Time, Periodicals, and Literary Studies

Abstract

In late 1971, Michael Wolff, discussing the need for a directory of Victorian periodicals, charted the golden stream of periodicals and argued for the ways periodical literature could be useful for social and cultural studies of the period.1 At roughly the same period, ambitious archival projects, most notably the Wellesley Index and the Waterloo, sought, in their different ways, to reveal the breadth and depth of periodicals across the century. These two projects helped to define the parameters of research for a generation of students and scholars who began to analyze in closer detail the 45 titles in Wellesley, with studies of editors, contributors, individual titles, and single contributions, and to delve further into the multitude of material uncovered by the Waterloo team. One of the difficulties in studying periodicals has always been the problem of access, even in accessing the relatively limited range of titles covered in Wellesley, compared to the vast field