Having just finished a book series that focuses on that time period (though with certain major fantasy elements thrown in), I got stuck on certain passages referring to books the captains of British Navy ships would have recognized, essentially, as smut.
How much of that literature has survived to modern day? Do we know if, as nowadays, there was a huge amount of terrible fiction, smut, etc that was produced and forgotten? Or was printing more expensive and therefore more limited to established authors?
I would say that there was a large amount, at least for those whom were literate. I can't give exact numbers but a story at least. When Napoleon landed in Egypt in 1798, he came across one of his favorite commanders, Bessiers (who would command the Guard later in the Empire), reading a romantic novel (by romantic, we don't mean bodice busters but rather things like Goerte). Napoleon picked up with book and saw what it was and threw it into the sand, proclaiming that men should only read history books rather than romantic novels. The irony is that just ten years earlier, Napoleon was nothing more than a fanboy of Goerte, even trying to write his own version.