensation, but by religious precept. Scientific books, once asked for only by students, are vastly increasing in popularity ; and the " fairy tales of science," as narrated by a Huxley or a Darwin, are beginning to be as eagerly demanded as the latest productions of Miss Braddon or Mr. Wilkie Collins. In the basement cellars, extending under the whole