“You see, but you do not observe”: Hidden Infrastructure and Labour in the Strand Magazine and Its Twenty-First-Century Digital Iterations

The Strand Magazine (1891–1950), a key print culture object, was launched six months before its publisher, George Newnes, restructured his business as a limited liability company. The initial share offering was only open to people closely affiliated with Tit-Bits and the Strand: booksellers, newsagents, bookstall clerks, periodical staff, and advertisers. This article examines the community of investors who purchased shares in 1891, revealing some of the invisible and less visible individuals who were affiliated with Newnes’s stable of publications. Exploring the transformations in the firm’s corporate structure during the 1890s invites consideration of the corporate and finance models that are involved in today’s digital marketplace. Currently, digital incarnations of the Strand Magazine, in varying degrees of completeness and quality, are available through both open-access and commercial sources. The corporate and imaginative structures behind these emergent media are opaque. What technological infrastructure is involved in their production? How do corporate and legal systems influence their creation, distribution, and use? We illuminate the Strand’s history by drawing attention to the significance of some of the under-considered technological, business, legal, and financing structures involved in the creation of today’s digital objects.