Russell's early years in fiction amount to a series of experiments at capturing a popular taste. He wrote with an acute consciousness of the marketplace and it is clear that he followed reviews of his novels closely. As we have seen, he was prompt to reply to charges of plagiarism and seems to have monitored the Athenaeum, which has been judged ‘the most generally respected of the purely critical journals in England’, especially closely. In 1875 he wrote to Bentley about a ‘very unfavourable notice’ of A Dark Secret in that periodical, commenting:

Even allowing for Russell's low opinion of the Athenaeum, this comment makes clear that in his early career he was seeking commercial rather than critical success, and as a professional author was consciously attempting to write in forms that would enable him to realize a pecuniary reward for his writing.

Unfortunately, Russell's novels before John Holdsworth were all commercial failures. With the exception of Memoirs of Mrs Laetitia Boothby (published at 7s.6d.) his early books were all issued at prices that ensured his audience was almost exclusively that of the circulating library.