Periodicals of Queen Victoria's Empire

ELT 41 : 2 1998 also far more troubled, and at times undermined, by it than his Bloomian expositor, bent on a grand feat of critical transumption, ever allows. Bruce Clarke ________________ Texas Tech University Periodicals of Queen Victoria's Empire J. Don Vann and Rosemary T. VanArsdel, eds. Periodicals of Queen Victoria's Empire: An Exploration. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. χ + 371pp. $80.00 DURING THE LAST thirty years, the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) has worked to establish bibliographical control over its sprawling and ungainly subject. Its members and others interested in the subject have produced the Wellesley Index, the Waterloo Directory, founded The Victorian Periodicals Newsletter (which developed into The Victorian Periodicals Review), sponsored conferences, bibliographies, and projects of various kinds. A group interested primarily in American periodicals evolved out of this general environment and now sponsors meetings and a journal of its own. J. Don Vann and Rosemary T. VanArsdel have been instrumental in these developments. They have been especially helpful in leading others through the thickets that constitute nineteenth-century periodicals research. Together they have co-edited Victorian Periodicals: A Guide to Research, volumes 1 and 2 (1978 and 1989), and Victorian Periodicals and Victorian Society (1994). Thus Periodicals of Queen Victoria's Empire: An Exploration is the latest of their guides to researching and understanding Victorian periodicals, the focus this time being on periodicals published throughout the empire. They have done their usual excellent job. RSVP has long considered these periodicals within its range of interest. However, researching them has been and remains difficult. In 1991 to promote such work, the organization sponsored a conference session on periodicals published throughout the British Commonwealth. Vann and VanArsdel's "exploration" of these materials is now the best single volume on the subject and will be invaluable to researchers. But they have chosen to call their work an "exploration," not a "guide." There is good reason for that decision: although much is presented, much remains to be learned. A specialist has compiled each of the six sections: Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Southern Africa, and Outposts of Empire; "Out246 BOOK REVIEWS posts" covers what was then Ceylon and is now Sri Lanka, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore, Malta, and the West Indies (Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, British Guiana, Jamaica, and Trinidad). Each section is headed by a map, a useful reminder of just how far apart towns and settlements often were and of where these places are in relation to each other. That Merrill and Linda Distad's chapter on Canada occupies one-third of the book is a testimony to the efforts of bibliographers, librarians, and scholars in sorting out and preserving Canadian periodicals and creating tools for locating and working with them. The periodicals of the other countries dealt with have been, on the whole, less fortunate. Each section is well set out and packed with information concerning such matters as titles, title changes, editors, and publishing conditions. In the section dealing with Australian periodicals, for example, one finds the curiously titled Dead Bird: A Journal Devoted to Sport and the Drama. This journal went through a number of changes in title before finishing as the Saturday Referee and Arrow. Throughout the discussion in each section one finds a mix of the predictable and the unknown. That many of the colonial journals were inspired by journals in Britain is certainly among the predictable. Scanning quickly for Punch reveals one in Melbourne, one in Montreal, and several in New Zealand. Other satirical journals, such as Tomahawk, were also widely imitated; and in Australia one of the best literary magazines of the period, the Australian Monthly, was modeled on the Cornhill. In at least one instance, we discover something not quite so easily predictable: direct cross-fertilization between colonies. In Wellington, New Zealand, Samuel Revans's journalistic career advanced because of his experience in Canada on the Montreal Daily Advertiser. Eventually, Revans owned the New Zealand Gazette land Wellington Spectator until just before it failed, perhaps losing interest as his attention shifted in a pattern typical of colonial journalists and publishers to land and politics. We also gain new information about women journalists in the empire...