“Literary dealers in the rococo of history”: Book Reviews and Historical Specialisation, 1820–50

Abstract:This article examines how reviews of written history worked to establish new historical protocols, technical vocabulary, and field knowledge in organs of higher journalism in the first half of the nineteenth century. Focusing primarily on questions of generic differentiation and disciplinary formation, rather than on those of institutional or bureaucratic professionalisation, this article argues that book reviews allow us to examine the rhetoric of historical specialisation in its commercial context, thereby providing a unique insight into how and why certain historical values became normative as the nineteenth century progressed.