Vice, Scandal, and "News": 19th-Century Newspapers and their Literary Products
Research Project
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01.09.2013
- 01.09.2019
My project emerges from within the context of the repeal of the taxes on knowledge (i.e. the removal of additional taxes for advertisements (1853), stamps (1855), and the weight of paper (1861)), honing in on the changing nature of the periodical from 1850 onwards, and the way in which 19 th -century serialized fiction in Britain refracted and reflected the political agendas of the monthly, weekly, and daily papers that housed them. Moving chronologically through Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White , Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater , A. C. Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, and Bram Stoker's Dracula , I explore the influence of newspaper and magazine layouts, the authors' knowledge and exploitation of readership and circulation, the organization of the news, and the way in which authors incorporate current events and/or 'front page news' in their writing, demonstrating that serialization increasingly became a mode of narration and a form of logic.
