Harry, I've never read a publishing contract for a novel so I can't be certain but a quick google turned this up for scholarly journals.
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/copyright.asp it does ask that authors assign copyright to the publisher though it doesn't demand it. And outside the book world we know it has been standard in the past in music or it would be Paul McCartney getting royalties for Hey Jude not Michael Jackson's estate. This link
http://www.copylaw.com/new_articles/copyterm.html seems to hint that assigning copyright was common in the past (I don't know about now.) I do wonder how those contracts handled derivative works, in comic books it seems the publishers kept rights to that given how old Superman is but in novels it'd be interesting to find out if an author could shop a sequel elsewhere or prevent one not written by him/her if the publisher wanted to produce one.
Edit. Link on reclaiming copyright after 56 years is in no way an endorsement by me of copyrights that last longer than 56 years.