| The final section of the book
introduces readers to six major figures in
nineteenth-century British journalism. John Drew
thoughtfully considers Charles Dickens's contributions to
periodical literature, in particular his creation of the
weekly magazines Household Words and All the
Year Round, "two of the most prominent
periodicals in the Anglophone world" (301). Iain Crawford,
taking a little-noticed conflict between Harriet Martineau
and William Thackeray as a starting point, establishes
Martineau's prominence in the world of journalism as well
as the challenges she faced as a woman writer. Crawford
argues that Martineau served as a model for the generation
of women authors that came after her, including,
ironically, Anne Thackeray. While Wilkie Collins is
perhaps better known today as a novelist than a
journalist, Graham Law argues in his chapter for the
importance of Collins's journalism. He provides an
overview of Collins's career, focusing on the articles and
short fiction that appeared in the Leader, Household
Words, and Bentley's Miscellany rather than
his more well-known full-length serialized novels. Laura Vorachek, Review in Victorian Periodicals Review 50:4 (Winter 2017) |
| ...
Graham Law's chapter on Wilkie Collins follows this,
providing detail on the famous 'Unknown Public' essay,
putting it in context of other, less well-known accounts
of popular reading, before giving a clear account of
Collins's journalistic career. ... John Morton, Review in Journal of European Periodical Studies 6:2 (Winter 2021) |
| Editor Joanne Shattock
has organised this collection of 21 essays (plus her
introduction) into four parts: Periodicals, Genres
and the Production of Print; the Press and the
Public; the 'Globalisation' of the
Nineteenth-Century Press; and Journalists and
Journalism. This last section, informed, as the
entire volume is, by extensive digitisation of
periodicals archives, presents, like water drops
laid out for examination in a magic lantern show,
the granular details of writers' dealings with their
regular journals: Oscar Wilde and the Pall Mall
Gazette, Margaret Oliphant and Blackwood's, for
example. Sarah Lonsdale, Review in Journalism 18:8 (September 2017) |