Marketing Celebrity: Norman Macleod, Dinah Mulock Craik, and John Everett Millais in Alexander Strahan’s Good Words

This essay considers how the celebrity identities of an author, editor, and illustrator were deployed in a successful religious periodical. The publisher, Alexander Strahan, sought to differentiate his product from others in the magazine market; however, Good Words shared motifs and names with other periodicals, including Cornhill Magazine. Strahan also reframed the work of participating contributors at the end of 1862, combining established celebrity names to configure a volume of the periodical that commemorated the first anniversary of the death of Prince Albert.