Art and technology have almost always been strange and controversial bedfellows. Gutenberg’s Bibles, for instance, were initially thought to have been created not through the magic of movable type but through that of witchcraft. And as if the relationship between art and technology isn’t problematic enough, in walks commerce, creating a love triangle in which art is in constant danger of being jilted. On the other hand, the hotbed formed by that impassioned threesome can produce offspring impossible and unimaginable under any other circumstances.

Such was the case in England during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), a time of exponential growth and innovation artistically and technologically, as well as in the field of marketing. This period, in the area of publishing, is the subject of the show “Victorian Bestsellers,” a small, lively gathering of printed books, autographed manuscripts, advertisements, drawings, prints, and printing plates at the Morgan Library & Museum.

Coming on the heels of the Industrial Revolution, the Victorian Era brought us Realism, Impressionism, and Modernism, as well as the ongoing struggle between handicraft and the machine. The period also saw the birth or fruition of mass production and communication, the railroad, mechanical reproduction, and indoor plumbing, as well as the rise of the middle-class, leisure time, and increased literacy. It brought us newspapers, magazines, posters, political cartoons, and broadsheets; the patent and the copyright; publishing houses and advertising agencies — the latter of which originated as brokers who sold advertorials and quickly evolved into unregulated spin-machines. All of these innovations in one way or another contributed to what made a book a best seller.

It is impossible really to account for the zeitgeist — the forces active in literature, design, technology, and business during the Victorian Era — that gave rise to the best seller. Yet the organizer of “Victorian Bestsellers,” John Bidwell, has made that zeitgeist accessible, producing an enjoyable and extremely informative romp through the ins and outs of the 19th-century world of publishing.

Mr. Bidwell has divided the show into several compact categories: What Is a Bestseller?, Predecessors, Publication Methods and Copyright, Yellowbacks, Penny Dreadfuls, Victorian Color Printing, Classics, Social Commentary, Non-Fiction, Poetry, and French and English Illustration, respectively. Charles Dickens, the exhibition’s star in both literature and business, has his own deserved section and figures prominently in other areas of the show. Dickens is represented in wood-engraved caricatures, contracts, letters, autographed manuscripts, and serialized novels.

The wall labels are packed with authors’ salaries, figures, rates, and dates of sales and editions, quarrels between author and publisher, marketing methods, technological advances in printing, and even a tale of distributors being mobbed by an angry public because an edition had sold out. The show reminds us that best sellers inspired parodies, spin-offs, children’s versions, games, toys, souvenirs, dramatizations, and musical adaptations — some of which were authorized, much of which were not.

The subject of “Victorian Bestsellers” is consumerism and mass consumption; and most of the works, though at times great works of literature and generally easy on the eyes, are not always great works of visual art. There are some exceptions. A whole range of beautiful bindings, some of them embossed with gold, are on view; and the show is rich with history. The exhibit includes charming illustrations, advertisements, and posters by artists such as Hablot K. Browne, George Cruikshank, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. And there are classic examples of typography and caricatures, as well as brightly colored portfolio covers by Alfred Crowquill for yellow books such as “The Three Musketeers,” “The Lofty and the Lowly,” and “The Guide to the Crystal Palace.” Crowquill’s covers — comic, ornate, neo-Gothic, or picturesque — explode on the wall and demonstrate the melting-pot range of Victorian graphic design.

We are also offered the nearly complete range of 19th-century popular literature, from tawdry thrillers to books of poetry by Tennyson and Longfellow. Extremely successful books and novels that have since fallen into obscurity find space alongside classics that remain best sellers today. Isabella Mary Beeton’s “The Book of Household Management” (“the most influential cookbook of all time”) and Samuel Smiles’s “Self-Help; With Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance” (the book that gave birth to the genre) are on view along with Dickens’s “Oliver Twist,” Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Dumas’s “Le Comte de Monte-Cristo,” Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and Sewell’s “Black Beauty.” The cover of “Black Beauty” extols it as “The Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the Horse.”

The exhibition, which is at heart a celebration of populist taste, is colorful and even at times delightful. Racy penny dreadfuls, cheap yellow backs and chapbooks, Kate Greenaway’s tender children’s books, and Gustave Doré’s illustrations for “Rabelais” all round out the well-paced show. But I left wishing the exhibit had had more visual kick. I could not help but think that “Victorian Bestsellers” might have made a better book — perhaps a best seller — than an art exhibition.

Until May 6 (225 Madison Ave., between 36th and 37th streets, 212-685-0008).