This chapter outlines the development of the theory of natural selection and the events surrounding the publication and reviewing of Darwin’s Origin of Species, especially in non-specialist publications. The different responses in Britain and the United States are noted. The role of supporters such as T. H. Huxley in reaching a popular audience is explored, although their reservations about the adequacy of the theory are also taken into account. Conservative efforts to present evolution as the unfolding of a divine plan provided a very different way of understanding the general idea of evolution. Many popular accounts failed to understand the difference between Darwin’s ‘tree of life’ model and older ideas of a linear ascent toward humanity, especially when dealing with the issue of human origins. In this area, popular interest in the gorilla as a potential ancestral form distracted attention from some aspects of Darwin’s model, as shown in more detail in Chapter 3. The early evolutionism of Herbert Spencer is introduced and his relationship to Darwinism explained.

This chapter outlines the rise and (partial) fall of the mainstream English-language literary novel since WWII. The heights of success of the literary novel required that readers have leisure, focus, and access to public institutions that support literary study and activity. After WWII, literary work was supported by the surge in university enrollments built upon the postwar period’s remarkable economic dynamism, which afforded state-supported higher education and high rates of secure employment. In more recent years, however, austerity governments increasingly defund humanities education and literary arts programming. Students and aspiring writers, indebted and anxious about pathways to employment, are induced to avoid literary study and work, to be risk-averse and market-facing; and people simply do not feel compelled to spend what little they have for entertainment on expensive books. The avowedly literary branch of the mainstream industry has been contracting for these reasons, while other forms of reading and writing cultures (for instance, self-publishing and texts designed for smartphones) have emerged into a more dominant position.

This chapter explores issues of black mobility by considering the circulation of Robert Roberts’s 1827 book, The House Servant’s Directory: or, A Monitor for Private Families. The House Servant’s Directory holds an important place in book history as one of the earliest known commercially produced books written by a formerly enslaved African American man. Initially, the book received printings in both New York and Boston and was popular enough to warrant two subsequent editions. However, the popular circulation of The House Servant’s Directory exceeded the “circulation” of its indentured author, as his mobility was limited by restrictions on people of African descent. And while the story of David Walker’s broad circulation of his 1829 Appeal fits well into narratives about Black mobility and fugitivity, the early African American print sphere is more often marked by less successful efforts at circulation.