Before the advent of television, reading was among the most popular of leisure activities. Light fiction--romances, thrillers, westerns--was the sustenance of millions in wartime and in peace. This lively and scholarly study examines the size and complexion of the reading public and the development of an increasingly commercialized publishing industry through the first half of the twentieth century. Joseph McAleer uses a variety of sources, from the Mass-Observation Archive to previously confidential publishers' records, to explore the nature of popular fiction and its readers. He analyzes the editorial policies which created the success of Mills & Boon, publishers of romantic fiction, and D. C. Thomson, the genius behind The Hotspur and other magazines for boys, and also charts the rise and fall of the Religious Tract Society, creator of the legendary Boy's Own Paper, as a popular publisher.

The life of Sir Harry Perry Robinson (1859-1930) unfolds like a Boy's Own adventure. Born in India and educated at Oxford, Harry fled to the United States to make his name and fortune. After a stint in the gold mines of the American West, he became a major force in the railroad industry and helped to elect a U.S. President. Returning to England, Harry had a celebrated career as a book publisher (discovering the American author Jack London) and as a journalist for The Times, serving as the oldest correspondent during the First World War and going on to have one of the scoops of the century: the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1923. Harry's incredible journey unfolds against the background of his equally adventurous and accomplished family. His father, Julian, was an Indian Army chaplain and newspaper editor. His aunt was a suffragette and personal friend of both Disraeli and Gladstone. Brother Philip was a dashing foreign correspondent, arrested as a spy during the Spanish-American War. Brother Edward ('Kay'), founder of the British Empire Naturalists' Association, gave Rudyard Kipling his first writing job. And troubled sister Valence was rumoured to end her days living in a barrel on a roadside in Bulawayo. From the White House to Buckingham Palace, the American West to the Western Front, the sands of Egypt to the shores of India, the board room to the bedroom, Harry was a master of reinvention, and each of the nine 'lives' he assumed allowed an 'escape' from one experience into the next. His innate wanderlust was both a blessing and a curse, but it made for a splendid adventure, and Harry's was a grand life lived in history's shadow.

Jack London (1876-1916) is one of the most popular American authors in the world today. Two novels, The Call of the Wild and White Fang, are regarded as literary classics and have never been out of print. His forty-four published books, and hundreds of short stories and essays have been translated into more than 100 languages and hailed by critics worldwide. A vigorous self-promoter and the kind of media celebrity we would recognize today, London was America's first novelist to earn more than one million dollars a year from his writing (in today's currency). Call of the Atlantic reveals a side of London's life that has been largely overlooked by academics and critics, yet is essential to understanding the character, drive, and success of this extraordinary man - namely, London's publishing odyssey overseas. Joseph McAleer considers how London achieved international fame, and the part that he played in engineering his own success. What makes London's dealings overseas especially interesting is that he made his own decisions, unlike many of his contemporaries who depended upon the good will of their agents and publishers. Through correspondence, McAleer reveals London's conversations and transactions, as well as the misunderstandings caused when letters (which could take up to three weeks to arrive) crossed in the mail. Emotions ran high, as did the constant need for money, and the picture that emerges of London is not a pretty one. It was his way or nothing as he played what he called the 'writing game' right through to his premature death, aged forty.

This is the first history of Mills & Boon, the British publishing phenomenon which has become a household name synonymous with romantic fiction. On the firm's 90th anniversary, Joseph McAleer's lively and entertaining account of the establishment and development of the company examines the intimate relationship between editorial policy, morality, and sales. McAleer examines the components of the Mills & Boon `formula' and demonstrates how these novels were tailored to ensure the highest sales, and greatest satisfaction for its cadre of loyal female readers throughout the world.