British Newspapers

The 2017 winner of the Robert and Vineta Colby Scholarly Book Prize Providing a comprehensive, interdisciplinary examination of scholarship on nineteenth-century British periodicals, this volume surveys the current state of research and offers researchers an in-depth examination of contemporary methodologies. The impact of digital media and archives on the field informs all discussions of the print archive. Contributors illustrate their arguments with examples and contextualize their topics within broader areas of study, while also reflecting on how the study of periodicals may evolve in the future. The Handbook will serve as a valuable resource for scholars and students of nineteenth-century culture who are interested in issues of cultural formation, transformation, and transmission in a developing industrial and globalizing age, as well as those whose research focuses on the bibliographical and the micro case study. In addition to rendering a comprehensive review and critique of current research on nineteenth-century British periodicals, the Handbook suggests new avenues for research in the twenty-first century. "This volume's 30 chapters deal with practically every aspect of periodical research and with the specific topics and audiences the 19th-century periodical press addressed. It also covers matters such as digitization that did not exist or were in early development a generation ago. In addition to the essays, readers will find 50 illustrations, 54 pages of bibliography, and a chronology of the periodical press. This book gives seemingly endless insights into the ways periodicals and newspapers influenced and reflected 19th-century culture. It not only makes readers aware of problems involved in interpreting the history of the press but also offers suggestions for ways of untangling them and points the direction for future research. It will be a valuable resource for readers with interests in almost any aspect of 19th-century Britain. Summing Up: Highly recommended" - J. D. Vann, University of North Texas in CHOICE

This book provides fresh insights into how the British press affected both British perceptions of decolonisation in Africa and British policy towards it during the ‘wind of change’ period. It also reveals, for the first time, the extent to which British newspaper coverage was of relevance to African and white settler readerships. British newspapers informed the political strategies and civic cultures of African activists, nationalists, liberal whites in Africa, the staunchest of white settler communities, and the first governments of independent African states and their opponents. The British press, British public opinion and British journalists became etched into the lived experiences of the end of empire affecting Anglo-African and Anglo-settler relations to this day. Arguing that the press cast a transnational web of influence over the decolonisation process in Africa, the author explores the relationships between the British, African and settler public and political spheres, and highlights the mediating power of the British press during the late 1950s. The book draws from a range of British newspapers, official government documents, newspaper archives, interviews, memoirs, autobiographies and articles printed in African and white settler papers. It will be of interest to historians of decolonisation, Africa, the media and the British Empire.

This Text-book traces the evolution of the newspaper, documenting its changing form, style and content as well as identifying the different roles ascribed to it by audiences, government and other social institutions. Starting with the early 17th century, when the first prototype newspapers emerged, through Dr Johnson, the growth of the radical press in the early 19th century, the Lord Northcliffe revolution in the early 20th century, the newspapers wars of the 1930s and the rise of the tabloid in the 1970s, right up to Rupert Murdoch and the online revolution, the book explores the impact of the newspapers on our lives and its role in British society. Using lively and entertaining examples, Kevin Williams illustrates the changing form of the newspaper in its social, political, economic and cultural context. As well as telling the story of the newspaper, he explores key topics in detail, making this an ideal text for students of journalism and the British newspaper. Issues include: newspapers and social change the changing face of regional newspapers the impact of new technology development of reporting techniques forms of press regulation

This book traces the relationship between the popular press and the Labour Party from the early twentieth century through the Second World War and up to the current day.

The Routledge Companion to British Media History provides a comprehensive exploration of how different media have evolved within social, regional and national contexts. The 50 chapters in this volume, written by an outstanding team of internationally respected scholars, bring together current debates and issues within media history in this era of rapid change, and also provide students and researchers with an essential collection of comparable media histories. The Routledge Companion to British Media History provides an essential guide to key ideas, issues, concepts and debates in the field. Chapter 40 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315756202.ch40

The administration of George Grenville, 1763-1765, continues to divide historians. The passage of his American Stamp Act was widely debated by his contemporaries, damned by nineteenth-century Whig historians, and criticized by many historians well into the twentieth-century. The Stamp Act proved to be a political blunder which helped precipitate the outbreak of the American Revolution, and it is this, together with Grenville’s own forbidding personality, which has coloured how he has been largely remembered. Indeed, as one of his more recent biographers has noted, Grenville’s political career has been mainly judged on the comments made by his contemporary political enemies. Grenville, however, came to the premiership after spending twenty years in office and was perceived by many as an efficient and energetic minister; a capable and conscientious man who got things done. This present study adds to the recent reappraisal of Grenville’s career by investigating how he and his followers interacted with, and attempted to influence, the activities of the increasing political press during the first decade of the reign of George III. The Grenvillite pamphleteers were both well-organized and effective in their defence of their political patron, and the press activities of Thomas Whately, William Knox, Augustus Hervey, and Charles Lloyd are fully investigated here within the larger context of the political debates from 1763 to 1770. The impact East Indian issues, Irish affairs, John Wilkes, and American colonial problems had on shaping British public opinion are also examined. The book concludes, with regard to the American colonies at least, that the Grenvillite vision of empire was essentially traditional and mainstream. Stubborn, peevish, and argumentative he may have been, but Grenville was hardly the scourge of the American colonies as previously portrayed; nor was he the lone author of all the trouble between Britain and her American colonies as some American historians have suggested. George Grenville will remain a controversial figure in eighteenth-century British political history, but this study offers an examination of his political activities from a different perspective, and thus helps broaden our estimation of a minister who has been considered for too long as one of the worst prime ministers during the long reign of George III.