Investigating Victorian Journalism

Lurid, controversial, and vulnerable to accusations of titillation or rabble-rousing, the works of Victorian investigative journalism collected here nonetheless brought unseen suffering into the light of day. Even today their exposure has the power to shock. As one investigator promised, “The Report of our Secret Commission will be read to-day with a shuddering horror that will thrill throughout the world.” Secret Commissions brings together nineteen key documents of Victorian investigative journalism. Their authors range from well-known writers such as Charles Dickens, Henry Mayhew, and W.T. Stead to now-forgotten names such as Hugh Shimmin, Elizabeth Banks, and Olive Malvery. Collectively, they show how unsparing descriptions of social injustice became regular features of English journalism long before the advent of American-style “muckraking.” The reports address topics as varied as child abuse, animal cruelty, juvenile prostitution, sweat-shops, slums, gypsies, abortion, infanticide, and other controversial social issues. The collection features detailed chapter introductions, original illustrations, a historical overview of investigative reporting in the nineteenth-century press, and suggestions for further reading.

This book analyses the significance of the special correspondent as a new journalistic role in Victorian print culture, within the context of developments in the periodical press, throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. Examining the graphic reportage produced by the first generation of these pioneering journalists, through a series of thematic case studies, it considers individual correspondents and their stories, and the ways in which they contributed to, and were shaped by, the broader media landscape. While commonly associated with the reportage of war, special correspondents were in fact tasked with routinely chronicling all manner of topical events at home and abroad. What distinguished the work of these journalists was their effort to ‘picture’ the news, to transport readers imaginatively to the events described. While criticised by some for its sensationalism, special correspondence brought the world closer, shrinking space and time, and helping to create our modern news culture.

Examining the relation of print and culture in the 19th century, this book scrutinizes the cultural politics and production of Victorian magazines. A high degree of interdependence among literature, history and journalism is alleged, and ways in which space is designated male or female is explored.

The influential journalist, editor, and prolific fiction writer G. W. M. Reynolds (1814-1879) finally receives the attention he is due in this collaborative volume. Essays address Reynolds's involvement with Chartism, serial publication, the mass market periodical, commodity culture, and Reynolds's long-running urban gothic work, The Mysteries of London. Comprehensive bibliographies of Reynolds's own writings and relevant secondary works make this volume an essential resource for scholars.

James Mussell reads nineteenth-century scientific debates in light of recent theoretical discussions of scientific writing to propose a new methodology for understanding the periodical press in terms of its movements in time and space. That there is no disjunction between text and object is already recognized in science studies, Mussell argues; however, this principle should also be extended to our understanding of print culture within its cultural context. He provides historical accounts of scientific controversy, documents references to time and space in the periodical press, and follows magazines and journals as they circulate through society to shed new light on the dissemination and distribution of periodicals, authorship and textual authority, and the role of mediation in material culture. Well-known writers like H. G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle are discovered in new contexts, while other authors, publishers, editors, and scientists are discussed for the first time. Mussell is persuasive in showing how his methodology increases our understanding of the process of transformation and translation that underpins the production of print and informs current debates about the status of digital publication and the preservation of archival material in electronic forms. Adding to the book's usefulness are an extended bibliography and a discussion of recent debates regarding digital publication.

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