Victorian Periodicals Review最新文献

Reviewed by:

• The Arms-Bearing Woman and British Theatre in the Age of Revolution, 1789–1815 by Sarah Burdett
• Rebecca Nesvet (bio)

In Peter Brook's film Marat/Sade (1967), the late Glenda Jackson sleepwalks through political assassination as a narcolepsy patient playing Charlotte Corday. The lyrics of the asylum patients' song about Corday invest her with agency and determination. "Charlotte Corday had to be brave," the patients sing, "had to find a man with knives to sell; had to find a man [End Page 510] with knives." Sarah Burdett's monograph locates earlier Cordays on stage in a brief but electrifying theatre tradition that foregrounds "the arms-bearing woman": a heroine who takes up a knife, dagger, pistol, sword, or even a cannon-match or explosive and who thereby signifies "extreme political and social disruption" and "revolutionary chaos" (1). Burdett reconstructs the stage arms-bearing woman to a great extent by tracing her depiction in theatre reviews, advancing the study of periodicals as a method to enhance the study of time-based media.

Burdett's study is indebted to Wendy C. Nielsen's The Woman Warrior in Romantic Drama (2012) but goes beyond it, arguing that in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789, the woman bearing arms erupted into London theatre as a panicked response to French women's mass participation in the revolution (11). Edmund Burke called these women "furies of hell," and Isaac Cruikshank caricatured them in "A Republican Belle" (14–15). The theatre censor detected Jacobinism everywhere, including in Shakespeare, hence the censorship of a planned production of Julius Caesar in 1794 (18). In the uncensored minor theatres that catered to working-class audiences, the armed woman's meanings multiplied (23).

In chapter 2, Elizabeth Inchbald's Next Door Neighbours, performed at the Haymarket in 1791, and The Massacre (1792) "complicate mainstream discourses on the relationship between male civility and female militarisation" (40). Next Door Neighbours is a "quintessential sentimental comedy" but has a radical denouement when Eleanor, rejecting the Roman Lucretia narrative, turns to her would-be aristocratic rapist and announces,"'Tis not myself I'll kill—'tis you" (43–44). The plot of Next Door Neighbours was stageable, Burdett argues, in part because it was derived from an earlier play by a man, Louis-Sébastien Mercier's L'Indigent (48). I would have liked to see the antagonist described as an "assailant" rather than an "assaulter," but

Abstract:

When the Pall Mall Gazette published an editorial about the fraud case brought against spiritualist medium D. D. Home in May 1868, the editor likely anticipated letters about the legitimacy of spiritualism—a topic of considerable media attention. Instead, he received multiple letters scrutinizing the discourse of scientific authority as asserted by its most renowned figures. This article analyzes that month-long sequence of letters and commentary to parse the criticism of authority on the unexpected grounds of language itself, illuminating how PMG correspondents resisted the reification of scientific objectivity by suggesting that even esteemed scientific investigators conveyed personal prejudice.

Reviewed by:

• Writing for Social Change in Temperance Periodicals: Conviction and Career by Annemarie McAllister
• Emma Liggins (bio)

The temperance movement in the nineteenth century, and its advocates who championed total abstinence from alcohol for the purposes of social reform, have often been sidelined in the historical record. Yet, as this fascinating new study shows, the flourishing national network of journalists and lecturers in the UK needs to be more widely known in the context of its contributions to the development and diversity of the temperance press. Building on her tireless research into temperance history, Annemarie McAllister's Writing for Social Change in Temperance Periodicals: Conviction and Career maps the careers of seven representative figures whose journalism, performances, and creativity put them at the forefront of radical campaigning against the evils of alcohol.

Temperance periodicals were widely read and circulated, with seventy titles in circulation by 1890. McAllister shows how content also drew from and reprinted material from other reform movements, such as animal rights and campaigns for antislavery and suffrage. The discourses of science, Christianity, slum clearance, and pacifism all found their way into temperance writing. The propagandist nature of this content cannot be underestimated, as McAllister argues: "The imperative to attract and retain readers required successful propaganda to be arresting and entertaining" (5). The book covers the 1840s to the 1930s, showing how the rise of New Journalism and the impact of the First World War affected the movement. It successfully builds on research into Victorian attitudes to alcohol and abstinence as well as representations of working-class culture by historians such as Brian Harrison, Peter Keating, and Brian Maidment. Working-class in its origins, the total abstinence movement continued to "represent personal, social and economic empowerment for many" (4). By examining the attractive aspects for both leaders and ordinary members of a movement that was sometimes misleadingly perceived as overtly [End Page 513] moralistic, this study has a lot to tell us about the social purposes of popular entertainment and how careers were forged in print culture.

The interest for periodical scholars lies in the careful analysis of a number of neglected publications in the temperance press, based on extensive archival research on a set of periodicals still not digitised. The widespread impact of the Band of Hope, a temperance organisation for working

• RSVP Bibliography:2017–20
• Kristin E. Kondrlik (bio)

This edition of the RSVP Bibliography covers Victorian periodicals scholarship published in the period between December 2017 and December 2020. We have indexed essays, books, edited collections, master's theses, and dissertations discussing journalism, newspapers, and magazines in Great Britain and throughout the British Empire, primarily in the period between 1837 and 1901. This year's bibliography features a number of intercultural, transnational, and transatlantic approaches, touching on the influence of British periodicals across the world.

The bibliography surveys an incredible wealth of scholarship from across the field, with a staggering six hundred thirty-one entries. The scholarship contained within broaches a wide range of topics, including gender, race, imperialism, politics, periodical form, printing, and circulation, and it illustrates the wide reach of British periodicals during the nineteenth century.

I want to thank our dedicated team of thirty-eight volunteers, without whom this bibliography would not be possible. Navigating the waters of such a sea of published scholarship can be a daunting task, and so I am incredibly grateful to VPR's editor Kathy Malone for her guidance as we compiled this year's bibliography.

As bibliographer, I am eager to see this publication grow and evolve, much as our field has in the years since the first bibliography in 1973. While we have tried to be as comprehensive and accurate as possible, we acknowledge that we may have missed some works in periodicals studies. To that end, we are happy to take suggestions or make corrections if we have missed any relevant periodicals scholarship. If you have any corrections, additions, or questions, or if you are interested in contributing to the next bibliography (which will cover the period December 2020 through December 2024), please reach out to me at biblio@rs4vp.org. [End Page 329]

Contributors

• Elizabeth Adams

• Artemis Alexiou

• Emily Bell

• Derek Boetcher

• Rachel M. Bright

• Fabia Buescher

• Rachel Calder

• Anne Chapman

• Sujata Chattopadhyay

• Julia M. Chavez

• Amy Colombo

• Alexis Constantine

• Francesca Corsetti

• Lydia Craig

• Paolo D'Indinosante

• Jack M. Downs

• Rebekah Greene

• Cody Grey

• Andrew Hobbs

• Jamie Horrocks

• Amber Kidd

• Alex Kither

• Maggie Gallup Kopp

• Jack Love

• Endnotes

Rosemary VanArsdel Prize

The VanArsdel Prize is awarded annually to the best graduate student essay investigating Victorian periodicals and newspapers. The prize was established in 1990 to honor Rosemary VanArsdel, a founding member of RSVP whose groundbreaking research continues to shape the field of nineteenth-century periodical studies. The winner will receive $500 and publication in Victorian Periodicals Review. Applications open May 1 and are due June 15. For more information, visit https://rs4vp.org/awards.

Expanding the Field Prize

The RSVP Expanding the Field Prize is awarded annually for an outstanding essay that diversifies the existing geographic, racial, and ethnic composition of nineteenth-century periodical studies. We encourage submissions that deepen our understanding of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) founders, editors, contributors, and readers of periodicals; interrogate Anglocentric perspectives; enact anti-racist or anti-colonial values; and/or consider the cultural impact of the British Empire around the world.

The winner will receive $500 and publication in Victorian Periodicals Review. Graduate students, independent scholars, and faculty of all ranks are invited to submit their work. Applications open May 1 and are due June 15. For more information, visit https://rs4vp.org/awards.

Call for Guest Editors

Victorian Periodicals Review invites proposals from guest editors for special themed issues. Individuals or coeditors should submit a proposal to Katherine Malone at vpr@rs4vp.org. Please include a short description of your topic and its relevance to Victorian periodical studies along with a brief bio for each editor. A full list of past special issues is available at https://rs4vp.org/vpr. [End Page 522]

Abstract:

Eliza Cook's Journal is often considered an unambiguous example of a midcentury journal of popular progress—that is, the kind of journal that addressed both middle- and working-class audiences but singled out the latter for educational and cultural improvement, or "leveling up." This essay reconsiders Cook's prose contributions to her journal, noting how frequently she critiques middle-class culture as needing improvement. It argues that Cook sought to balance the rhetoric of leveling up that permeated other contributions to her paper by ridiculing the middle classes and celebrating the value of working-class culture as it was.

Reviewed by:

• The Lady's Magazine (1770–1832) and the Making of Literary History by Jennie Batchelor
• Astrid Dröse (bio)

Jennie Batchelor's monograph concerns a principal periodical of the late eighteen and early nineteenth century: the Lady's Magazine. "The first recognisable modern women's magazine" was published monthly from 1770 until 1847, ran to over 750 monthly issues, and circulated about 15,000 copies at its peak (3). Women's periodicals have long been considered aesthetically inferior, unintellectual, ephemeral testimonies of an amateur culture. Batchelor argues that "the Lady's Magazine can, indeed, persuasively write back to a literary history that has traditionally marginalised it on the grounds of its unapologetic popularity and its association with women's reading pleasure" (3). Batchelor presents a magisterial book that, for the first time, addresses a hitherto neglected field of literary history around 1800 and challenges established narratives. She alternates detective work with large historical arcs to describe the eventful history of the Lady's Magazine from the exciting founding phase in 1770 to 1832, the year in which the Robinson publishing house ceased publication.

The book's six main chapters treat the Lady's Magazine's origins, beginnings, content, authors and readers, rivalries and changes, and literary historical significance. Batchelor begins with a letter from Charlotte Brontë to Hartley Coleridge from 1840, in which Brontë reports on her reading of the Lady's Magazine in her youth. The letter illustrates the ambivalence that characterised the view of this journal in the mid-nineteenth century. On the one hand, the Lady's Magazine seemed old fashioned, as if it had [End Page 508] fallen out of time in the modern Victorian literary system; on the other hand, for Brontë it virtually symbolised the emancipation of female reading and writing.

The first chapter places the Lady's Magazine in the history of women's journals in the Age of Enlightenment, such as the Ladies' Mercury, the Lady's Museum, or the Female Specator. The aim of all these projects was "to promote women's reading, women's writing and women's literary history" (41). The Lady's Magazine followed on from these projects but also found its own paths from the beginning. The second chapter tells the magazine's turbulent founding story: it was essentially shaped by the competition of important players in the London book market, which took place in Paternoster Row,

Reviewed by:

• The Rossettised. by Carol Jacobi and James Finch
• Aisha Motlani (bio)

Tate Britain's exhibition The Rossettisexplores the relationship between members of this family of artists and poets, particularly Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal, his fellow artist-poet, model, and later wife. One would expect that it would help dismantle the myth of the singular male artistic genius that scholars such as Deborah Cherry and Jan Marsh have worked so hard to upend. Despite these aims, however, the exhibition still feels like a one-man show.

Curated by Carol Jacobi, the exhibition is divided into nine sections that explore the historical, Romantic, and modern life subjects that occupied the Rossettis and their circle. The spotlight on Gabriel's painterly trajectory is established in room one, where the first object one encounters is his reimagining of the annunciation scene in Ecce Ancilla Domini!(1849–50). Mounted a few feet from the wall, its display lends it an off-kilter quality that was perhaps intended to magnify the unease exuded by the frightened figure of Mary in the painting, modelled by Christina Rossetti. On the walls are verses from Christina's poems, including "Who Shall Deliver Me" (1864) and "Cousin Kate" (1859). Sound recordings of these verses amplify the tension between the painting's virginal and sparse imagery and the themes of sexual predation and unrequited love explored in Christina's verses. Yet the painting's placement somewhat curtails the effect. The gap between painting and wall reinforces rather than challenges the idea of the solitary artistic genius. [End Page 503]

The working relationship between Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal is explored several rooms later in a section that examines poetic and visual representations of the Victorian fallen woman. Studies of Gabriel's unfinished painting Found(1854–55/1859–81) and verses from Christina's narrative poem "Goblin Market" (1862) are placed alongside an enlarged reproduction of Siddal's drawing Pippa Passes(1854). This drawing is based on Robert Browning's poem of the same name, which describes a silk worker in medieval Italy who walks through the streets of her town unscathed by evil and inspiring good. Opposite this is Gabriel's Bocca Baciata(1859), a painting of his model and mistress Fanny Cornforth as Alatiel, the sexually experienced heroine of Boccaccio's The Decameron. Jacobi's catalogue essay provides some important context for these curatorial choices. Jacobi points out Siddal'

Reviewed by:

• Transfictional Character and Transmedia Storyworlds in the British Nineteenth Century by Erica Haugtvedt
• Kristen Layne Figgins (bio)

Modern fandom is an exciting phenomenon: buying merch, cosplaying at conventions, and engaging in creative practices such as reading and writing fan fiction all bolster contemporary fan communities. As Erica Haugtvedt deftly argues in Transfictional Character and Transmedia Storyworlds in the British Nineteenth Century, not much has changed since the nineteenth [End Page 505] century. Haugtvedt examines the reception histories of some of nineteenth-century Britain's most popular texts and demonstrates how the approaches of fan communities across media formats help to create community-mediated understandings of character and storyworlds. The selections of media Haugtvedt addresses are diverse, including merchandising, penny dreadfuls, and theatrical productions, but nearly all show the ways in which fandom is a method of meaning-making, especially for the nineteenth century's working classes.

Haugtvedt's first chapter, "Introduction: From Novel Studies to Fan Studies," lays out several guiding principles. She is particularly interested in the "cognitive predisposition to orient narratives through the experiences of characters," even when those texts, as "allographic extensions," have different creators and potentially contradict one another (3). Haugtvedt's answer to this problem lies in psychology: we develop schemata for understanding a character. Audiences use these schemas to blend characters from different adaptations, reconciling different traits and characteristics and even vital plot elements into a cohesive whole. In this chapter, Haugtvedt also begins to frame nineteenth-century receptive practices as similar to modern conceptions of fandom, a theme that her book consistently reinforces, right down to the stigma that fans often experience. Notably different from modern fandom, however, are the effects of nineteenth-century copyright and plagiarism laws, which allow for transmedial fan appropriation that in effect authorizes so-called theft of stories and characters.

Haugtvedt's second chapter, "Pickwick Abroad (1837–1838): Transfictional Character as Permanent Object," focuses on the character of Mr. Pickwick from Charles Dickens's enormously popular The Pickwick Papers (1836–37). Pickwick, as a character, exemplifies how nineteenth-century audiences engage with character. In discussing George W. M. Reynolds's popular Pickwick Abroad, Haugtvedt not