'fresh, interesting, and informative' Times Literary Supplement 'a worthwhile and interesting study which successfully combines the empirical, the theoretical and the critically pugnacious to offer a new way of exploring some of the hidden relationships operating in the nineteenth-century literary marketplace.' SHARP News 'it was quite eye-opening for me to read Simon Frost's new academic study, The Business of the Novel: Economics, Aesthetics and the Case of Middlemarch. Frost examines the history of the composition of this tome, and its consumption-including Middlemarch ketchup and Middlemarch matchboxes!' livemint.com

• Introduction; Chapter 1 Coordination of Economic and Aesthetic Practices; Chapter 2 Coordination of Economic and Aesthetic Discourses; Chapter 3 End-Users and Readers; Chapter 4 Shoppers; Chapter 5 Contextual Wants; Chapter 6 A Commodity Reading of Middlemarch; Chapter 7 Good for the Audience; Chapter 8 Rival Books and Products; conclusion Conclusion;