Cricket Witness No 6 - His Captain's Hand on His Shoulder Smote

64 the set) to the sixpenny or a shilling magazine of serial episode transformed the publishing industry and, more importantly, the reading patterns of the nation. It arose on the back of technical and political progress. The dynamic new railways carried books, magazines and comics rapidly, ensuring that the entire country could be supplied with periodicals, such as comics, with regularity. The production of such publications gained from improved manufacturing techniques. The work-force employed in the paper, printing and stationery trades almost doubled to 200,000 during the last half of the 19 th century. Crucial to this rising tide of print was the legislative changes mainly introduced by William Gladstone. While Chancellor of the Exchequer, he banished what he called ‘the tax on knowledge’, abolishing advertising duty in 1853, stamp duty on periodicals in 1855 and paper duty in 1861. As a Liberal politician, he was aware that these levies had been imposed not just for revenue but as a supposed bulwark against the cheap circulation of insurrectionary literature. Censorship he abhorred; reading he adored. In consequence there were newspapers and books galore. In Regency days not manymore than 500 books were published each year. As Victoria became Queen, an average of 2000 books was annually published; by the time of Edward VII it was 10,000, with the percentage of novels within that total rising from 12% to 25%. There were 42,000 novels published in the Victorian era, written by 3500 Victorian novelists, a hundred of whom wrote a hundred books each. Authors like Charles Dickens sold their books at the rate of 500,000 a year over lengthy periods. In 1842 Charles Edward Mudie introduced the first circulating libraries, with WH Smith following suit. Then the public libraries proved very successful. Introduced in 1850, there were 108 libraries, with 1.8 million books in the 1880s and 438 libraries, with 9.4 million books, by 1914. This provision of books by local authorities was a humane and civilising move, a tribute to the virtues of the burgeoning collectivist ethic of Victorian England. The library had a The Flood (1) Greyfriars For Ever..And Ever