A novel requires some measure of structure to hold it together, a plot tends to work nicely for this. To deconstruct a bit, traditionally, a novel is divided into chapters and at one time was even commonly divided into physically separate volumes. Over time, the result of the separate volumes has been the unhappy event of missing volumes. If I had only volumes 1 and 2 of the original Pride and Prejudice I think I would be very sad. (I don’t have any, by the way.) But I do have single volumes of other very old books.
I’ve heard only anecdotally that the reason for separate volumes stemmed from the convenience of being able to pass on volume 1 to the next reader while proceeding with volume 2. I’ve never come across this as any more than speculation. Personally, I suspect the volume decision was a financial one and/or a limitation of the materials at hand, and the fact that the separate volumes could be passed on so that readers didn’t have to wait for someone to finish the entire book was simply fortuitous for the customer. Perhaps in my copious spare time I’ll try to track that down.
The historical practice of physically separate volumes has gone by the wayside, thank goodness, because imagine the horror of your TBR pile if your favorite historical romance (let’s say it’s Scandal by yours truly) came in three volumes and now that you finally have time to read this lovely book, you discover you’re missing volume two. Or the book eating cat (we have one of those) has managed to drag volume three under the bed for a nice snack of the opening chapters. Or that you picked up all three volumes on your way to the airport but only when you’re at 40,000 feet do you discover you have the volume one of some other book.
If books today still came in separate volumes, would each volume have different cover art? This, of course, was not an issue back in the day. You either went cheap and kept your books in their original boards (what would the neighbors think of that?) or you bound them yourself, probably in Morocco leather. And since Carolyn Jewel of 1815 would surely have been Lady Readerham (married to the dashing and wholly reformed rake the earl of Readerham— I assure you, we had quite the tumultuous courtship and that the story about how he got that scar is completely false. There were never any crocodiles in the moat.) At any rate, I would have a nice little coronet to have embossed on the covers of the books in my library.
But that was then. (Would have been then?) What about today? Would bookstores today even allow you to buy single volumes of a multi-volume work? Or would there soon be a healthy after-market source for orphaned volumes? Maybe there’d be special deals, Buy Volumes 1 and 2, get Volume 3 for half off!
What do you think? And if you lived in 1815, who would you be and what would be in your library? Sorry, Lord Readerham is taken.
I think there is a modern version of this: the multivolume series, whether it’s the ever-popular fantasy trilogy or an open-ended, long-running series like the Sharpe books or the Marcus Didius Falco mysteries. Somehow any given bookstore or library is only going to have Books 1, 3, and 7 when you really desparately want to find Book 5 so you can follow your favorite characters’ lives in proper chronological order. This used to drive me crazy before the days of Amazon and before libraries put their entire catalogs online, making it easier to have a book housed at the other end of town delivered to my local branch.
I’m not sure 1815 me would’ve had a library. I’m pretty sure my Regency alter-ego was married to a soldier and followed the drum, so she couldn’t have been the bookworm and packrat that I am. 🙂
I think my 1815 Regency persona would have been the Duchess of Steventon and she would have had a lot of volumes in her library and would have had the books bound to match her couch.
I agree with Susan about the multi-volume series. They drive me crazy. I want to read them in order, but finding the order they actually belong in can be hard. I’ve found wikipedia is pretty good about setting up the order of series, but they do not have all the ones I want.
I think we should create a website that contains all the series and the order in which they were written. I have yet to come across a good one.
The other thing that drives me crazy are books that you can see were supposed to be part of a series, but then never are. There is one book “The Intelligencer” that left you hanging in the end and there was talk about a second book, but because of poor sales of the first book the second never got written. I WANT to KNOW what HAPPENED! The book was pretty good too. Better than the Da Vinci Code and we’re already getting another of those. I think Dan Brown can milk Robert Langdon for a long time. Sad when there are so many good books in the world that don’t get published.
I am pretty sure I would have been a scullery maid in 1815 and wouldn’t have been allowed up in the library. I probably would not have been able to read. One household chore I have never minded doing are dishes, so I think I must have been a happy scullery maid.
I would have to be the Countess of Bolton in 1815 as my Dad’s family is related to the Earl of Bolton way back and on the wrong side of the blanket.
I would LOVE to have a monstrously huge room with floor to ceiling bookcases FILLED with books. I would want them embossed with the family crest I think.
And I would create a catalogue system so I could keep track of any books I might loan out to friends.
I like books in series, but ONLY if I can read the entire series. Jane Austen, I would go nuts if I read a book, really liked it and it left me hanging!
Considering my ancesters where either brewmasters in England or farmers in Norway at that point in time, I’m afraid that I wouldn’t have read much either.
As for the volumes, I recently moved and I had some of books from the start and the others slowly trickled in. I own a lot of book series and it was very frustrating when I tired to reread some of them and realized that I didn’t have the others or at least not the next one yet. Just because I knew what happened didn’t mean I wanted to read them out of order. I couldn’t imagine all of books “in three volumes”. I have just enough space as it is, thinking of all those extra bindings makes me afraid for my book collection.
Both of these things make me very glad that I live in the here and now, but I still like to escape every now and then. 🙂
How awful it would have been if you’d only been able to afford two volumes of a three volume novel!
Sometimes the arrangement of the book within the volumes is very telling–my favorite example is that the cliffhanger return of Sir Thomas Bertram in Northanger Abbey occurs at the end of a volume.
My 1815 persona? Well, I’d probably have functional literacy–most people did. If I were a bit further up the social scale I think I would have been a great borrower of books. But I can’t imagine myself as an aristocrat!
Hah! I LOVE everyone’s persona. Diana, I know I would hire you as my happy go lucky scullery maid.
And Janet, I think you would have been a duchess for sure. Or maybe the Queen or something.
Susan and others, Yes, you’re right about multi-volume books. I came to Sherrilyn Kenyon rather late and I know I haven’t read all the Dark Hunter books yet, but I can’t figure out which ones I’ve missed. So frustrating!
I’m not sure why but a number of my heroines are daughters of clergy so I wonder if that’s what I’d be (albeit with a slight rebellious streak). So I’d be living in a neat little parsonage somewhere. The huge library would belong to my father’s patron, the local lord, to whose manor we are occasionally invited. I wouldn’t be able to resist slipping off to the library, where of course I’d meet the bookish second son…