Network: Andrew Lang and the Distributed Agencies of Literary Production

Abstract

This essay uses the case of Andrew Lang to evaluate the critical trope of the “network” and to assess its value for the analysis of Victorian periodical culture. It surveys the network sociologies of Pierre Bourdieu and Bruno Latour and reviews recent advances in periodical studies organized around this now-ubiquitous buzzword. Lang’s own networking practice, realized in his casual take on intellectual property and materialized in the multiple authorship of his Fairy Book projects, shows how attending to assemblages rather than individuals might expand conventional models of creative agency in literary studies and enable new configurations of literary-historical time.