Bentley's Miscellany

In August 1829, Richard Bentley joined forces with Henry Colburn to establish a publishing business. In February 1831, Bentley launched Standard Novels, an enormously successful series of monthly one-volume reprints at 6s. each with impressive illustrations. By 1831 Colburn's debts exceeded £18,000 and the following year Bentley purchased his share of the business for for £6,700.

1836 Bentley had the idea of publishing a monthly journal in order to promote his novels. That year Charles Dickens had great success with his serialised Sketches by Boz and The Pickwick Papers. Bentley offered Dickens £500 for his next novel. Bentley also agreed to pay twenty guineas to Dickens in return for becoming editor of his journal, that he decided to to call Bentley's Miscellany . Bentley signed an agreement with George Cruikshank to become the illustrator of Dickens's novel. He was paid £50 for the use of his name as illustrator and 12 guineas for every monthly etching.

The journal was first published in January 1837. The second edition included the first part of Dickens' novel, Oliver Twist. Each episode consisted of about 7,500 words. Most critics liked the series but Richard Harris Barham disliked the "radicalish tone" of the novel. The Spectator criticised Dickens's use in fiction of the "popular clamour against the New Poor Law". However, he did praise Dickens for his remarkable skill in making use of peculiarities of expression." Queen Victoria read the novel and told her friends that she found it "excessively interesting".

Charles Dickens constantly demanded more money from Bentley for his work being published in his journal. On 21st January, 1839, Dickens wrote to Bentley complaining about their business relationship: "I am conscious that my books are enriching everybody connected with them but myself, and that I, with such a popularity as I have acquired, am struggling in old toils, and wasting my energies in the very height and freshness of my fame, and the best part of my life, to fill the pockets of others, while for those who are nearest and dearest to me I can realise little more than a genteel subsistence."

Dickens then went on to say he was resigning as editor of the Bentley's Miscellany: "I do most solemnly declare that mortally, before God and man, I hold myself released from such hard bargains as these, after I have done so much for those who drove them. This net that has been wound about me, so chafes me, so exasperates and irritates my mind, that to break it at whatever cost... is my constant impulse." Bentley's son George later argued that these negotiations was a "brick in the building of Dickens's character... Dickens was a very clever, but he was not an honest man."

Richard Bentley tried to get Dickens to change his mind but eventually accepted defeat and appointed William Harrison Ainsworth as editor of the journal. Bentley considered taking Dickens to court for breach of contract. He probably would have won his case but it was not considered a good idea for a publisher to sue an author. Dickens described Bentley in a letter to a friend as an "infernal, rich, plundering, thundering old Jew". In doing so he was quoting the comments of Bill Sikes on Fagin in Chapter 13 of Oliver Twist.

Other authors who had their work serialised in Bentley's Miscellany included Wilkie Collins, Edgar Allan Poe, Ellen Wood, Richard Harris Barham, Catharine Sedgwick, Richard Brinsley Peake, Thomas Moore, Thomas Love Peacock, William Mudford, Charles Robert Forrester and Frances Minto Elliot.

Over the years Bentley had problems with William Harrison Ainsworth and George Cruikshank . As Bentley's biographer, Robert L. Patten, has pointed out: "Within a few years Ainsworth and Cruikshank too had severed relations with Bentley because of editorial and financial disputes, partly stemming from the very success of their enterprises, which were governed by contracts that did not allow sufficiently for additional remuneration and enhanced editorial control.

The circulation of Bentley's Miscellany dropped by two-thirds and in October, 1854 sold it to Ainsworth for £1,700. Ainsworth sold it back to Bentley in 1868 who merged it with the Temple Bar Magazine .

Primary Sources

(1) Charles Dickens , letter to Richard Bentley (21st January, 1839)

I am conscious that my books are enriching everybody connected with them but myself, and that I, with such a popularity as I have acquired, am struggling in old toils, and wasting my energies in the very height and freshness of my fame, and the best part of my life, to fill the pockets of others, while for those who are nearest and dearest to me I can realise little more than a genteel subsistence.... I do most solemnly declare that mortally, before God and man, I hold myself released from such hard bargains as these, after I have done so much for those who drove them. This net that has been wound about me, so chafes me, so exasperates and irritates my mind, that to break it at whatever cost... is my constant impulse.