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The introduction sets nineteenth-century British and Irish newspaper and periodical press activity within broad contexts, provides an account of the social, economic and political changes affecting media history within this period, and notes the manner in which past surveys and studies of journalism and communication history have influenced our understanding of this period.Topics also addressed include ownership and shifts in news coverage based on technological, legal and cultural developments across the century. It also contextualises volume contents as part of a move to multi-disciplinary approaches to press and journalism history, as well as a turn to placing press production within international and transnational cultural and historical trends.

The final chapter weighs up the trajectories of serialized fiction and women's magazines in the final decades of the nineteenth century to ask what effects Braddon's, Marryat's and Wood's work had on the close relationship between fiction and the female press. Middlebrow women's magazines and feminist newspapers of the 1890s, like Woman at Home, The Englishwoman, Our Mothers and Daughters, and Woman's Signal, while seemingly antithetical in their attitudes towards the ‘new woman’, shared strategies for dealing with the female figure that correspond with those used by the author-editors of the 1860s. As it had for Braddon, Wood, and Marryat, the periodical press of the 1890s provided a space in which conventions of gender and genre could be re-thought for a female audience.

This chapter surveys the history of the periodical press and its relationship to scientific knowledge. It shows that a wide range of periodical formats, including those aimed at both expert and more general readerships, were central to the circulation of knowledge and scientific publicity. But the press was also a key factor in the changing status of science in Victorian culture, the evolving identity of scientific practitioners, and debates over the nature of knowledge. Paradoxically, the fluid array of venues for scientific exchange developed alongside an emergent idea that there was one periodical genre that had a privileged claim to the publication of new knowledge claims: the specialised scientific journal.

A new episode in the history of spiritual autobiography opened in the late 1730s with the advent of transatlantic Evangelical Revival, and the distinguishing characteristic of this revival or ‘work’ in all its manifestations was the increased incidence of the conversion of individuals. Unlike earlier periods of heightened religious fervour, the revival was uniquely concentrated in time and extended across space. Changes in the North Atlantic world helped to create ‘modern’ conditions for this phenomenon, particularly with the rapid spread of religious news through itinerancy, letter-writing, and the periodical press and the more extensive movement of people, goods, and ideas in the period generally. Includes the case study of the early evangelical Joseph Humphreys—since Humphreys’s experience illustrates how the larger Evangelical Revival was itself constituted by individual conversion experiences, and how these experiences so often compelled converts to retell their life’s story from the beginning, even venturing sometimes to do so in print before an anonymous public.

This first section maps out the argument concerning the relationship between sensation, performance, and the press through the key figures of the female author-editors Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Ellen Wood, and Florence Marryat. Each of these writers is introduced in the larger context of women's journalism in the nineteenth century and the modulating status of editorship during this period. The Introduction then considers the term ‘sensation’, its early definitions, its current contested status, and the ways in which this book uses it to describe an enabling idiom for women writers. In considering Judith Butler's understanding of performativity the chapter also provides a theoretical underpinning for the connections the book explores between the self-conscious performances of gender and of genre.

Two issues are addressed in this chapter. First, the standard secular interpretation is shown to be an inadequate account of contemporary reactions to the Exhibition because it ignores the extensive range of primary source material of a religious nature, especially sermons and the contemporary periodical press that commented on the Exhibition from many different denominational perspectives. Such sources provide the basis for reinterpreting the Exhibition within a religious framework. In order to undertake this, the second section of this chapter offers a brief overview of the main divisions within Anglicanism and between the Established Church and Dissent. Particular attention is paid to two themes that recur in later chapters, evangelicalism and the heightened anti‐Catholicism following the recent ‘paper aggression’.

The first chapter presents Funü shibao in its historical and print context. It emphasizes Funü shibao’s innovativeness in order to highlight both the distinctiveness of the journal and the range of possibilities that existed in this period. Focusing on the remarkable resources of its publisher and the cultural ingenuity of its editor, it also situates the journal within revolutionary and early Republican politics. It excavates the journal’s often implicit political agenda and introduces some of its key female and male contributors. The chapter further outlines the cultural and historical methodology for reading the periodical press that is used throughout the book. This method focuses on the intermediality of the journal itself, its dialogue with other print products, and its position within larger cultural debates and historical developments.

Drawing mainly on the Anglo-Jewish periodical press, it appears that Jewish writers were generally supportive of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Having been chastised on many occassions as anti-intellectual, Jews could portray themselves as traditionally siding with science and rationality at a time when many Christians strenuously opposed evolution. Yet Alfred Henriques was alone in perceiving that Darwin’s theory was as damaging to traditional Judaism as it was to mainstream Christianity. Following Henriques, Claude Goldsmid Montefiore and others pressed for the development of a modern form of Judaism — what became Liberal Judaism — that could encompass an evolutionary account of the physical world. Among the scientific community, Raphael Meldola — who looked to Darwin as his mentor — was the leading Jewish evolutionist.

This chapter traces the rise of journalism as a profession in the nineteenth century and the changing attitudes both to journalists and journalism as the newspaper and periodical press evolved over the period. Using contemporary articles, histories, memoirs and biographies, the chapter assesses the changing status of journalists, and the gradual blurring of the distinction between writing for newspapers and contributing to the periodical press. It explores the ways in which discussions about journalism as a profession mapped onto discussions about professional authorship. The chapter also explores the role of women journalists, testing the theory that although exceptional women broke through the barriers of a predominantly masculine world, opportunities in journalism for most women were limited by the subjects they were permitted to write about and the confined spaces of women’s magazines. Another section examines the roles of editors and proprietors and the move towards specialisation as sub-editors, reporters, special correspondents and leader writers took on specific tasks in the production of newspapers.  The final section explores the burgeoning discourse on journalism which was characteristic of the period, a palpable demonstration of the self-reflexivity of the new profession.

The Conclusion draws together the strands of the press in which Braddon, Wood, and Marrat had worked and traces the changes they faced in the late nineteenth century and the subsequent decline of their magazines amidst faster-moving ‘New Journalism’. This final chapter argues that these drastic changes in the way that the periodical press worked after the editorial departures of Braddon, Wood, and Marryat have helped to obscure their successful editorships. Finally, it sums up the book's argument that the careers of these women provide models of multiple, complex, and performative genderings both within and beyond the press and demonstrate how performance was vital to their survival within the literary marketplace of the Victorian period.

The first half of this chapter addresses the role of religion in the closing ceremonies and how the religious periodical press assessed the place of the Exhibition in contemporary history. In the second half the responses of the various Christian sects and denominations are reviewed in order to show that although some religious groups were among the Exhibition's sternest critics, others (especially, Congregationalists, Quakers, and Broad Anglicans) were among its most ardent supporters. This diversity is important in showing that there was no single ‘Christian response’ to the Exhibition. Overall it is argued that religion was a highly significant factor in understanding contemporary responses to the most prominent event of the mid‐nineteenth century.

This volume aims to both broaden and deepen understanding of women’s active engagement with this expanded periodical print culture, be that as consumers or contributors, in the context of the ‘general’ press and the dedicated women’s press, in both its commercial and specialised forms. Moving beyond expected periodical titles, geographical locations, and scholarly assumptions, the 35 essays collected in this volume reveal the complexity of women’s participation with print media and the diversity of their contributions as authors, readers, editors, journalists, correspondents, engravers, and illustrators. These chapters demonstrate the variety of trajectories forged by women as they entered into print, cultivated a public voice, and shaped public discourses about women’s lives, issues, and interests. Yet while the growth of the press undoubtedly empowered women to develop public identities and pursue professional careers, the conventions of journalistic publication problematised the notion of individual agency in significant ways. So while this volume showcases the diversity of opportunities created for women by the expansion of Victorian print media, both as producers and as consumers, it also explores the limits of that freedom.

This chapter introduces the genre of the commercial periodical press. It defines the nature of this press by examining a number of terms used to describe it, including popular, women’s, commercial, and general interest. It further discusses the recent redemption of this genre of materials after decades of ideologically driven scholarly neglect that was first instigated by New Culture intellectuals in the late 1910s. It outlines three dialectical tensions that mark the contents of the journal that are central to the analysis throughout the book: tensions between the journal’s reformist and commercial objectives, between its everyday and epic agendas, and between the strategies of its male editor and authors and the tactics of its female writers and contributors. Finally, the introduction briefly outlines each of the succeeding chapters.

This chapter focuses on the impact of the periodical press on Töpffer's picture stories. In moving to another medium, Töpffer's invention also changed its raison d'être. Its artistic goals could no longer remain the same: the aim was not to produce an autonomous work—a novel in prints—but to share in the life and rhythms of a periodical and its readers. While the periodical press offered rich evolutionary possibilities, it also suffered from an obvious flaw: authors could not control this complex environment in the same way that they were able to control the publication of a novel.

This chapter focuses on press and periodical press spaces as significant vehicles for Irish language and culture. Such development took place in spaces that juxtaposed Irish- and English-language usage within confined societal structures. The Gaelic column in English language newspapers from the 1850s onwards developed into a forum for the Irish Ireland movement. Much early nineteenth century Irish-language print material was linked to religious organisations; it is not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that Irish emerges in public discourse forums. A notable feature from the 1880s onwards is the use of journals such as the Irish Ecclesiastical Record and the Gaelic Journal as stepping stones for the foundation of the Gaelic League, the main Irish-language Revival organisation. The first dual-language newspaper of the Revival period An Claidheamh Soluis agus Fáinne an Lae (1899-1932), added new dimensions to the political space while maintaining cultural dominance. Irish-language journalism alone was not the cornerstone for Irish-language Revival, but as a cultural element in an evolving new social and intellectual structure, it embraced new writing and communication styles and formats.