Literature and the Expansion of the Press

This chapter traces the growth of the periodical press from the mid-nineteenth century until the end of the Victorian period, emphasizing the explosion in the number of weekly and monthly publications that serialized fiction. It demonstrates the interconnections between the professionalization of authorship in the Victorian period and the buoyant periodical press. The editorship of a weekly or monthly magazine was a role undertaken by a number of writers, providing a regular income in addition to fees earned from individual works. Poets too profited from publication in magazines, but it was mainly novelists, whose works often first appeared in weeklies and monthlies and who combined reviewing the work of others with creative writing at some point in their careers, who benefited most from the press. Writers discussed include Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Margaret Oliphant, and Tennyson.

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · George (robot) · Literature · Media studies · Period (music) · Professionalization · Social science · Sociology · Victorian literature · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · History · Publishing and Scholarly Communication · Travel Writing and Literature