Travel Writing in Victorian Periodicals: Media Forms and Cultural Work
Final Report Abstract
The second half of the nineteenth century saw a convergence of travel and periodicals culture. The study investigates this nexus for Victorian Britain and aims to demonstrate that periodicals present travel with a media logic that differs from that of the book. This difference explains their special impact on the period’s culture of travel. Periodicals were products of a democratic print market and contributed to the democratisation of travel. This idea leads to a new approach in the study of travel writing, which has been predominantly book-based. In contrast to travel books, articles in periodicals reach larger audiences, are embedded in thematic networks (within an issue and volume) and come in short as well as longer (serialised) forms. Significantly, the small form of the article enables the representation of modest forms of travel that would not have been book-worthy subjects. It is a central thesis of the study that general-interest periodicals performed important cultural work in that they helped to inscribe travel into nineteenth-century culture, accommodated readers to the idea of travel and educated them to travel. Periodicals indicate the broad Victorian interest in travel, and their periodicity makes it possible to trace developments in Victorian travel. In face of the sheer mass of Victorian periodicals, the study works with selected examples of family magazines (Leisure Hour, Good Words), women’s magazines (Englishwoman’s Magazine, Lady’s Treasury), periodicals for young readers (Boy’s Own Paper, Girl’s Own Paper) and for working-class readers such as the British Workman.
