Newspaper Poems: Material Texts in the Public Sphere

Abstract

recent years, material and textual studies have expanded our critical understanding of the contexts in which poetry was written, published, and read during the Victorian period. Studies of the economic and social structures of publishing have offered new accounts of the position of different genres within the larger literary marketplace. Studies of Victorian literary criticism have demonstrated the role of the periodical press in shaping readers' opinions and in making new poems known to large numbers of readers. Studies of particular poets have explored the aesthetic and political implications of Victorian revision and publication practices. However, because most studies of poetry in the periodical press have tended to focus on particular poets or on the selection processes of particular journals, relatively little attention has been paid to the history of poetry published in large-circulation general newspapers.1 The rapid growth in literacy during the Victorian period coincided with economic and technological changes that made the publication of inexpensive daily newspapers possible. Newspapers and journals tailored to different classes of readers and to different political interests were central to the development of the Victorian culture of information. The newspaper, the railroad, and the telegraph made rapid communication and distribution of all kinds of information possible, shaping an increasingly industrial and commercial world in which poetry's purpose and future were undecided and subject to debate.