New Media and the Rise of the Popular Woman Writer, 1832–1860

The idea of ‘new media’ is nothing new. Long before Twitter and Facebook, the rise of new periodical genres and formats provided opportunities for Victorian women writers and readers to participate in popular print culture as never before. This study illuminates the relationship between the rise of the popular woman writer the expansion and diversification of newspaper and periodical print media during a period of revolutionary change. It includes discussion of canonical women writers such as Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot, as well as lesser-known figures such as Eliza Cook, Frances Brown, Eliza Meteyard, and Rose Ellen Hendriks. In addition, it explores the networks of women writers connected with cheap family magazines such as Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal during the 1830s and ’40s. It also examines the ways women readers actively responded to a robust popular print culture by creating scrapbooks and engaging in forms of celebrity worship. The book closes with discussion of the ways Victorian women’s participation in popular print culture anticipates our own engagement with new media in the twenty-first century. Explores the link between revolutionary change in the Victorian world of print and women’s entry into the field of mass-market publishing This book highlights the integral relationship between the rise of the popular woman writer and the expansion and diversification of newspaper, book and periodical print media during a period of revolutionary change, 1832–1860. It includes discussion of canonical women writers such as Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, as well as lesser-known figures such as Eliza Cook and Frances Brown. It also examines the ways women readers actively responded to a robust popular print culture by creating scrapbooks and engaging in forms of celebrity worship. Easley analyses the ways Victorian women’s participation in popular print culture anticipates our own engagement with new media in the twenty-first century. His book highlights the integral relationship between the rise of the popular woman writer and the expansion and diversification of newspaper, book and periodical print media during a period of revolutionary change, 1832-1860. It includes discussion of canonical women writers such as Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot, as well as lesser-known figures such as Eliza Cook and Frances Brown. It also examines the ways women readers actively responded to a robust popular print culture by creating scrapbooks and engaging in forms of celebrity worship. Easley analyses the ways Victorian women's participation in popular print culture anticipates our own engagement with new media in the twenty-first century List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Felicia Hemans and the Birth of the Mass-Market Woman Poet 2. Eliza Cook, New Media Innovator 3. George Eliot, the Brontës and the Market for Poetry 4. Women Writers and Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal 5. Frances Brown and the ‘Modern’ Market for Print 6. Scrapbooks and Women’s Reading Practices Coda Bibliography Index This book highlights the integral relationship between the rise of the popular woman writer and the expansion and diversification of newspaper, book and periodical print media during a period of revolutionary change, 1832 1860.