Available September 2026
ISBN 9781915115799 Hardback £75.00
229 x 152 mm. 202 pp.
50 illustrations - colour and b&w.
Just the Ticket!
The Surprising Origins, Wonderful Life, and Shock Death of 19th-Century Railway Library Fiction
John Spiers
Edward Everett Root Publishers Co. Ltd.
EER
About this book
This landmark work provides new and comprehensive illustrated and documented guidance to the major popular publishing revolution of the ‘railway libraries’ from the 1840s onwards, in these several countries.
These revolutionary changes in popular publishing were prompted by the Belfast educational and religious publishers Simms & M’Intyre.
They discovered the enormous and previously unrealised ‘carrying capacity’ of the new middle-class market for cheaper new fiction, and inevitably others joined in. Their initiatives were duly (if initially only tentatively) copied by George Routledge, who became one of the greatest Victorian publishers. These publishers issued very attractively produced cheaper pocket-sized novels at 2s, and 1s. they became widely known as ‘yellowbacks’ in coloured illustrated covers. They were sold to train travellers on the fast growing railway networks, and internationally.
In February 1846, Simms & M’Intyre issued the first of 14 volumes in small 8vo. format in their revolutionary Parlour Novelist series at 2s. The series was issued monthly from February 1846 to early in 1847.
In April 1847 they followed this by publishing the first volume in their pocket-sized small 8vo. format Parlour Library series, this being continued by them up to 1853, eventually amounting to more than 300 titles by a succession of London publishers in several take-overs. The Belfast firm’s second series, The Parlour Library, daringly began with an entirely new work of fiction, The Black Prophet: A Tale of the Irish Famine, by the peasant-born ultra-realist William Carleton, which was issued on 1 April 1847 and which sold for 1s.
In November/December 1848, George Routledge issued the first title in The Railway Library and Fireside Companion series at 1s. This ran to over 1,200 titles over 50 years, and became one of the core focus activities which long defined the firm in the book market. As this work shows, the new reading public became a crucial social fact, leading on to mass society.
Contents:
Foreword by Wallace Kirsop
Introduction
Chapter 1. An important Australian cultural story
Chapter 2. The Key men in Australia: George Robertson, E. W. Cole, Henry Lloyd, Samuel Mullen, A. C. Rowlandson—and overseas, Simms & M’Intyre, W. H. Smith and George Routledge
Chapter 3. The importance of the empirical study of the books themselves—and in aiding interpretive narrative—as an archive
Chapter 4. The first ‘yellowbacks on railway bookstalls’?
Chapter 5. What the railways did in Australia and in the UK to and for book publishing
Chapter 6. The surprising origins of ‘railway library’ series. The Belfast firm of Simms & M’Intyre
Chapter 7. The French response for railway travellers
Chapter 8. What happened next in Belfast
Chapter 9. A pivotal relationship: George Routledge (1812-1888) and William Henry Smith Jr (1825-1891)
Chapter 10. Routledge and America. The huge bonus of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Chapter 11. The revealing tale of Henry Cockton’s novel Valentine Vox
Chapter 12. Routledge’s dramatic dealings with Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton [Baron Lytton of Knebworth]
Chapter 13. The shock death of railway libraries
Chapter 14. George Routledge, E. W. Cole, and the problems of succession
Chapter 15. Conclusion. What can we learn from what we learn?
List of illustrations
Further bibliographical guidance
About the author
Professor John Spiers is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies, in the School of Advanced Study, University of London. His previous books include Serious about Series (second edition, 2025). His Books for the Million was published by EER in 2026, and two volumes Victorian Popular Publishing. From Golden Guineas to Small Change, will be published by EER in 2027.