Posting It: The Victorian Revolution in Letter Writing (review)

There is a growing body of scholarly work that posits continuities between the Victorians and ourselves, finding in Victorian streetscapes, technologies, institutions, consumer practices and entertainments, the origins of our own, twenty-first century culture. Catherine J. Golden's Posting It is a fascinating addition to this body of work. Golden studies a series of narratives and objects that emerged from the postal reform of 1840 and the introduction of the Penny Post, exploring what they reveal about Victorian culture. Her book traces the sentimental story of postal reform, analyzing the ways in which the need for, and consequences of, reform were plotted in specific, affective ways in a variety of media. It also draws parallels between "the Victorian revolution in letter writing" and the impact of communication technologies for us today, suggesting that the Victorian legacy "has shaped and continues to shape our ever-changing communications technologies today" (254-55).

The book adds to the current literature about the British post by drawing upon a wide array of materials including Victorian and contemporary postal histories; biographies; literary texts; narrative paintings; extant period letters and cards; Victorian letter-writing manuals; the Great Exhibition catalogue; and objects such as postage stamps, writing desks, post boxes, prepaid stationery, and pens. Its strength is this multi-faceted approach, which provides many fascinating examples of the way discourses about postal reform inhabited a number of narratives and objects, as well as the way in which material culture can inform our understanding of the Victorians. Golden performs some wonderful readings of such items. For example, she examines the design of the officially endorsed, but unpopular, "Mulready" prepaid stationery, as a "material memory" of Victorian culture. Divided into two sections, the "Mulready" design communicates both the hopes attached to postal reform and particular aspects of Victorian culture: "The sentimental scenes of hearth and home on [. . .] illustrate the argument that the Penny Post would support and strengthen familial relationships in Victorian England" but it also signals for us today the specific ways in which domesticity was idealised by the Victorians (91). The upper half of the Mulready, in a series of stereotypes analysed by Golden, both signals the range of Britain's Empire in 1840 and forecasts its future expansion (93). These and other readings of postal objects are nicely done but tend to confirm what we already know about Victorian ideologies of domesticity and empire rather than challenge or extend them. In some instances the analysis could also be taken further. In the case of the Mulready, there is, perhaps, a missed opportunity for extending the discussion to consider why the design might be officially endorsed but distasteful to the broad population and to what extent this limits our reading of the design as a marker of popular culture.

While the actual analysis of objects as "material memories" is very effective, there is little critical awareness about the use of this phrase itself. The introduction signals that the term is borrowed from Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass (2000) to explore the ways in which postal objects are "potent reminders of the past" that "evoke memories of history and society, subordination and authority, nation and identity, class and gender, friendship and love, and aesthetic taste, et cetera" (7). But what does this really mean? We cannot actually remember the Victorian past, so what exactly is evoked here? And why are these potent reminders important? These are crucial questions in a culture that is invested, and not always critically, in Victoriana (see KAPLAN 2007; KRUEGER 2008). "Memory" is used and critiqued by recent scholarship in a variety of ways and, given Golden's dependence on the term, a clearer sense of what it suggests about our relationship to the Victorian past would seem apposite. Throughout, the phrase seems to be used in the sense critiqued by Kerwin Klein and others, as a supplement to history, one that promises immediacy...