Tells the story of how the publishing industry rose from virtual obscurity during the Victorian age to dominate English and world literature, and relates personal anecdotes about authors, editors, and publishers of the era and their attempts to make decent living.

"The author traces the significant yet underappreciated historical role that mass-market paperbacks of Jane Austen's books have played in making her the celebrated author she is today. This is a work of bibliography and of literary history. The author has amassed a large collection of rare and forgotten Austen volumes with rich, colorful, and sometimes gaudy covers that are featured, selectively, as figures in the book"--