Gender and the Victorian Periodical

Examining the important role played by the Victorian periodical in defining and refining gender roles during the second half of the nineteenth century, this study analyzes the periodical press in nineteenth-century culture. It considers issues of gender in the presses' development as a powerful political and social medium. The authors examine broad questions as they are explored in a range of periodicals, from literary and political reviews to comic magazines.

Periodicals in the Victorian era portrayed and reinforced gender notions and ideals. Indeed, the Victorian periodical press was a critical cultural site for the representation of competing gender ideologies. This is a full-length book examining masculinities and femininities as defined and interrogated in these periodicals. It investigates readers, editors, and journalists; and it considers the power of the press at home, in the domestic space, in metropolitan centres and at the margins of empire. The work is based on archival research into a wide range of publications from the 1830s to the fin de siècle; from enduring intellectual heavyweight quarterlies through more ephemeral women's and working men's magazines, to magazines for boys and girls. The study is informed by the theories and approaches of media and cultural studies and women's studies. A valuable appendix supplies information about the many periodicals of the period mentioned in the book.

List of plates; Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The writing subject; 2. The gendered reader; 3. Editorship and gender; 4. Gender and the 'Politics of Home'; 5. Gender and cultural imperialism; 6. Feminism and the press; 7. Gender, commodity and the late nineteenth-century periodical; Conclusion; Notes; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.

This study examines the periodical press in nineteenth-century culture, and considers issues of gender in the development of the press as a powerful political and social medium. The study explores broad questions as they are raised in a range of different kinds of periodicals, from journals to comic magazines.

Hilary Fraser is Geoffrey Tillotson chair in Nineteenth-century studies in the School of English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of Beauty and Belief: Aesthetics and Religion in Victorian Literature (Cambridge, 1986), The Victorians and Renaissance Italy (1992) and English Prose of the 19th Century (with Daniel Brown, 1997).
Judith Johnston teaches in English, Communication and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia. She is editor with Margaret Harris of The Journals of George Eliot (1998) and author of Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters (1997).
Stephanie Green is Lecturer for the University Extension Program at the University of Western Australia and Marketing and Promotions Manager of Fremantle Arts Centre Press. She has published widely on topics in nineteenth-century literature.