Frank Norris's 'A Salvation Boom in Matabeleland" The Bibliographic Problems of Syndicated Fiction
F OR MANY YEARS BIBLIOGRAPHERS, textual editors, and others have recognized that numerous works by some of the most famous authors of the late nineteenth century first appeared not in book or magazine form but rather in newspapers published in Boston, Cleveland, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Los Angeles, St. Paul, Chicago, Syracuse, and Atlanta, among other places. Occasionally works were purchased by one newspaper and printed only once in its pages. More commonly, though, businesses called syndicates would purchase a single short story or novel from an author and sell it for simultaneous publication in anywhere from 20 to 150 newspapers across the country, much as features are syndicated today. Frank Norris, Jack London, Henry James, Sarah Orne Jewett, Hamlin Garland, Mary E. Wilkins (Freeman) Robert Louis Stevenson, Stephen Crane, Rudyard Kipling, William Dean Howells, and many others had some of their works published in this way. A few of these newspaper appearances have been documented in bibliographies of authors' works. In general, though, they have not been documented as fully as they should be. When one turns from the detailed descriptions of an author's book publications in most bibliographies to the author's serial publications in both magazines and newspapers, one is often disappointed at the lack of detail. Typically, all that is provided is the title, the name of the periodical in which the work appeared, the date, and the page number. The "problem" of syndicated fiction is that these descriptions