The Minerva Press

The Minerva Press, generally acknowledged as "the greatest single manufactory of fiction during the period" between 1790 and 1820, serves as "the veritable symbol of the cheap literature of [its] day."¹ In spite of the fact that Minerva Press works were widely read and (one assumes) enjoyed, the press and its productions have been vilified. Minerva works have been regarded rather in the light of the Harlequin romance of our own period: homogenous pap manufactured for the amusement of women without the discrimination to appreciate more intellectually or aesthetically challenging literature. Even Dorothy Blakey, the historian whose 1939 bibliography, The Minerva Press, 1790-1820, remains the only extended study of the press, accepts without question an 1884 assessment that Minerva works are "completely expurgated of all the higher qualities of mind."² According to Blakey, the "only justification for a study of the press" is the "vogue [Minerva works] had in their own day, and their later use as a symbol for popular fiction."³

Many of the hundreds of works published by the press were almost incredibly popular. In 1806, for example, two thousand copies of Vicissitudes Abroad; or, The ghost of my father by Anna Maria Bennett were sold the very first day the six-volume novel was offered to the public, even though the price was thirty-six shillings for the set.⁴ The number of books sold, however, only partially reflects the popularity of Minerva works; William Lane, the founder of the press, was an astute businessman who pioneered the expansion of the circulating library in order to develop a market for the works he produced. Not only did Lane supply his own Leadenhall Street library with Minerva works, his productions made their way into the collections of provincial libraries throughout Britain and into circulating libraries as far afield as New York, Jamaica, and Bombay.⁵