Circulation In The Great Gatsby

During the lifetime of a piece of literature, many factors are altered as demands and audiences change. In addition, a partner of demand is circulation; how a book is accessible to audiences or who reads certain pieces. Importance is focused on how well a book sells, who will read this, and how well will it circulate. These ideas are illustrated through the interplay between cost and accessibility, the resulting quality of novels, and finally the circulation between then and now.

Price and accessibility are two factors that play off each other, with price being too high, the audience that has access to a certain piece of literature decreases. This was the case in the 1820s-1840s in Britain with Charles Dickens’ novels, only wealthier individuals

The downside to the penny dreadfuls were the quality of the pieces. Penny dreadfuls merely were a cheap, watered-down summary of the actual Dickens’ novels. While huge, detailed, novels were being circulated among the wealthy, the poor still had a way of accessing the novels, just in a cheap, summarized form. Regardless of quality, an important aspect of circulation is still present, regardless of wealth, a way to circulate information still was created to suit the demand. Moreover, the ideas of inexpensive summaries of books began to catch on and began circulating in America, named the dime novels. Ultimately, the reasoning behind the penny dreadfuls and dime novels is to appeal and accommodate a poorer population of individuals, which is why they caught on. Therefore, audiences are a key factor in determining what form of the novel to make, not only of Dickens’ novels but also of other authors (University of Alberta Libraries

Currently, the Bruce Peel Special Collections library holds some penny dreadfuls and dime novels from when they were popular. Many the in-demand pieces were centered around crime novels but also came in many other forms (University of Alberta Libraries 2015). In terms of the audiences, they vastly have shifted from being practical pieces of writing for the poor, to now being studied and analyzed. This relates to how circulation and audiences change over time, as do pieces of writing. Although the purpose of the penny dreadfuls and dime novels has changed, they still serve a purpose in current times. Circulation methods of present-day would be very limited, their audience decreased as well, but they are used as a platform for learning and understanding the divide amongst wealthy and poor in the 1800s. Overall, it is still important to note that books still serve a very crucial role in societies of today and of the past, even in the early to late 1800s, books were being distributed and popularized like how they are today. In current times, summaries of books can be found online, or most times shown on the front or back of a novel. This displays the purpose today of summaries but also throughout time, as it boosts the circulation of books. Additionally, like the rise of coloured covers of the penny dreadfuls, current day books emphasize covers,