British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
14TH BRITISH ACADEMY POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP SYMPOSIUM
Abstract
Robert Cadell and the Financial Crash of 1825 – 1826
Dr Ross Alloway
In the first two decades of the nineteenth century, technological developments in printing, expanding systems of communications and transportation, and an increasingly literate and prosperous population facilitated the transformation of literary texts from accoutrements of the wealthy to items that could be afforded by a much wider readership. Perhaps more so than any other publisher of his time, Robert Cadell (1788-1849) anticipated the changing situation. Among his many achievements was the revolutionary publication of the Abbotsford edition of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly Novels which proved that low priced fiction could be immensely profitable; a strategy that became a hallmark of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century publication of fiction.
Perhaps ironically, Cadell’s remarkable success was the product of failure. Cadell is often portrayed as a businessman who plotted to gain from the bankruptcy of Scott and the publisher Archibald Constable during the financial ‘crash’ of 1825-1826. But as this paper shows, Cadell, rather than ruining Scott and Constable, single-handedly delayed the bankruptcy for far longer than would have been possible without his aid. In fact, Cadell’s business acumen nearly saved Scott, and the lessons he learned from the crash laid the foundation for his future accomplishments.
Dr Ross Alloway is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He has published a number of articles on nineteenth-century Scottish publishing, and in particular, on Robert Cadell’s role in the 1825-1826 crash and the subsequent bankruptcy of Archibald Constable & Co.