Why Study Nineteenth-Century Periodicals?
The study of historical periodicals opens up one’s understanding of today’s media: its content, its methods of production and distribution, its materiality (and immateriality), its audiences, its business practices, and the individuals who contribute to or participate in its creation.
Many of the big names in nineteenth-century literature, politics, art, science, religion, and politics either wrote for or were written about in the periodical press. The nineteenth-century press also engaged in practices that anticipated or inspired today’s media practices. Some periodicals were interactive, allowing readers to express their ideas and opinions or ask questions of the larger community. Other publications were didactic, seeking to inform and educate an increasingly literate populace. There were entertaining periodicals, informative periodicals, humorous periodicals, music periodicals, mass-audience periodicals, and niche/specialist periodicals. Just like the internet, if there was an interest group or pastime, there was also likely a special periodical devoted to it.
Historical periodicals offer not only a rich blend of content that can be easily adapted to a variety of classroom needs, they also contain articles and images of a manageable length for classroom activities. Periodical-based lessons can be used as stand-alone activities or in conjunction. For example, BLT19 lessons focused on labour and temperance periodicals can be used on conjunction with nineteenth-century texts in either the English Language and Literature or History Classroom.
Digitised Nineteenth-Century Periodicals
A few decades ago, it was much more difficult to study historical periodicals. Hard copies were accessible only to those who could physically visit research libraries or archival collections. The advent of mass digitisation projects, such as Google Books and the Internet Archive, has revolutionised access to and the study of historical publications. Because nineteenth-century periodicals are out of copyright, they have been particularly popular objects for digitisation. While historical periodicals are more easily accessed today, the digitised materials vary widely in terms of accessibility (many are still hidden behind paywalls), ease of use, image quality, explanatory or contextual materials, the accuracy of OCR text upon which searches are reliant, and pedagogical framework.
Some nineteenth-century periodicals you may have already heard of: Household Words (1850-1859) and All the Year Round (1859-1895), for example, were two weeklies edited by Charles Dickens, which have been digitised by Dickens Journals Online (DJO). Sherlock Holmes first appeared in the pages of the monthly Strand Magazine (1891-1950), which is available on the Internet Archive. The weekly Punch (1840-2002) deployed both text and cartoons to satirise middle-class Britain and, in doing so, traced important social and historical events over more than a century. Selected volumes of Punch are available through Google Books. A simple comparison of DJO, Internet Archive, and Google Books illustrates the varying quality and contextual materials provided by large digitisation projects.
At the same time, for every digitised Punch and Strand Magazine, there are dozens of other, niche magazines that may or may not have been digitised. Digitisation projects tend to emphasise certain types of publications: periodicals associated with famous authors, popular publications that reached large audiences and/or ran for long periods of time, periodicals held in large university libraries, and publications that will have a guaranteed market of twenty-first century users, e.g., those of interest to genealogists. As of 2016, only a small fraction of the Victorian periodical marketplace has been digitised, yet students often are surprised to find that their publication of interest remains only in material form.
The BLT19 Project
Labour, trade, and professional periodicals are a segment of the nineteenth-century press that has received little attention, yet the publications produced for various branches of British industry speak to a wide range of social, cultural, historical, business, and creative issues. The BLT19 Project seeks to digits a genre of historical periodicals that has received little attention but was extremely important in British labour and professional history: publications devoted to business, labour, trade, professions, and temperance. The project provides pedagogical materials to help instructors and students engage with the publications and their wide-ranging, diverse content.
Pedagogical Approaches to the Study of Historical Periodicals
Because periodicals are inherently collaborative, they are particularly suited for collaborative learning approaches. Teresa Magnum describes periodical literature as a “marketplace collective of writers, illustrators, editors, printers, advertisers, publishers, and a host of workers in related professions and trades” (Magnum 2006, 307). Most of the BLT19 sample lesson plans involve collaborative team exercises followed by a group conversation to unify the findings of the teams.
Resources for the Study of Historical Periodicals (Open Access)
- Dickens Journals Online
- Research Society for American Periodicals
- Research Society for Victorian Periodicals
- Welsh Newspapers Online
Resources for the Study of Historical Periodicals (Paywall)
- Gale Cengage 19th-Century UK Periodicals Database
- ProQuest British Periodicals Database
- The Times Archive
Bibliography
Magnum, Teresa. “Periodicals, Pedagogy, and Collaboration.” Victorian Periodicals Review 39.4 (Winter 2006): 307-08, at 307. Web. Project Muse. 27 Apr 2016.