Histories for the Many: The Victorian Family Magazine and Popular Representations of the Past: The Leisure Hour, 1852–1870 by Doris Lechner (review)

Doris Lechner's Histories for the Many: The Victorian Family Magazine and Popular Representations of the Past: The Leisure Hour, 1852–1870 has a great deal to offer anyone who wants to understand Victorian magazines, the emergence of mass-market publishing, or representations of history in popular culture. The book explores these broad topics through a case study of the Leisure Hour and the Religious Tract Society, its founder and publisher. While the Leisure Hour appealed to readers with entertaining non-fiction serials about historical events and figures, its editors were aware that competition from secular rivals such as the London Journal were brimming with sensational serials accompanied by equally exciting illustrations and non-fiction essays. Lechner argues that while the London Journal had the advantage, the Leisure Hour capitalized on the most appealing traits of the penny family magazine as a way to propel itself into the realm of its bestselling rival. The Leisure Hour also anticipated "the arrival of the family magazine to the middle classes in the 1860s" as it bridged the gap between the penny weekly and the shilling monthly versions of the genre with its promotion of middle-class notions of respectability (62). Indeed, the magazine was redesigned in the early 1860s in order to incorporate some key elements of the middle-class family magazines, including a full-page illustration for each issue; a larger, more easily readable format; and features that would appeal to both middle-class housewives and railway commuters. The magazine was finally converted from a weekly to a monthly in 1881.

After defining the genre of the Victorian family magazine and tracing its trajectory from a cheap mass-market genre in the 1840s and 1850s into a more expensive format for middle-class readers in the 1860s, Lechner delves into the rationale behind the Leisure Hour's focus on historical narratives rather than fiction. She maintains that the Religious Tract Society believed that the use of fiction would undermine its goal of religious conversion while historical writing would support its evangelical aims. Historical content also promised to unite its target audience of working- and lower-middle-class readers with its more educated and affluent founding members. As Lechner points out, the magazine's historical agenda was "defined by the periodical's design as an intermediary within Victorian historical culture: between secular and religious, working and middle class, male and female, popular and academic" (15). History in the Leisure Hour took many forms, including travel writing, biographical and autobiographical narratives, descriptive sketches of monuments and landscapes, and reviews of historical books and exhibitions. Much of the historical writing was serialized and illustrated, suggesting an equivalence to the popular fiction published in other family magazines. The historical selections represented English national identity across historical periods and "often addressed domestic, everyday experiences and objects" as a way to connect "historical actors or events to contemporary" readers (27). Perhaps not surprisingly for a magazine that wanted to walk the line between the secular and the religious, the Leisure Hour typically refrained from engaging in overtly religious discourse.

Lechner goes on to compare the Leisure Hour with its working-class rival the London Journal (1845–1912), as well as with its middle-class counterparts Good Words (1860–1911) and the Cornhill Magazine (1860–1975). Interestingly, John Gilbert served as one of the primary illustrators for both the Leisure Hour and the London Journal, which gave the magazines a similar appearance. Both magazines also featured images of historical events, monuments, and national landscapes, though the Leisure Hour was more focused on these subjects of illustration than the more sensational London Journal. According to Lechner, the Religious Tract Society was interested in "didactic and moral notions" derived from historical events relevant to its readers' lives (77). The London Journal, on the other hand, focused on "great men...