'The expansion of publishing for a mass market in early Victorian Britain was a major factor in creating popular fiction as we now know it. Yet we still know very little about this dark underworld of print culture that emerged in London. This is now transformed through the prodigious research of Robert Kirkpatrick who has given new life to the publishers and writers like Edward Lloyd and G.W.M. Reynolds who shaped the imagination of a generation. Many figures in this volume have previously been unknown to historians. This will become a standard work in the history of popular literature.'Rohan McWilliamProfessor of Modern British History, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK