Charles Edward Mudie

Charles Edward Mudie, 1871.

Charles Edward Mudie (born October 18, 1818 in Chelsea , † October 28, 1890 ) was a British bookseller and founder of Mudie's Select Library.

Life

Charles Mudie was the son of a London book and newspaper seller. In 1840 he founded his own publishing house in Bloomsbury and published texts by Ralph Waldo Emerson , among others .

In 1842 he expanded his business to include a lending library and, with his Select Library, developed into the largest commercial British book lender within a few years . Using an extensive distribution network and modern means of transport such as the railroad and steamers, he was soon sending his books in his characteristic metal-clad standard containers to subscribers even beyond the borders of the British Empire .

The lending library was so successful that it moved to a larger building on Oxford Street in 1852 , where it remained for more than half a century and became one of London's landmarks.

In 1879 Mudie's eldest son Charles Henry died, whom he had chosen as his successor in the company and who had joined the company eight years earlier. Mudie never fully recovered from this loss, and in the years that followed he withdrew more and more from day-to-day business until he finally handed over his post to his younger son Arthur in 1884 and left the business entirely.

By the end of the 19th century, the Select Library's holdings had grown to over seven million volumes, even if old titles were constantly being removed from the warehouse and sold as second-hand books. By the time Mudie's death in 1890, however, new developments such as the rise of publicly funded libraries and cheap paperback editions had ushered in the decline of the company that had dominated the English literary scene for more than half a century.

meaning

Mudies Select Library, with its rapid growth, was responsible for the closure of many smaller commercial libraries that could not compete with the low prices and large selection of titles. This led to a concentration of the industry in the hands of a few financially strong companies and to a centralization of book lending from London.

Mudie's company was by far the largest and therefore most influential lending library. He used this influence to promote his ideas of good literature, even if he was guided by the moral ideas prevailing at the time his Select Library was founded. Mudie's library soon became known for its conservative practices and has long been a stronghold of Victorian values.

For logistical and financial reasons, he favored the implementation of the three-volume novel format, also known as Dreidecker, which had been known for several years, and influenced the leading British publishing houses through its dominant market position. This preference for the expensive, three-volume, bound prestige editions led for decades to artificially high book prices and correspondingly small editions. Readers should be encouraged to borrow books instead of buying them. The large lending libraries thus became the main buyers of publishers of fine literature . A title that was rejected by Mudie for its program or only bought in small numbers had little chance of becoming a financial success. This led to frequent allegations that he was censoring English literature.

The predominance of the three-decker had a considerable impact on prose literature for an entire literary era. Many important Victorian novelists such as William Makepeace Thackeray , Anthony Trollope , George Eliot and Thomas Hardy wrote almost exclusively three-decker novels, which, with an average of 900 pages and three-volume publication, made special demands on the content and structure of the novels.

literature

• Henry Curwen: A History of Booksellers. The Old and the New . Chatto and Windus, London 1873.
• Guinevere L. Griest: Mudie's Circulating Library and the Victorian Novel . David & Charles, Newton Abbot 1970.