Researching the Nineteenth Century Periodical Press: Case Studies ed. by Alexis Easley, Andrew King, and John Morton (review)

Researching the Nineteenth Century Periodical Press: Case Studies forms the companion volume of The Routledge Handbook to Nineteenth Century British Periodicals and Newspapers (2016, reviewed by Joanne Shattock in VPR 50, no. 1). The subtitle makes the differing purposes of the two volumes clear. The Handbook, a much fatter volume, offers a broad overview of the field as both an introduction to and a summary of the current scholarly interest in nineteenth-century periodicals and, to a more limited extent, newspapers. Case Studies is less of a reference guide than a glimpse of some of the ways in which researchers have—with due self-consciousness about the resources, methodologies, and approaches available to them—gone about their own research. Perhaps because it is aimed primarily at readers in the early stages of engaging with periodicals research, this collection is largely about work already undertaken rather than a visionary account of work still to do. Most of the chapters, nonetheless, offer suggestive accounts of the thought processes, the richness of available sources, and the working methods of accomplished scholars as they engage with their own particular fields of interest. And some—notably Margaret Beetham's diary-cum-research notebook of her work in the Co-operative Movement Library in Manchester and Marianne Van Remoortel's extensive trawl through the minutiae of census records and other forms of biographical information—clearly conclude at the beginning of major pieces of research rather than at their completion. The editors have given their contributors space to think through their individual responses to questions about the procedures, aims, and evaluative processes of working with both the primary materials and, to borrow a term used by Patrick Leary to encompass everything surrounding periodicals that remains as yet and perhaps forever unavailable to the scholar, the "offline penumbra" of Victorian periodicals ("Googling the Victorians," Journal of Victorian Culture 10, no. 1 [2005]: 82).

Such an editorial approach might suggest miscellaneity rather than a shared coherent authorial purpose, but I don't think this is the case here. First, the history of periodicals research has been substantially waymarked by multi-edited and multi-authored collections of this kind, which, while denying anything approaching a definitive statement, have nonetheless seemed like moments of important summary. Shattock and Wolff's modestly titled Samplings and Soundings (1982) was followed by other tentative, multi-voiced engagements with the field such as Brake, Jones, and Madden's Investigating Victorian Journalism (1990) and Brake and Codell's Encounters in the Victorian Press: Editors, Authors, Readers (2005). More recent multi-authored projects, including the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism (2009), the Routledge Handbook (2016), and collections like Joanne Shattock's Journalism in the Periodical Press (2017, reviewed by Laura Vorachek in VPR 50, no. 4), seem more assertive in their titles, but periodical scholars continue to resist a teleological narrative in which exploration gives way to declarations or tentative statements give way to certainties. Despite the gains of mighty research tools like the Wellesley Index, the Curran Index, and the Waterloo Directory, the research agenda is still inevitably built round "sampling," "sounding," "investigating," and "encountering"—that is to say, processes rather than conclusions. While Case Studies follows in this process-oriented tradition by allowing authors to speak of their individual research, it is slightly disappointing that this volume gives little sense of the accumulative and collaborative strand that has been so distinctive and important to recent periodicals research.

Second, the book is prefaced by a splendidly combative and thoughtful introduction by the three editors, which suggests if not an agreed programme for their contributors then at least a shared sensibility. The editors unashamedly defend research on established literary figures given the constraints of contemporary higher education and the academy. Those seeking academic careers and the blessing of publishers are still well advised to centre their work on canonical writers, artists...