Table Of ContentResearching the Nineteenth-Century
Periodical Press: Case Studies
Extending the work of The Routledge Handbook to Nineteenth-Century
British Periodicals and Newspapers, this volume provides a critical
introduction and case studies that illustrate cutting-edge approaches to
periodicals research, as well as an overview of recent developments in the
fi eld. The twelve chapters model diverse approaches and methodologies for
research on nineteenth-century periodicals. Each case study is contextualized
within one of the following broad areas of research: single periodicals,
individual journalists, gender issues, periodical networks, genre, the
relationship between periodicals, transnational/transatlantic connections,
technologies of printing and illustration, links within a single periodical,
topical subjects, science and periodicals, and imperialism and periodicals.
Contributors incorporate fi rst-person accounts of how they conducted their
research and provide specifi c examples of how they gained access to primary
sources, as well as the methods they used to analyze these materials.
Alexis Easley is Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas, USA.
Andrew King is Professor of English Literature and Literary Studies at the
University of Greenwich, UK.
John Morton is Senior Lecturer at the University of Greenwich, UK.
Researching the Nineteenth-
Century Periodical Press
Case Studies
Edited by Alexis Easley,
Andrew King, and John Morton
First published 2018
by Routledge
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Contents
List of fi gures vii
Notes on contributors viii
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: researching the nineteenth-century
periodical press: case studies 1
ALEXIS EASLEY, ANDREW KING,
AND JOHN MORTON
1 Researching a single journalist: Alfred Austin 14
JOHN MORTON
2 Researching gender issues: Eliza Cook, Charlotte Cushman,
and transatlantic celebrity, 1845–54 30
ALEXIS EASLEY
3 Bibliographic issues: titles, numbers, frequencies 46
BETH GASKELL
4 Researching periodical networks: William and
Mary Howitt 60
JOANNE SHATTOCK
5 Researching a periodical genre: classifi cations,
codes, and relational terms 74
FIONNUALA DILLANE
6 Researching the relationship between two periodicals:
representations of George Eliot in the G irl’s Own Paper
and Atalanta 91
BETH RODGERS
vi Contents
7 Researching transnational/transatlantic connections:
the 1865 Atlantic cable expedition 102
CATHERINE WATERS
8 Researching technologies of printing and illustration:
Clement Shorter, Phil May, and photomechanical
reproduction in the Sketch 115
GERRY BEEGAN
9 Who do you think they were?: what genealogy databases
can do for Victorian periodical studies 131
MARIANNE VAN REMOORTEL
10 The body in the archive: reading the working
woman’s reading 145
MARGARET BEETHAM
11 Researching science and periodicals: satire and
scientifi c jargon in Punch 161
GREGORY TATE
12 Researching empire and periodicals 175
CHANDRIKA KAUL
Bibliography 192
Index 211
Figures
2.1 Eliza Cook, “Yankee Holding out Her Banner” 31
2.2 Eliza Cook, “Yankee Holding out Her Banner” (detail) 33
2.3 Eliza Cook, “Yankee Holding out Her Banner” (detail) 34
2.4 Eliza Cook, Manuscript Poems 36
8.1 “Pointing a Moral” (wood engraving by H. Harral),
Graphic 3 (March 11, 1871) 117
8.2 “Miss Hilda Spong” (retouched photomechanical
halftone from a photograph by Alfred Ellis), Sketch
16 (November 4, 1896) 123
8.3 “Mr. Hall Caine” (retouched photomechanical
halftone from a photograph by G. B. Cowen), Sketch
19 (August 11, 1897) 125
8.4 “I don’t care for them ’ats, Billy” (photo-relief line print
with mechanical tint from a pen-and-ink original by Phil
May), Sketch 13 (April 15, 1896) 128
9.1 Number of women in fi ve print industry occupations
according to the 1881 and 1911 censuses 141
9.2 Gender distribution in fi ve print industry occupations
according to the 1881 and 1911 censuses 142
Notes on contributors
Gerry Beegan is a design historian whose research interests include the his-
tory of popular illustrated periodicals, image reproduction processes, and
print media and their audiences. He is the author of T he Mass Image: A
Social History of Mechanical Reproduction in Victorian London (2008)
and serves on the editorial board of D esign and Culture. He has contrib-
uted to a number of edited volumes and has published essays and reviews
on design history and visual culture in the New York Times, Journal of
Design History , Journal of Visual Culture, D esign Issues, and dot dot dot .
He is Chair of the Visual Arts Department at Rutgers University.
Margaret Beetham is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sal-
ford, Manchester, having retired from the English Department at Man-
chester Metropolitan University. Her publications include A Magazine
of Her Own?: Domesticity and Desire in the Woman’s Magazine, 1800–
1914 (1996), T he V ictorian Woman’s Magazine: An Anthology (2001),
with Kay Boardman, and numerous journal articles and book chapters.
She was an associate editor of The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century
Journalism (2009) and is on the boards of the Research Society for Vic-
torian Periodicals and of the European Society for Periodical Research.
Fionnuala Dillane is College Lecturer in the School of English Drama and
Film at University College Dublin. Her recent work includes Before
George Eliot: Marian Evans and the Periodical Press (2014, 2016),
co-winner of the Robert and Vineta Colby Prize; “Ireland, Slavery, Anti-
Slavery and Empire,” a special issue of S lavery & Abolition: A Journal
of Slave and Post-Slave Studies (2016), co-edited with Maria Stuart and
Fionnghuala Sweeney; and T he Body in Pain in Irish Literature and Cul-
ture , co-edited with Naomi McAreavey and Emilie Pine (2016).
Alexis Easley is Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in Min-
nesota. She is the author of F irst-Person Anonymous: Women Writers and
Victorian Print Media, 1830–70 (2004) and L iterary Celebrity, Gender,
and Victorian Authorship, 1850–1914 (2011). Her work has appeared in
several recent book collections, including The C ambridge Companion to
Notes on contributors ix
Victorian Women’s Writing, The Blackwell Companion to the Brontës ,
and Harriet Martineau and the Birth of the Disciplines . She co-edited
(with Andrew King and John Morton) The R outledge Handbook to Nine-
teenth Century Periodicals and Newspapers and is currently at work on a
new essay collection (with Clare Gill and Beth Rodgers), T he Edinburgh
History of Women’s Periodical Culture in Britain, Volume 2, the Victorian
Period. She also edits Victorian Periodicals Review .
Beth Gaskell is a third-year PhD candidate at the University of Greenwich.
Her research investigates military writing, military-media relations, and
the professionalization of the British Army in the long nineteenth century,
with a particular focus on the rise of the professional periodical press. She
is a committee member of HistoryLab, the national postgraduate network
for historians based at the Institute of Historical Research. She is also
currently undertaking project work at the Royal Astronomical Society.
Chandrika Kaul teaches in the Department of Modern History, University
of St. Andrews, Scotland. She has published extensively in the fi eld of
media and empire and is founding co-editor of the book series Palgrave
Studies in the History of the Media. Her monographs include R eporting
the Raj: The British Press and India (2003) and C ommunications, Media
and the Imperial Experience: Britain and India in the Twentieth Century
(2014). She edited M edia and the British Empire (2006, 2013) and E xplo-
rations in Modern Indian History and the Media (2009) and co-edited
International Communications and Global News Networks: Historical
Perspectives (2011) and T he N ews of the World and the British Press
1843–2011 (2015).
Andrew King is Professor of English at the University of Greenwich. His
publications include T he London Journal 1845–1883: Periodicals,
Production and Gender (2004) and several co-edited essay collections,
including The Routledge Handbook to Nineteenth-Century British Peri-
odicals and Newspapers , with Alexis Easley and John Morton (2016). He
has also published numerous articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia
entries on popular periodicals and fi ction and served as an associate edi-
tor of The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism . He is currently
completing a literary biography of Ouida and is working on a project
for providing online teaching materials to high schools and universities
(BLT19.org.uk).
John Morton is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Greenwich.
His fi rst monograph, Tennyson Among the Novelists , was published in
2010. He is co-editor, with Andrew King and Alexis Easley, of The Rout-
ledge Handbook to Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals and Newspa-
pers (2016). He has published essays and journal articles on the afterlives
of Victorian poetry, considering writers such as Tennyson, Longfellow, Robert
Browning, T. S. Eliot, Mick Imlah, Alan Hollinghurst, and Anthony
