The wide appeal of prose fiction is significant of an important tendency. With the growth of population and the diffusion of education, a great reading public grew up unlike any that had existed before.
This new reading public had no high literary standards. It asked for something to read, and two great industries grew up to satisfy that demand though popular fiction and popular journalism. Hence it has become difficult for an author always to satisfy his standards of literary taste and at the same time to make a popular appeal. Dickens succeeded, but others have not been so fortunate, and hence we have the new and strange condition of a great class of readers who have no interest in true literature of the time.