The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture, 1790-1860 - Hardcover

Anderson, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019811236X ISBN 13: 9780198112365

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1991

Synopsis

In mid-nineteenth century Britain, literacy was by no means universal, and printed imagery captured the popular imagination in a way that words alone could not. This study shows how the widening dissemination of print led to the transformation of popular cultural experience such that by 1840 an essentially modern mass culture had begun to develop. Focusing on four illustrated magazines, but looking also at penny fiction and broadsides, Anderson interprets a wide variety of neglected sources. A recurring theme is the decline of the role of high art reproduction. Anderson combines modern cultural theory and historical evidence to demonstrate how people of all kinds--especially workers and women--interacted with the printed image, helping to shape the increasingly visual culture that was ultimately to lead to the growth of twentieth-century mass media.

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Anderson, PhD, is a Vancouver book author, editor, and literary consultant.

Review

`...closely argued and brilliantly researched....Such is the quality of the work,...that one never feels "reference overkill," or any sense of pedantry....This excellent and original book should be required reading for anyone interested either in Victorian cultural history or in the
influential role played by periodicals in the nineteenth century.'
Rosemary T.Van Arsdel, Victorian Review

`persuasive and informative ... written with admirable concision and empathy for the material ... excellent footnotes ... The Clarendon Press is to be congratulated for the encouragement to historical and literary scholarship which immaculate productions such as this provide.'
John Springhall, University of Ulster at Coleraine, Social History Society's Newsletter, Spring 1992

`well-illustrated study'
International Review of Social History, No. 3, 1992

`Anderson's conscientious scholarship is evident in her copious and well researched footnotes and bibliography ... a highly readable, highly informative, and delightfully visual exploration of the predecessors of the mass media.'
Betsy Cogger Rezelman, St. Lawrence University, Victorian Studies Association of Ontario Newsletter, No. 51, Spring '93

`Patricia Anderson's effort to identify a transformation of popular culture in mid-nineteenth-century Britain is ... welcome ...she makes some shrewd points about the shifting, if not "transformed," visual literacy of the vastly more numerous mid-century consumers.'
Robert L. Patten, Rice University, American Historical Review, April 1993

'The book has a number of strengths. It is thoroughly researched and in fact the footnotes and bibliography are an excellent guide to students in the field of early Victorian periodicals. The book is also to be commended for the effort to theorize the material ... the book is written with
great clarity, a fact even more impressive in the light of the large number of secondary materials the analysis rests on. Thompson wears her research lightly. Finally, Oxford University Press has done well in the production of the book; it has a good number of illustrations, all of them important
examples of the material under discussion ... a useful contribution to the analysis of the nineteenth-century periodical press and the ongoing analysis of the development of mass culture.'
Anne Humpherys, City University of New York, Nineteenth-Century Literature 47:4 (March 1993)

'Anderson's speculative interpretations on the altered meaning that the various images acquired in the context of the periodical provide perceptive readings of social forces arrayed in the periodicals ... this is an important and illuminating study ... Anderson explores a topic too little
considered, and her study has wide implications.'
Michael Kaufmann, Indiana University-Purdue University

'an important avenue to understanding the role of print culture generally, and periodical literature more specifically, in people's lives ... most useful for students of popular print as a catalog of the images and of the general content of these four widely circulating weeklies'
Lee E. Heller, Hampshire College, Nineteenth-Century Prose, Volume 20, Number 2: Fall 1993

`Detailed and engaging study ... lively descriptions ... entertaining as well as informative.'
Victorian Studies

`Extensively researched and ambitious study ... well written ... her enthusiasm for this fascinating period of English publishing history shines through. The choice of sample illustrations from the period is excellent.'
Epilogue

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 019811236X
• ISBN 13: 9780198112365
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 222