Victorian Periodicals and Society

ELT 38: 1 1995 Victorian Periodicals and Society J. Donn Vann and Rosemary T. VanArsdel, eds. Victorian Periodicals and Victorian Society. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. xiii + 370 pp. $125.00 ANYONE who has ever found himself Ui the nether regions of a respectable library, confronted by shelf after shelf of bound periodicals, most of which appear not to have been consulted or cared for Ui decades, to judge by the layers of dust and the little flakes of paper and binding which crumble to the touch and sou the reader's hands and clothes, wül have a sense of the daunting task the editors of this volume faced when they set out to coUect a series of essays about British Victorian periodicals and the society that created and consumed them. It is one thing to dip into a stray volume or two for an hour's amusement, but quite another to make sense and order out of the contents of a roomful of such periodicals, and a brief visit to the stacks wül quickly reveal some of the serious obstacles to such an endeavor. It should be understood that this is not a book about American magazines, and it is not a series of solemn essays on the educational, legal, social, and technological forces which created the enormous explosion Ui Victorian periodicals. It is not a chatty and nostalgic "book about books" for the mere bibliophile, nor is it a comprehensive checklist of British Victorian journals. Instead, the editors have created a specialized and focused overview and introduction to the resources, problems, and opportunities confronting anyone attempting to explore the world of Victorian journalism. As the editors tell us Ui the introduction, the problems confronting a willing researcher are mainly two. First, there is the incredible diversity of subject and discipline addressed by the periodicals; and second, there is the sheer volume or numbers of the periodicals themselves. The editors deal neatly with the first problem by dividing the book into sections and chapters devoted to periodicals covering individual fields or disciplines, written by authors with expertise Ui those fields, whUe the second problem is necessarily left to each writer to deal with as best he can. The editorial framework is quite flexible, aUowing each contributor to deal with his topic after his own fashion, the result being that there is little uniformity between the chapters. Some contain annotated lists of periodicals, others describe them Ui the body of the text, others 140 BOOK REVIEWS lean toward a more general analysis, some have footnotes at the end, etc. Briefly, the book is divided into five parts containing eighteen chapters , each covering the periodicals for a different profession, occupation, or area of interest. Without being exhaustive, the subjects covered are the professions (law, medicine, science), the arts (music, authorship, theatre), various occupations and forms of commerce (transport, advertising , farming), aspects of popular culture (temperance, sport, comic periodicals), ending with chapters on workers' and student journals. Sadly, editors Vann and VanArsdel were unable to include planned chapters on engineering and the police gazettes. Despite their obvious differences Ui subject matter, the authors of each chapter found much m common, and certain observations and themes emerge repeatedly. Most found, for example, that Victorian periodicals documented and Ulustrated England's change from a rural to an urban society, helped create a new sense of professionalism and specialization in the various professions and occupations (a trend which squeezed out the layman and required corresponding changes Ui educational theory and practice), that next to nothing is known about the editors and owners of many important magazines, that relatively little serious research Ui this neglected field has been done to date, and that a very great deal of basic and important work remains to be done. Clearly this is not a bedside book for the "gentle reader." Readers of ELT should find the chapters on the arts especiaUy interesting and informative. The chapter on authorship and the book trade, for example, describes Ui some detaU the struggles of authors of the period to control their own creations and acquire professional respectabUity. Yet, despite its specialist nature, the book is not a dry-as...