Expanding the European novel (1830–1920)

Literature, having become the book-text, drew new power from its ability to convince that it could account for the world and express its changes. But the novel was not only a privileged form for representing the world in the new era of capital. It also became a commodity. This article draw synthetically from two different bodies of research that have produced separate sets of objects and tools over the last twenty years: those concerned with the organization of a global book market, and those concerned with the evolution of popular forms. Following the expansion of the popular novel, this work underline common processes in the making of reading markets, shared imagined references – where classical historical history of literature focuses on national making, and links between the strong points of European culture.