What are Yellowbacks?
Named for their frequently yellow-tinted covers, yellowbacks are books that were sold in England during the late 19th-century at railway stations. Yellowbacks were made and sold at a cheap price — usually retailing at a shilling each. Although many classics were sold as yellowbacks, e.g. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, and Henry James’ The American, this form of publication took on a reputation for being “cheap” in the other sense of the word. Produced for popular reception, most yellowbacks are “sensation novels,” novels that draw in its readers with promises of intrigue, mystery, murder, and most importantly, scandal. The cover illustrations are as lurid as the stories: colorful, dramatic, and eye-catching.
Because of their reputation and often sensational content, many books produced as yellowbacks were excluded from canonical studies in academia. However, there has been renewed interest in these books over the past thirty years and in what they reveal of the “Victorian imagination.” Scholars are not simply interested in the literature, but also in the cover illustrations and the advertisements which are placed before and after the book’s main text. Moreover, since many of the yellowback authors were women, there is much material here for feminine author restoration projects.
To learn more about yellowbacks, please visit the Links page.
Yellowbacks On-Line:
Click here to access Emory University’s on-line collection of yellowbacks. When you access this page, you will get a listing of all yellowbacks in Emory University’s library. To isolate those which are online, click on Full-Text Online under the Show Only tab in the left-hand column. If you have trouble accessing this page:
- Go to Emory’s library catalogue discoverE. Enter “yellowbacks” in the search box.
- Again, to isolate those which are online, click on Full Text Online under the Show Only tab in the left-hand column.
First of all, these lists are NOT definitive or comprehensive. They are the results of my scanning the on-line collection in the fall of 2010. It’s very possible I missed or overlooked items; in addition, since I developed these lists, more yellowbacks have been digitized and added to the collection. If you find something that I should add to a list or that you think should be removed from a list, please contact me via the Feedback page.
Most yellowbacks fall into the category of fiction and/or sensation novels. Most of the category lists I’ve developed, so far, are for the “Non-Fiction” books. Please note that I am using the term, “Non-Fiction” quite loosely as I expect there are fictional flourishes throughout the sketches and autobiographies, as well as a lot of opinions and mis-information in the “Information/ Guides” section. Also note that there will be some overlap between categories. The Fiction section is still in development.
REVIEWS
Book Reviews: This section is in development. It will be dedicated to reviews and/or summaries of specific yellowbacks. I will include my own reviews, ones that I find on the web, and ones which you submit to me via e-mail. Here are the reviews I recently posted:
- The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins
- The Book of Ready-Made Speeches, by Charles Hindley
- The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
- Eton School Days, or Recollections of an Etonian, by Bracebridge Hemyng.
- Lady Audley’s Secret, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
FEEDBACK
Please leave comments or suggestions on the Feedback page.
