Yellow-back
{{short description|Cheap novel published in Britain in the 19th century}}
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A yellow-back or yellowback is a cheap novel which was published in Britain in the second half of the 19th century. They were occasionally called "mustard-plaster" novels.{{Cite web|title = Introduction · Yellowbacks|url = http://omeka.philaathenaeum.org/yellowbacks/introduction|website = omeka.philaathenaeum.org|access-date = 2016-01-18}}
Developed in the 1840s to compete with the "penny dreadful", yellow-backs were marketed as entertaining reading. They had brightly coloured covers, often printed by chromoxylography, that were attractive to a new class of readers, thanks to the spread of education and rail travel.
Routledge was one of the first publishers to begin marketing yellow-backs by starting their "Railway Library" in 1848.{{cite news|title=Hooked on books|first=Judith|last=Flanders|author-link=Judith Flanders|work=The Sunday Telegraph|location=London|date=2006-08-20|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3654668/Hooked-on-books.html|access-date=2015-04-10}}[https://www.publishinghistory.com/routledges-railway-library.html Routledge's Railway Library (George Routledge) - Book Series List], publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 17 January 2021. The series included 1,277 titles, published over 50 years. These mainly consisted of stereotyped reprints of novels originally published as cloth editions. By the late 19th century, yellow-backs included sensational fiction, adventure stories, "educational" manuals, handbooks, and cheap biographies.[https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,805526,00.html "Books: The Yellowbacks"], Time, 10 July 1950. Retrieved 17 January 2021.
Two typical examples of authors of yellow-backs include James Grant and Robert Louis Stevenson.{{Cite book|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.32000006889283;view=1up;seq=14|title=The eighteen nineties; a review of art and ideas at the close of the nineteenth century|last=Jackson|first=Holbrook|publisher=New York, Kennerley|year=1914|location=London|pages=44}}
The color yellow is similarly associated with fast-paced crime thrillers in Italy, where the word for "crime story" is giallo even nowadays.
See also
{{portal|Novels}}
References
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Further reading
- Michael Sadleir, Collecting "Yellowbacks", London: Constable, 1938 (Aspects of Book-Collecting series).
- Michael Sadleir, XIX Century Fiction. A Bibliographical Record based on his own Collection, Constable & Co. and University of California Press, 1951; reprinted by Cooper Square Publishers, New York, 1969. 2 volumes. Vol. II lists Sadleir's personal "Yellow Back Collection".
- Chester W. Topp, Victorian Yellowbacks & Paperbacks, 1849-1905, Denver, Colorado: Hermitage Antiquarian Bookshop, 1993, 9 volumes, as follows: Vol. 1. George Routledge; Vol. 2. Ward & Lock; Vol. 3. Hotten, Chatto & Windus; Vol. 4. Frederick Warne & Co., Sampson Low & Co.; Vol. 5. MacMillan & Co., Smith, Elder & Co.; Vol. 6. Longmans, Green & Co.; Vol. 7. F.V. White & Co. Cassell & Co., W. Blackwood & Sons, Vizetelly & Co.; Vol. 8. Simpkin, Marshall & Co., J.W. Arrowsmith, R. Bentley, Ward & Downey, J. Blackwood; Vol. 9. David Bryce, Ingram, Cooke & Co., David Bogue, Henry Lea, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., J & C. Brown & Co.
- Robert Lee Wolff, {{cite book|title=Nineteenth-Century Fiction: A Bibliographical Catalogue based on the Collection formed by Robert Lee Wolff|volume=5 vols.|location=New York|publisher=Garland Publications|year=1981–1986}} Yellowbacks occupy a prominent position in this catalogue.
External links
- [https://www.flickr.com/photos/yellowbacks/ Digital collection of Yellowback covers] UCLA
- [https://yellowbacks.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/ Yellowbacks at Emory], Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University - digitalized yellowbacks available for download
- [https://digital.lib.usf.edu/SFS0032106/00001 Guide to the Yellowback Press collection, 1981-1995] at University of South Florida Libraries
- {{Internet Archive|yellowbacks|Yellowbacks Collection}}
- [http://omeka.philaathenaeum.org/yellowbacks/ Yellowbacks: Don’t Judge These Victorian Books by Their Covers], Antheneaum of Philadelphia
- [http://www.bl.uk/collections/early/victorian/yell_thu.html Aspects of the Victorian book: Yellowbacks], at British Library
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1108451.stm Now that's a novel idea] at BBC
- [https://repository.monash.edu/items/show/13203#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0 Yellowbacks : an exhibition], at Monash University Library - also: [https://repository.monash.edu/files/original/e1736d02c6f6c0f6798c94776a7c8132.pdf Exhibition catalogue]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20030910113148/http://www.nls.uk/collections/rarebooks/news/acquisit1001.html Recent acquisitions - Rare Books] at National Library of Scotland
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Category:19th-century British literature