The three-volume novel (sometimes three-decker or triple decker) was a standard form of publishing for British fiction during the nineteenth century. It was a significant stage in the development of the modern novel as a form of popular literature in Western culture.
thumb|right|An 1885 cartoon from the magazine Punch, mocking the clichéd language attributed to three-volume novelsThree-volume novels began to be produced by the Edinburgh-based publisher Archibald Constable in the early 19th century. Constable was one of the most significant publishers of the 1820s and made a success of publishing expensive, three-volume editions of the works of Walter Scott; the first was Scott's historical novel Kenilworth, published in 1821, at what became the standard price for the next seventy years. [Archibald Constable published ''[[Ivanhoe]] in 3 volumes in 1820, but also, T. Egerton had been publishing the works of Jane Austen in 3 volumes 10 years earlier, Sense and Sensibility in 1811 etc.][1]
This continued until Constable's company collapsed in 1826 with large debts, bankrupting both him and Scott.[2] As Constable's company collapsed, the publisher Henry Colburn quickly adopted the format. The number of three-volume novels he issued annually rose from six in 1825 to 30 in 1828 and 39 in 1829. Under Colburn's influence, the published novels adopted a standard format of three volumes in octavo, priced at one-and-a-half guineas (£1 11s. 6d.) or ten shillings and sixpence (half a guinea) a volume. The price and format remained unaltered for nearly 70 years, until 1894.[3] The price for a three-volume novel put them outside the purchase power of all but the richest households. This price should be compared with the typical six shilling price for a one volume novel, which was also the price for the three-volume novels when they were reprinted as single volume editions.
Three-volume novels quickly disappeared after 1894, when both Mudie's and W. H. Smith stopped purchasing them at the previous price.[4] Mudie's and Smith's issued circulars in 1894 announcing that in future they would only pay four shillings per volume for novels issued in sets, less the customary discounts, with the usual trade practice of supplying thirteen volumes for the price of twelve. This killed the production of the three-volume library editions.
| 1884 | 193 | ||
| 1885 | 193 | ||
| 1886 | 184 | ||
| 1887 | 184 | ||
| 1888 | 165 | ||
| 1889 | 169 | ||
| 1890 | 160 | ||
| 1891 | 162 | ||
| 1892 | 156 | ||
| 1893 | 168 | ||
| 1894 | 184 | ||
| 1895 | 52 | ||
| 1896 | 25 | ||
| 1897 | 4 |
The format of the three-volume novel does not correspond closely to what would now be considered a trilogy of novels. In a time when books were relatively expensive to print and bind, publishing longer works of fiction had a particular relationship to a reading public who borrowed books from commercial circulating libraries. A novel divided into three parts could create a demand (Part I whetting an appetite for Parts II and III). The income from Part I could also be used to pay for the printing costs of the later parts. Furthermore, a commercial librarian had three volumes earning their keep, rather than one. The particular style of mid-Victorian fiction, of a complicated plot reaching resolution by distribution of marriage partners and property in the final pages, was well adapted to the form.
In the early nineteenth century the cost of a three-volume novel was five or six shillings per volume. By 1821 Archibald Constable, who published Sir Walter Scott, took advantage of his popularity to increase the price of a single volume to ten shillings and sixpence (half a guinea), or a guinea and a half (31 shillings and sixpence) for all three volumes.