| ... [This]
volume includes Sheila M. Kidd's fascinating chapter
on "Gaelic Literature of the Diaspora," which
focuses on the dissemination of emigrants' writings
through the periodical press. Of particular interest
is the example of the Glasgow-based Sinclair firm
which published Gaelic periodicals in Glasgow,
Canada, and Tasmania—but few in the Highlands,
population displacement producing an accompanying
shift in the patterns of print circulation. Another aspect of the nineteenth-century periodical sphere is revealed in Graham Law's wonderful chapter on the newspaper novel, a form which, as he explains, comes to occupy a gap left by a "slump in book and magazine publishing" (126). The fairly well-known story of the decline of the Scottish publishing industry in the Victorian period is thus given a new spin which emphasizes generic innovation. Law also argues persuasively that the newspaper fiction of David Pae (1828–84) carves out a distinctively "North British" sphere which extends into the North of England. Honor Rieley, Review in European Romantic Review 34:4 (2023) |