Journalism and the Periodical Press in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Newly commissioned essays by leading scholars offer a comprehensive and authoritative overview of the diversity, range and impact of the newspaper and periodical press in nineteenth-century Britain. Essays range from studies of periodical formats in the nineteenth century - reviews, magazines and newspapers - to accounts of individual journalists, many of them eminent writers of the day. The uneasy relationship between the new 'profession' of journalism and the evolving profession of authorship is investigated, as is the impact of technological innovations, such as the telegraph, the typewriter and new processes of illustration. Contributors go on to consider the transnational and global dimensions of the British press and its impact in the rest of the world. As digitisation of historical media opens up new avenues of research, the collection reveals the centrality of the press to our understanding of the nineteenth century.

About the Author

Joanne Shattock is Emeritus Professor of Victorian Literature at the University of Leicester. She is President of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals. Her books include Politics and Reviewers: The Edinburgh and the Quarterly in the Early Victorian Age (1989), the Oxford Guide to British Women Writers (1993) and, as editor, the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, 1800–1900 (Cambridge, 2000), Women and Literature in Britain (Cambridge, 2001), and the Cambridge Companion to English Literature (Cambridge, 2010). She is the General Editor of The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell, 10 volume set (2005–6), and co-General Editor, with Elisabeth Jay, of Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant, 25 volume set (2011–16). She was the Founding President of the British Association for Victorian Studies (2000–3).