Roman-feuilleton

roman‐feuilleton, a serialized novel: see feuilleton.

In statistical terms the roman-feuilleton was the dominant literary genre of the 19th c. The formula ‘la suite au prochain numéro’ had already been used in the Revue de Paris in 1829, but it was in 1836 that Émile de Girardin first used serialized fiction in La Presse as the corner-stone of his marketing strategy. Girardin led the way, and Armand Dutacq was quick to follow in Le Siècle, and all major Parisian dailies included serialized fiction after 1836.

Although dramatic for the period, the circulation figures now seem quite modest. In 1846 the three main Parisian dailies (Le Siècle, Le Constitutionnel, and La Presse) had, respectively, 32, 885, 24, 771, and 22, 170 subscribers. The total readership was, of course, much higher, given that the papers were read in family groups, clubs, and cabinets de lecture. Nevertheless, the increased audience for newspapers and for the emerging roman-feuilleton remained largely a middle-class one. Only later in the century did the roman-feuilleton find a significant lower-class readership. In these early years, the key novelists were Balzac, Sue, Soulié, Dumas père, and Féval. Balzac never had the success of Sue or Dumas. Indeed, in 1844 publication of Les Paysans was prematurely brought to a halt, and it was replaced by Dumas's La Reine Margot. It was Sue who first made a truly enormous impact with Les Mystéres de Paris (1842-3) and Le Juif errant (1844-5), which by itself increased subscriptions to Le Constitutionnel by 20, 000.

The period 1842-8, generally seen as the highpoint of the roman-feuilleton, was dominated by Dumas ( Les Trois Mousquetaires, 1844; Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, 1844-6). But the formulas laid down by the pioneers were endlessly repeated and further elaborated throughout the century in the social, historical, sentimental, travel, and even space-fiction variants of the genre. Foreshadowing a long line of detectives and future comic supermen, the early 19th-c. stories told of how Byronic hero figures penetrated the mysteries of the big city and braved the dangers of the criminal underworld in order to bring about justice and retribution on behalf of the repressed and the tyrannized. Sue's Rodolphe leads to Ponson du Terrail's Rocambole series (1857-71), to Gaboriau, to Leblanc's Arsène Lupin, and to the Fantômas series, by which time the cinema began to draw directly from the roman-feuilleton, heralding future television soaps. [See also Press].

[Brian Rigby]

Bibliography

• L. Queffélec, Le Roman-feuilleton français au XIXe siécle (1989)