The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture, 1790-1860 by Patricia Anderson (review)

88Victorian Review He received me in his doorway, not asking me to enter, and inquired whether I were not a miner. When I told him that I was not a miner, he asked me whether I earned my bread. I told him I did. "I guess you're a miner," said he. I again assured him that I was not. "Then how do you earn your bread?" I told him that I did so by writing books. "I'm sure you're a miner," said he. Then he turned upon his heel, went back into tiie house, and closed the door. Learned, convincing and moving, Hall's account of TroUope is a fine accomplishment. R. D. McMaster University ofAlberta Patricia Anderson. The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture, 1790 - 1860. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991. 211. $59.95 US (cloth). William Edward Hickson, proprietor and editor of the Westminster Review (1840 - 1851) was a forceful proponent of musical education for children in the schools, claiming that in rural or poor metropolitan areas the chdd's world offered virtually no experience of the beauty of sound. He favored introduction of the tonic sol-fa system and a program of glee-singing to make music more readily accessible to all. Similarly, Patricia Anderson argues the years 1790 - 1830 were a visual desert for the working classes, and some of the middle class, in terms of availability of pictorial imagery in their daily lives. There is evidence to suggest that poor people were not satisfied with this condition, and were drawn to express themselves in whatever medium they could find, "using slate and pencil," "cutting out shapes in paper," "copying borrowed drawings," sketching with "bits of chalk on the floor," drawing with "charcoal on their household hearths," or, in the case of a young girl, creating with "green cloth and yellow thread" (45). One thinks of the many pre-historic cave drawings testifying to man's ineluctable need to express himself and to create his own visual and aesthetic experiences. In 1832 Charles Knight founded the Penny Magazine, an illustrated weekly miscellany, priced at an affordable penny, in which he reproduced both portraiture and representations ofpaintings and sculpture. His editorship was tied loosely to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and Reviews89 from die outset he regarded die new publication as an "antidote to die forces of social disruption" and as a means for purveying "much-needed general knowledge and diverse imagery" (53). Knight was aware of die poverty of lower and middle class visual imagery and his reproductions were ofa quaUty suitable to hang on the waUs ofpoor homes to add brightness and cheer to die family hearthside. The Penny Magazine quickly established a large circulation, 200,000 by December, 1832, possibly reaching a readership, by broadcast, of 1,000,000. Anderson selects from a rapidly growing group of journals three other weekly miscellanies to analyze, each of which was also priced at one penny, also pubUshed on Saturday afternoons, aU with a high priority for illustration, aU committed to education, and to emphasizing social and moral values for die poor and middle classes. The titles are: London Journal (1845 - 1906); Reynold's Miscellany (1846 - 1869); and Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper (1853 - 1932); these Anderson labels die "second generation" of illustrated penny miscellanies. They differed from die earlier paper because tiiey were not tied to any outside sponsoring body (such as die SDUK or die Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge) but they also achieved large circulations and were enormously successful in providing light entertainment for die people in die form of serial fiction and short tales, and fare for women such as fashion, cookery, puzzles, etc. Sensational fiction and stories were die subjects illustrated, but art was thereby trivialized because it was no longer aimed at reproduction of classic masterpieces, but rather at representation of bloody and violent tales. Illustration also moved from high art to examples of practical design which would have an "Economic, a Moral, and a Social value" (124); and diese periodicals promoted self-development tiirough such exhortations as "improve yourself; practice discipline; work hard; exercise moderation" (119). As a result of their large circulations during...