Abstract
The Victorian newspaper and periodical press may be characterised above all by its abundant variety, in subject matter, political allegiance and geographical distribution. The peculiar vigour of nineteenth-century journalism has commonly been attributed to the influence of the dual processes of economic growth and technological innovation, but the energies released by Victorian politics, both high and low, central and local, also played their part. Political institutions and organisations encouraged and sustained a lively and heterogeneous press, and the emergence of reformed political and administrative systems were the subjects of intense scrutiny and speculation by journalists and their readers throughout Britain. But the contribution made by journalism to Victorian political culture in general was complex and paradoxical. While it is true that the variety of the press was impressive, certainly by modern standards, its diversity nonetheless was constrained by strict political limitations, and if in its range and perceived responsibilities it could be described as ‘democratic’, it was so in a political system that did not allow for full democratic electoral participation in government. Within these limitations, however, popular Victorian journalism contained elements that encouraged readers’ engagement with a participatory, though in many instances an extra-parliamentary, political process. The diversity of this journalism signifies above all the richness and expansiveness of Victorian political culture.
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Notes
Keith Robbins has explained how the discourse of a British nation emerged in the late nineteenth century through the simultaneous occurrence of processes of integration and diversity in political, social and cultural life, and in similar vein it is possible to argue that the local press for much of the middle of the nineteenth century was able to maintain its diversity precisely through its integration with the British state at the local level. Keith Robbins, Nineteenth-Century Britain, Integration and Diversity (Oxford, 1988). For studies of Victorian state ‘Collectivism’ see William Graham, ‘The Collectivist Prospect in England’, The Nineteenth Century, XXXVII (1895) and A.V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation Between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century (London, 1905). Further contemporary accounts of political change may be found in Barbara Dennis and David Skilton (eds), Reform and Intellectual Debate in Victorian England (London, 1987). For the press and local politics, see Maurice Milne, ‘The Survival of the Fittest? Sunderland Newspapers in the Nineteenth Century’, in Joanne Shattock and Michael Wolff (eds), The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings (Leicester, 1982) p. 214. Local government reform was effected chiefly by the Municipal Reform Act of 1835, the Metropolis Management Act of 1855 and the Local Government Act of 1888.
Ian Jackson, The Provincial Press and the Community (Manchester, 1971) p. 11.
W. T. Stead, ‘The Future of Journalism’, Contemporary Review, L (1886) 663–79.
Joel H. Wiener (ed.), Innovators and Preachers: The Role of the Editor in Victorian England (Westport, Conn., 1985) p. xiii.
Recent studies of Reynolds include Virginia Berridge, ‘Popular Sunday papers and mid-Victorian society’, in G. Boyce, J. Curran and P. Wingate (eds), Newspaper History from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day (London, 1978) pp. 247–64, and Anne Humpherys, ‘G. W. M. Reynolds: Popular Literature and Popular Polities’, in Wiener (ed.) Innovators, pp. 3–22.
A Conservative Journalist, ‘Why is the Provincial Press Radical?’ National Review, 7 (1886) 678. These and related issues are discussed in A.J. Lee, The Origins of the Popular Press in England 1855–1914 (London, 1976), and in essays by George Boyce, Raymond Williams and James Curran in Boyce et al., Newspaper History. Useful critical observations on the ‘Fourth Estate’ debate may also be found in Brian Harrison, ‘Press and Pressure Group in Modern Britain’, in Shattock and Wolff (eds), Samplings, pp. 261–96.
Peter Hennessy, What the Papers Never Said (London, 1985) pp. 1–11.
The centralisation of political power was, if Marshall McLuhan is right, itself dependent on the creation of a highly centralised newspaper press. ‘Socially, the typographic extension of man brought in nationalism, industrialism, mass markets, and universal literacy and education’, Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extension of Man (New York, 1964) p. 157.
F. K. Gardiner, ‘Provincial Morning Newspapers’, in The Kemsley Manual of Journalism, with introduction by Viscount Kemsley LLD (London, 1952) pp. 204–5.
Robert B. Parker, The Widening Gyre (Harmondsworth, 1988) p. 54.
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© 1990 Laurel Brake, Aled Jones, Lionel Madden
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Jones, A. (1990). Local Journalism in Victorian Political Culture. In: Brake, L., Jones, A., Madden, L. (eds) Investigating Victorian Journalism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20790-9_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20790-9_5
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