Literature at Nurse

George Moore’s fierce polemic against the literary and social censorship of the Victorian select circulating libraries was a landmark in the history of English novel publishing. Moore wrote this broadside, and Henry Vizetelly published it, in 1885 – both of them incensed at the arbitrary moral restrictions placed on the circulation of literature by Mudie’s select circulating library and by W.H. Smiths, which had both refused to stock Moore’s novels, A Modern Lover and A Mummer’s Wife. The significance of Moore’s tract gives it a sustained cultural relevance. Professor Coustillas presents it here with the full correspondence it aroused on first publication. This is critically assessed, and its ready availability again will prove it a valuable document for Victorian studies.