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British Writers, Popular Literature and New Media Innovation, 1820-45

Online ISBN:
9781399514026
Print ISBN:
9781399514002
Publisher:
Edinburgh University Press
Book

British Writers, Popular Literature and New Media Innovation, 1820-45

Alexis Easley (ed.)
Alexis Easley
(ed.)

Professor of English

University of St. Thomas
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Published online:
23 January 2025
Published in print:
30 June 2024
Online ISBN:
9781399514026
Print ISBN:
9781399514002
Publisher:
Edinburgh University Press

Abstract

The period between 1820 and 1845 is often interpreted as a transitional phrase between the Romantic and Victorian periods. Some individual writers working in this era– for example, Felicia Hemans, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Carlyle– have received significant critical attention, but many other new media innovators of the period have been neglected in histories of nineteenth-century literature. This is especially true of writers who worked in the popular press, including Dinah Mulock, Mary Howitt, and William Hazlitt. What made these writers significant was their engagement with the rise of new media– annuals, serial publication, weekly periodicals, newspapers, and illustrated magazines. These genres were associated with the emergence of a “mass media”– periodicals and newspapers that reached a broad national audience with circulations in the tens and hundreds of thousands. Working within these new media formats, writers experimented with literary forms designed to appeal to artisans and the middle classes as well as family audiences that explicitly included women and children. Their innovations radically changed literary culture, leading to the rise of sentimental poetry, social-problem fiction, children’s literature, and diverse other genres. Many writers during this era also worked as editors of annuals, magazines, and other periodical literature, thus playing a crucial role in shaping the new media formats in which popular literature would be shaped and consumed.

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