19 ғасырдағы британдық роман: үш томдық форматтың тарихы

Form of publishing a novel/series in 3 volumes

The three volume novel (sometimes three decker or triple decker) was a standard form of publishing for British fiction during the nineteenth century. It was a significant stage in the development of the modern novel as a form of popular literature in Western culture.

The format of the three volume novel does not correspond closely to what would now be considered a trilogy of novels. In a time when books were relatively expensive to print and bind, publishing longer works of fiction had a particular relationship to a reading public who borrowed books from commercial circulating libraries. A novel divided into three parts could create a demand (Part I whetting an appetite for Parts II and III). The income from Part I could also be used to pay for the printing costs of the later parts. Furthermore, a commercial librarian had three volumes earning their keep, rather than one. The particular style of mid Victorian fiction, of a complicated plot reaching resolution by distribution of marriage partners and property in the final pages, was well adapted to the form. In the early nineteenth century the cost of a three volume novel was five or six shillings per volume. By 1821 Archibald Constable, who published Sir Walter Scott, took advantage of his popularity to increase the price of a single volume to ten shillings and sixpence (half a guinea), or a guinea and a half (31 shillings and sixpence) for all three volumes. This price was equivalent to half the weekly income of a modest, middle class household. This cost was enough to deter even comparatively well off members of the public from buying them. Instead, they were borrowed from commercial circulating libraries, the most well known being owned by Charles Edward Mudie. Mudie was able to buy novels for stock for less than half the retail price – five shillings per volume. The system encouraged publishers and authors to produce as many novels as possible, due to the almost guaranteed, but limited, profits that would be made on each. The normal three volume novel was around 900 pages in total at 150–200,000 words; the average length was 168,000 words in 45 chapters. It was common for novelists to have contracts specifying a set number of pages to be filled. If they ran under, they could be made to produce extra, or break the text up into more chapters — each new chapter heading would fill a page. In 1880, the author Rhoda Broughton was offered £750 by her publisher for her two volume novel Second Thoughts. However, he offered her £1,200 if she could add a third volume.

Outside of the subscription library system's three volume novels, the public could access literature in the form of partworks – the novel was sold in around 20 monthly parts, costing one shilling each. This was a form used for the first publications of many of the works of Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope and William Thackeray. Many novels by authors such as Wilkie Collins and George Eliot were first published in serial form in weekly and monthly magazines that began to become popular in the middle of the 19th century. Publishers usually offered a single volume reprint of the three volume library edition twelve months after the original, usually for the price of six shillings for the first reprint, with lower prices for later reprints. These were typically three shillings and sixpence for the second reprint, and two shillings for a "yellowback" for railway bookstalls. Publishers like Bentley offered cheap, one volume reprint editions of many works, with prices falling from six shillings to five shillings in 1847, and to three shillings and sixpence or two shillings and sixpence in 1849, with a one shilling "Railway Library" in 1852. The delay before reprint editions were released meant that those who wished to access the latest books had no choice but to borrow three volume editions from a subscription library. and often had sensationalist stories featuring criminals, detectives, pirates or the supernatural.

Though the era of the three volume novel effectively ended in 1894, works were still on occasion printed in more than one volume in the 20th century. Two of John Cowper Powys's novels, Wolf Solent (1929) and Owen Glendower (1940) were published in two volume editions by Simon & Schuster in the USA. The Lord of the Rings is a three volume novel, rather than a trilogy, as Tolkien originally intended the work to be the first of a two work set, the other to be The Silmarillion, but this idea was dismissed by his publisher. For economic reasons The Lord of the Rings was published in three volumes from 29 July 1954 to 20 October 1955. The three volumes were entitled The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has written several books in this format, such as The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and 1Q84. However, many translations of the novel, such as into English, combine the three volumes of these novels into a single book.