The House of Blackwood: Author-Publisher Relations in the Victorian Era by David Finkelstein (review)

Abstract

768 Reviews in principle, these are hardly even defended (cf. Grimes, Lacoss, Natov): myths are reassuringly self-explanatory, to the point of turning Harry into Jesus: 'Harry began his life as myth, as magic infant, the force that alone kept evil at bay. Throughout the first four books, he has struggled to become a human boy' (Cockrell, p. 26). This Jesus-Pinocchio also fulfilseight out ofthe ten archetypes suggested by Grimes, for whom it is not yet clear at this stage if Harry Potter's mother is a virgin, thus preventing Harry from fulfillingthis particular Messianic requirement (p. 107). Farah Mendlesohn's contribution is the only essay which attempts to critique some of the volume's tenets. Her cultural analysis of the internal contradictions of concepts of genealogy in Harry Potter goes against the idea that 'biologically, genetically, an embryonic hero is likely to come from appropriately strong roots, good DNA (Pharr, p. 54). Her discussion of 'fairness' also sits uneasily next to the well-meant claims about 'Rowling's abhorrence ofthe class system' (Natov, p. 133). Similarly, her view on gender clashes not only with the enthusiastic 'Harry is no wimp' (Pharr, p. 62) but also with Dresang's critical efforts. Even though at times simply reversing the logic it criticizes and failing to question the role of the author (whom Mendlesohn occasionally chastises, thus failing back into the position of the critic-as-moralizer shared by other contributors), Mendlesohn's essay is a critical argument. This volume is full of good intentions, which exert their commonsensical power; The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter fails, however, to work as a critical analysis of a cultural phenomenon. University of Salford Daniela Caselli The House ofBlackwood: Author?Publisher Relations in the Victorian Era. By David Finkelstein. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2002. viii + 199 pp. $55- ISBN 0-271-02179-9. Founded in 1804, the Edinburgh publishing firm of William Blackwood & Sons is best known for its role in nurturing major literary talents such as George Eliot and Joseph Conrad. Blackwood is already the subject of two histories commissioned by the house, Margaret Oliphant and Mary Porter's study of 1897-98 and Frank Tredrey 's house history of 1954. David Finkelstein's The House of Blackwood is one of a number of recently published texts that consciously set out to reinvestigate and revise the 'official' history of print culture. As Chapter 1 makes clear, officialhouse histories tend to concentrate upon famous authors and literary texts while ignoring the collaborative process between author, editor, and printing house that allowed these texts to be produced in the firstplace, and the role of the publisher in distributing and marketing them once they had left the press. Chapter 6 helps to redress this imbalance by documenting William Black? wood' s struggle to get Oliphant and Porter to produce a coherent author-centred 'representation ofthe firm's self-image' (p. 128) in the 1890s, and two general chap? ters (2 and 5) covering the economic history of the business draw attention to the way in which Blackwood's involvement in the production of a wide range of non-literary texts, including atlases and dictionaries, helped the firm to survive in the volatile world of Victorian publishing. These general chapters cover the periods 1860-79 and 1880-1912 respectively and draw upon a wealth of new archival material deposited in the National Library of Scotland that even the previous 'ofncial' historians of the firm were unable to call upon, and Finkelstein must be praised for extending his interest to the later period, when the firm 'began aiming more directly at its steadiest customer base: the colo? nial audience' (p. 101). However, it is unfortunate that the attention given in the MLR, 99.3, 2004 769 earlier chapter to 'production and the shop floor' (pp. 38-42) and 'distributing and marketing texts' (pp. 42-46) is not repeated in the chapter on the later period. Chap? ter 2 concludes with the statement that 'the labor strikes of 1872-73 resulted in a de-unionizing policy that was to remain in place until the turn ofthe century', but at least something should have been said about labour and...