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Victorianism MA 9. The Popular and the Aesthetic. Periodicals 1. 1780: 76 newspapers and periodicals in England and Wales between 1800 and 1809 154 new ones 1830s: 968 1860s: 1,639 1890s: 3,423 Steam press ( The Times , 1814):up to 2,500 sheets per hour
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Victorianism MA 9 The Popular and the Aesthetic
Periodicals 1 • 1780: 76 newspapers and periodicals in England and Wales • between 1800 and 1809 154 new ones • 1830s: 968 • 1860s: 1,639 • 1890s: 3,423 • Steam press (The Times, 1814):up to 2,500 sheets per hour • Rotary press (Lloyd’s Weekly News; 1856): by 1904: 55,000 32-page papers per hour
Periodicals 2 • Before1853: one successful provincial daily (Liverpool Telegraph and Shipping Gazette) • By 1870: 60 • by 1900: 171 • Total circulation of all London newspapers: • 56,000 in 1837 • 410,000 by 1874 • 680,000 in 1887
Books and religion • Early 1800s: 300 book titles annually • by 1842: nearly 3,000 • by 1897: about 8,000 • 1814-46: religion: 20.3 percent; fiction:16.2 percent; • early 1870s: reversed • By1901: religion 8.6%; fiction 33.0% • 1873, the ratio of secular to religious magazines: 60: 40 • by 1902: 80: 20.
Literacy of the working classes • 1841: jobs requiring literacy: • 27.4 percent of male workers; • 7.4 percent of female workers • 1891: • 37.2 percent of male workers • 5.4 percent of female workers • Literacy for leisure; second half of the century: • their real incomes rose by 80-100 percent • their working hours decreased
Popular/working class reading • penny dreadfuls, shilling shockers • The quarter educated • Public libraries: • between 1851 and 1862: 23 • between 1868 and 1886: 98 • between 1886 and 1918: altogether 584 • 1851: 610 mechanics’ institutes: 102,050 members; 681,500 volumes
Jane Austen: The Northanger defence of the novel • we [novelists] are an injured body: Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. And what are you reading, Miss -- -? Oh! it is only a novel! replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda ; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.
Novel concerns • Poisonous/dangerous reading • Bovaryism • Moral and political effects of mass literacy, of reading • Three-decker – cheap literature • Serialisation – warning: cliffhanger • Uncategorisability of novels • From 1860s: • sensation novels • crime stories
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood • The Germ (1848): to germinate ideas • Against the Royal Academy • Pure colours • Simplicity • Accuray of details • Freshness and directness • Medievalism
Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The Wedding of St George and Princess Sabra
Edward Burne-Jones • „A beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, never will be [...] in a land no one can define or remember, only desire.”
Christina Rossetti:In an Artist’s Studio • One face looks out from all his canvases, One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans: We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness. A queen in opal or in ruby dress, A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens, A saint, an angel -- every canvas means The same one meaning, neither more nor less. He feeds upon her face by day and night, And she with true kind eyes looks back on him, Fair as the moon and joyful as the light: Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright; Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.
