Popular novel in France
The popular novel—or popular literature, also known as paraliterature—refers to literary productions that reach a wide readership, which developed during the 19th century primarily due to the decrease in printing costs, the emergence of the first press groups, and literacy. This genre is originally concurrent with the Industrial Revolution and a sociology of reading, which practice could only democratize with the appearance of leisure time in a context of progressive urbanization.
These terms encompass works of great variety: detective, adventure, historical, regional, romance novels, etc. The common denominator is to present a story in a simple chronological order, with well-identified characters, archetypes, and where the plot takes precedence over stylistic considerations. Morality is sometimes imbued with good feelings, "common sense", or even Manichaeism; other times, it is reversed, with great naturalistic effects, positioning readers facing notions of fair and unfair.
The works of Eugène Sue, Alexandre Dumas, and Georges Simenon, among others, rank among the greatest successes of the popular novel, in terms of their posterity.
Not exclusively French, the notion of this genre is found among Anglo-Saxons in the British penny dreadful and the American dime novel, expressions equivalent to that of "two penny novel".
Long scorned by academia but prized as collectibles, the popular novel constitutes a subculture, an aspect of popular culture and the history of books. Its study was initiated by pioneers such as Richard Hoggart, founder of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Michel Ragon, as well as Roger Chartier, Marc Angenot, and Rosalind Krauss. Nowadays, it attracts a significant number of researchers and enthusiasts, while its production experiences sustained growth.
History
Origins and myth
The popular novel follows the tradition of oral literature from which it borrowed themes and narrative techniques. The first popular novelist is undoubtedly Scheherazade, who, in The Thousand and One Nights, to pique Shahryar's interest, is required to resume the thread of her story daily, consisting of a series of interconnected adventures. From a more historiographical perspective, the Bibliothèque bleue is a collection of small, disparate booklets often illustrated with wood engravings, whose dissemination was ensured, in rural France, from the early 17th century until the mid-19th century, by peddlers—other similar collections flourished at the same time across Europe. One of the earliest inventors of the "formula" of the French popular novel seems to be the writer François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil with works such as Les Veillées de ma grand-mère or Tableau d'une bonne famille, although they remained expensive to purchase.Various occurrences of the expression "popular novel" appeared before 1836, the birth date of the feuilleton novel. In September 1839, in the Revue des deux Mondes, Sainte-Beuve criticized what he then called "industrial literature". The expression "popular novelist" is said to have first appeared in 1843 in the socialist press to praise Eugène Sue, author of The Mysteries of Paris. The term refers to the author of literature intended for the people—for the masses, as his detractors would soon say. Other authors, who were unaware of being "popular", preceded Sue, such as Paul de Kock, Auguste Ricard, or Marie Aycard.
Emerging from the July Monarchy, this literary form, also called feuilleton-novel and then serial novel, developed during the Second French Empire and, especially, the French Third Republic. During 1835–1845, the price of a single-volume novel decreased, dropping from 3 to 1 franc, thanks to Gervais Charpentier, Michel Lévy Frères, among others.
The "popular novel" expression is regularly used only from the French Second Republic, with the creation of the Romans illustrés collection by Gustave Havard in 1848; and, in 1849, with the creation of the Romans populaires illustrés collection by the publisher Gustave-Émile Barba and his father. However, as early as 1841–1845, novels sold at each began to appear. They were called "four-penny novels", published by Joseph Bry or Hippolyte Boisgard.
With The Mysteries of Paris, Sue created archetypes that would be extensively reused: the persecuted innocence, and the righter of wrongs. This redeeming hero continued his career in historical novels, with Alexandre Dumas, Paul Féval, and Viscount Alexis de Ponson du Terrail, authors of some of the finest pages of swashbuckling novels. Meanwhile, adventure novels rapidly grew during the Second Empire with authors such as Gustave Aimard or Gabriel Ferry, and later Louis Noir, brother of Victor Noir.
The object definitively democratizes in the 1860s–1880s with a significant decrease in production costs of the press, and thus the unit selling price. Popular novels were everywhere. Some newspapers published up to three serials daily. It was the era when novels of judicial error triumph, dramas of families torn apart by a relentless fate. Emotion was the order of the day. One must make "Margot cry" or be "loved by their concierge". The "novel for Margot" was also, for a time, called the "novel of the doorman". The period also saw the emergence of detective fiction, fantastical and scientific genre novels, precursors to science fiction, and soon, espionage novels.
The wild fictions of the first popular novels were gradually giving way to a less epic social realism, closer to melodrama.
1880–1900: First golden age
Peak of novels featuring victims
This was the advent of authors such as Xavier de Montépin, whose The Bread Peddler saw numerous reprints, or Jules Mary who wrote Deux Innocents, Roger-la-Honte, La Pocharde, stories in which lost children, orphans, unwed mothers, alcoholics, and innocent convicts abound. At the start in an obscure newspaper, Mary earned eight francs a month. But he progressed quickly: his first novels delivered to Le Moniteur universel brought him a hundred times more. At Le Petit Journal, he was then paid annually. He bought himself a mansion on Boulevard Malesherbes. He was made an officer of the Legion of Honor in 1913. Finally, he was paid three francs per line, using an écurie of ghostwriters who were royally paid thirty centimes a line.This was also the case for Émile Richebourg who, with Les Deux Berceaux and La Petite Mionne, stages his favorite theme: the abduction or exchange of children, combined with adultery. At the peak of his career, he is said to have earned up to 1.5 million gold francs.
Also noteworthy are Georges Ohnet, author of The Ironmaster, and Pierre Decourcelle, with The Two Kids, whose success was as impressive as short-lived. Under their influence, there was a proliferation of novels featuring victims that depict heroes caught in a fatal spiral of ruthless circumstances. Ideal scapegoats endured a long and painful sentence for crimes they did not commit, awaiting their rehabilitation, a plot that owes much to The Count of Monte Cristo. These victim novels, tearful as they may be, also reflected a painful social reality. While sometimes posing as moralizers, novelists also contributed to raising awareness of real social problems: the gradual rehabilitation of the daughter-mother owes much to Jules Mary or Émile Richebourg.
The selling price remained a determining factor before 1914. Launching new collections or series was the subject of promotional offers on the first volumes. Delivered weekly, the illustrated booklets benefit from an exceptional print run for each first issue and sometimes free distribution. All publishers emphasized the pagination of their publications and the number of lines. Fayard, for example, praised the launch of Chaste et flétrie in its collection Le Livre populaire: "The magisterial work of Charles Mérouvel, the great popular novelist, comprises nearly 800 pages of compact text with 33,700 lines corresponding to 50,000 lines of newspaper with 1,518,000 letters. It was given without missing a word for 65 centimes in the first volume of our series Le Livre populaire. Such effort has never been made in bookselling, both in terms of affordability and the significance of the work provided."
Emergence of popular publishers
By the turn of the century, enthusiasm was at its peak. So specialized publishers emerged: Jules Rouff, one of the most prolific; Arthème Fayard, who launched Le Livre populaire in 1905; Jules Tallandier ; Joseph Ferenczi, whose series Le Petit Livre, created in 1912, were sold at 40 centimes each and did not stop until 1964 after more than 2,000 issues. La Maison de la bonne presse inaugurates the Collection des romans populaires at 20 centimes in 1912 with authors such as Pierre l'Ermite, René d'Anjou, and Delly. The era saw the affirmation of genre autonomy and the sentimental novel triumph. Female literacy has gradually caught up with male literacy. Publishers addressed an expanding audience, with women gradually becoming the main targets. The novel Jenny, l'ouvrière by Jules Cardoze offered an inside story: the adventures of Jenny, a worker like her readers, through a glorified daily life.Press
Newspaper publishers have greatly benefited from the popular novel advent. From the late 1830s until 1920, the original edition of a bookstore book was almost always preceded, accompanied, or followed by publication in episodes in national or regional newspapers. For the press, the period from 1860 to 1920, which saw the triumph of increasingly rapid machines like those of Marinoni, represented a golden age, now gone: now, press messengers founded by pioneers like Louis Hachette offer readers, at newsstands, cheap, stapled, and unbound booklets with illustrated covers, which serve as derivatives. Thus, in 1914, four national newspapers had circulations of over one million copies, competing for this market: Le Matin, Le Petit Parisien, Le Petit Journal, and Le Journal. These titles accompany their launches with extensive advertising campaigns.These newspapers provided a great deal of space to sensational news, a theme favored by popular novelists, who often followed criminal cases as journalists, such as Gaston Leroux, a trained lawyer who spent his entire career at Le Matin, first as a journalist and then as a senior reporter and finally as a feuilletonist until 1927. Gustave Le Rouge, head of service at Le Petit Parisien, was dismissed for inventing a sensational news story. Jules Mary wrote Le Boucher de Meudon based on the memoirs of Pranzini, the butcher murderer.
The union of the press and the popular novel was primarily an economic success. In 1865, Le Petit Journal increased its circulation to 282,060 copies at the time of the insertion of La Résurrection de Rocambole. In 1867, Le Dernier Mot de Rocambole forced the circulation of La Petite Presse to 100,000 copies on the first day alone. Émile Richebourg accepted the publication of Les Deux Berceaux in La Petite République, which saved Gambetta from ruin, as his newspaper was dying due to lack of readers.
Pierre Decourcelle, a millionaire writer, was at that time a true best-selling industrialist who accumulated successes, for which he mobilized a significant number of ghostwriters, akin to Dumas in his time, but up to sixty individuals. Not content with being published in serial form, this astute novelist had his works published, adapted them for the stage, and then for cinema by creating his own film company in 1908, the Société cinématographique des auteurs et gens de lettres.