London Newspapers Research Articles

The reaction of London newspapers to the proclamation of the Monroe doctrine

The presented article analyzes the reaction of the British press to the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine by the American president in 1823. The reaction of leading London periodicals such as The Examiner, The Monthly Magazine, The London Magazine and The Morning Post is considered. The author describes in detail the diversity of opinions: from support for Republican ideals and their contrast with the monarchical aspects of the policy of the Holy Alliance to expressing concerns about the negative impact of the doctrine on Britain's trade and economic interests in Latin America. The author concludes that the London newspapers have a balanced, albeit emotional assessment of the influence of the Monroe Doctrine on international relations and the specific interests of Great Britain. The article focuses on the period of the 1820s and the British reaction to American foreign policy activity, neglecting to consider the British position in the context of the War of Independence of the Spanish colonies of 1808-1819. In the study of newspaper materials by domestic and foreign scientists, general philosophical (deduction and induction, systematic approach, synergetic approach, etc.), general scientific (observation, comparative method, etc.) and private scientific methods specific to a particular field of knowledge. The Monroe Doctrine provides a rare example of a 200-year-old speech that remains the subject of regular references when discussing the current international political agenda to this day. The article examines the reaction to the Monroe Doctrine, which is one of the fundamental documents of American public policy, which became one of the first steps for the formation of American strategic culture in its current state. The relevance of the article is based on the need for a comprehensive study of the reports of the leading London press to identify their impact on international relations and the specific interests of the United Kingdom. Despite the fact that the Monroe Doctrine has been around for two hundred years, it does not lose its relevance in relation to Latin American states with the United States, and, more importantly, in relation to the United States, with other actors in world politics.

“To Preserve That Balance of Power on Which the Happiness and Prosperity of Europe Depend” – Discourse on the First Partition of Poland and the European Balance of Power in London Newspapers (1771–1774)

“To Preserve That Balance of Power on Which the Happiness and Prosperity of Europe Depend” – Discourse on the First Partition of Poland and the European Balance of Power in London Newspapers (1771–1774)

The role of Nicolo Grimaldi (Nicolini) in the Italian opera development in London in the early 18th century

The subject of the research is the artistic phenomenon of Nicolo Grimaldi, an outstanding Italian operatic castrato of the early 18th century. The author examines the creative biography and focuses on the analysis of the stage skills of the singer, who set the bar high for dramatic art in England. Nicolo Grimaldi (1673–1732) became famous under the pseudonym Nicolini (or Nicolino). His name became widely known thanks to the legendary performances on the stage of the Royal Theater in London in 1708–1712 and 1715–1717. The reconstruction of the vocal-dramatic profile of the singer, based on reliable historical sources, required to employ a comprehensive methodology, including historical, cultural and linguistic research methods. Information about Nicolini’s life and work has been still unknown to the Russian musical community and is being published in Russian for the first time. Various sources of information about Nicolini have been preserved: music-critical reviews in London newspapers, scores and librettos of operas, essays, letters and memoirs of contemporaries who testified to the character of the artist’s vocal and acting skills. They served as material for a historical and biographical analysis, the results of which will be of interest to both practicing singers and researchers of Italian baroque opera. The historical significance of Nicolini lies in the fact that, as an excellent singer and actor, he influenced the strengthening and development of Italian opera in the early period of its existence in London.

Thomas Holcroft and Joseph Haydn: Mapping an Unlikely Friendship

This essay examines the friendship between the British playwright, novelist, translator, and political activist, Thomas Holcroft, and the Austrian composer, Joseph Haydn. This friendship is explored against the backdrop of the politically fraught 1790s, and the discourse surrounding the French Revolution. Activists such as Holcroft were subjected to legal action; he was arrested during the Treason Trials of 1794 for allegedly taking part in a plot to overthrow the King. Eventually released without trial, Holcroft suffered deeply from the after-effects of his judicial experience. Haydn, conversely, is often seen as a composer who, in his music composed in Britain, exhibited an embrace of militarism and patriotism in works such as Symphony 100 and the canzonetta “The Sailor’s Song.” I argue that this assumed difference in political outlook between Haydn and Holcroft did not impede their friendship and collaboration. The essay concludes with a discussion of their collaboration on the second set of Haydn’s Canzonettas (1795) and Holcroft’s poetic tribute to Haydn published in the London newspapers.

Sorting out the Stars: The First Publication of ‘Delia' and Its Attribution to Burns

This essay discusses the disputed authorship of the short poem ‘Delia'; locates for the first time the correct London newspaper in which the poem was first printed, as written by Burns, before its appearance in Belfast; confirms earlier research and speculation by Lucyle Werkmeister and further elucidates the relationship of Burns with the editor Peter Stuart, and with Stuart's ‘spurious' Star newspaper; identifies, also for the first time, a previous publication of the poem with music in The Feast of Apollo (London, ?1787); and concludes that ‘Delia' (and the letter that accompanied it in newspaper publication) is very unlikely to be by Burns.

‘No true or just test of merit’: ‘The Public School Record’ 1886–1900

ABSTRACT ‘School league tables’ summarising the performance of secondary schools in England have been published annually since 1992. Although now a firmly established feature of the educational landscape, they have attracted criticism from those who point to their unintended negative consequences. These include ‘teaching to the test’, entering pupils for easier examinations, and resitting examinations multiple times in order to massage success rates. However, neither the concept of league tables, nor these alleged side-effects are new. Between 1886 and 1900, a series of London newspapers published rudimentary tables that attempted to rank and compare schools based on performance. Initially conceived as an exercise in investigating whether leading public schools really provided educational value, and against a background of political conflict over elite classical education, they provoked intense debate over how to judge the quality of secondary education in late Victorian Britain. This paper examines their short history.

New Information on Sor and Gil Blas

A contemporary London newspaper report clarifies the extent of Fernando Sor's contribution to the operatic drama Gil Blas. This letter is an addendum to Erik Stenstadvold, "Fernando Sor on the Move in the Early 1820s" Soundboard Scholar, no. 1 (2015), https://doi.org/10.56902/SBS.2015.1.7.

Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson’s Circle, ed. Anthony W. Lee.

<i>Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson’s Circle</i>, ed. Anthony W. Lee.

‘Our insulted coasts’: London newspapers and the invasion scare of 1781

At the end of August 1781, the combined fleets of France and Spain appeared in the mouth of the English Channel. Stormy weather and sickness soon forced them to retire to their home ports of Brest and Cadiz, and so this brief invasion threat attracts little more than passing reference in most studies of eighteenth-century Britain. This article examines the reporting of this crisis in London newspapers, which provides evidence of public interest in the navy and anxiety about the security of Britain.

Newspaper Debates in Late Eighteenth-Century England: ‘Letters to the Editor’ versus the Political Pamphlet

When exploring contributions to political debates in late eighteenth-century England, scholars have typically favoured non-serialized publications, most commonly the pamphlet, thus neglecting the many contributions appearing in the periodical press. This article redresses this oversight by exploring both the shortcomings and the advantages of the newspaper as a medium for political debate in this period. Based on a close reading of leading London newspapers from the politically turbulent years of 1791–95, this article explores the following questions: What advantages did the newspaper have over stand-alone publications such as the political pamphlet? What type of audience were writers of political newspaper commentary trying to reach, and what barriers did they encounter when attempting to do so? Why did the newspaper supplant the non-serialized pamphlet as the leading medium for political debate towards the end of the eighteenth century?

Британская пресса о первом английском переводе «Горя от ума»

The article is devoted to the responses of the English press to the publication of the first translation of A. S. Griboyedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit” into English, made by N. D. Benardaki in 1857 (London). Reviews that appeared in the Scottish magazine “McPhail’s Edinburgh Ecclesiastical Journal and Literary Review” and in the London newspaper “The Literary Gazette, and Journal of Archeology, Science, and Art”, and the names of their authors have remained unknown in Russia so far. In both issues, British readers are introduced to the content of the Russian play and with its characters, both publications tell about the life and work of its author. At the same time, each publication has features that reflect not only the personal preferences of its author, but also some general ideas about Russia in the middle of the XIX century that existed in Great Britain. The first article, relying on the text of the comedy, made an attempt to draw a general picture of the life structure and moral climate of modern Russia as a “not quite civilized” country, from the point of view of the British. The author of another one tendentiously covers the life of Griboyedov, revealing dislike for him as a diplomat whose activities in Persia were successfully directed against British influence in this country.

Picturing the Villain: Image-Making and the Indian Uprising

At the height of the Indian uprising in 1857, two rival London newspapers published portraits on the same day of the man who had become known in Britain as the primary villain of the conflicts: Nana Sahib. These were clearly portraits of two different men. This essay explores why Victorian image-making processes meant that such portraits were presumed accurate, and it traces multiple leads in identifying the men pictured within them. Considering “the villain” as a category steeped in conventions of melodrama, the essay argues that the portraits’ conflict with one another did not matter to the British public because such images worked to create certainty amid chaotic reportage of uprising events.

Rescuing a Heritage Database: Some Lessons from London Concert Life in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract The paper outlines the genesis and subsequent transformation of the database Calendar of London Concerts 1750–1800, now available as a dataset at https://www.doi.org/10.17026/dans-znv-3c2j. Originally developed during the 1980s, the database was used as a primary research tool in the preparation of articles and a 1993 monograph: the first comprehensive study of London’s flourishing public concert life in the later eighteenth century, which culminated in Haydn’s London visits in 1791–5. The database itself, extending to over 4000 records, was derived from an exhaustive study of London newspapers. Following the obsolescence of the relational database in which the material was initially stored, it has recently been transferred to a spreadsheet in csv format, publicly available with free open access. Issues arising out of the standardisation of concert data are explored, especially regarding the layout of complete concert programmes, and the strengths and limitations of the original design are analysed, within the context of the newly available version.

Ukrainian Youth Association and Its Journalistic and Publishing Activities in Emigration

The article is based on the author’s research of documents and materials of the UYA Board, conducted during his scholarly internship in the UK. The materials belong to the library of the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain in London and the archives which exclusively store complete files of such periodicals as Holos Molodi, Avanhard, Ukrainska Dumka, and Vyzvolnyi Shliakh, which were also studied.In the ongoing scientific debate over the assumption whether the Ukrainian Youth Association was a project of the Soviet secret services formed to identify and eliminate the nationally conscious part of the Ukrainian society in the 1920s and early 1930s, or the hypothesis that it was backed up by real organizers and cases, the author belongs to the group of researchers that share the second point of view.Modus operandi of this organization was as follows: it was founded in Kyiv on the basis of the First Shevchenko Kyiv Labor School in late 1925 as an alternative to the Moscow organization of the Communist Komsomol. Mykola Pavlushkov became the founder and first head of UYA. In 1929, UYA was exposed by the punitive Soviet authorities as an “underground counterrevolutionary organization”. In 1946, the organization resumed its activity in Germany, in the camps of American-funded forced refugees from Eastern Europe. The first volume of the organization’s main publication was released in Munich in December 1946. In December 1949, Holos Molodi magazine was founded in London. The active book publishing movement of this organization begins there.The author’s attention is focused on the analysis of printed materials produced by this organization and not fully available today in Ukraine. They include a number of small-print cyclic publications issued in Munich and London, as well as Avanhard and Holos Molodi monthlies, and the thematic page of the UK regional branch of UYA in the London newspaper Ukrainska Dumka. According to the thematic principle, the following main subjects of the publications are analyzed: propaganda of the ideas of belligerent Ukraine in the non-Bolshevik democratic world; protection and continuation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army’s deeds and those of fallen heroes of Ukrainian national liberation struggles of all times; assimilation of foreign experience in all spheres of life and state-building for its further use in Ukraine liberated from Bolsheviks.

Reading History in Britain and America, c.1750–c.1840

Throughout Reading History in Britain and America, c. 1750–c. 1840 Mark Towsey's fluency as a reader of marginalia is evident in his careful sifting of the traces left by readers of history books in the second half of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth, including even juvenile insults bandied between users of the books. But this is more than a virtuoso demonstration of how to find and interpret evidence of reading. For Towsey shows how active readers applied their reading to the big issues of the day–including the threat of France, the relationship between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic church, the balance of power between Crown and Parliament, empire, colonialism, slavery and the American Revolution—and how they sometimes used these history books to mean the opposite of what the authors intended.Towsey's stated aim is to use the methods of the history of reading “to establish the wider social, cultural and political significance of history books and their reception in the period … to think about them … as everyday objects encountered and read by ordinary readers as they went about making sense of the world around them” (17). In this he succeeds admirably.His introduction establishes who the readers were (from all sections of society, although he focuses on the middle and upper classes), and where they encountered history books (rarely at school, apart from ancient history). His analysis builds on the ideas of Robert Darnton, Adrian Johns, D.F.Mckenzie, David McKitterick, Benedict Anderson, Stanley Fish, and Michel de Certeau (10–15, 20).Chapter 1 explains how and why history was read in the period, applying Leslie Howsam's “life cycle of the reader” (26–27) to show how readers took up history at an early age and continued to use it throughout their lives. Towsey's sources include notes, summaries, and excerpts made by scores of men and women on both sides of the Atlantic, commonplace books, marginalia in library copies, and letters giving advice on reading or discussing what was read. Many readers kept their personal compilations of history reading all their lives, adding to them as their worldviews, and the world, changed.Chapter 2 focuses on two widely read but controversial histories, Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–89) and Hume's History of England (1754–61). Reviews in periodicals and other commentary framed both authors as religious skeptics, leading some readers to avoid certain passages, while others interpreted them in their own ways. Chapter 3 picks out the theme of constitutional history, showing how most readers clung to a Whig view of English political progress, rejecting Hume's more nuanced and less triumphalist interpretation. Chapter 4 examines how readers in different parts of the United Kingdom and Ireland read histories of the union and its constituent nations, particularly in Scotland (united with England in 1707) and Ireland (united with Britain in 1800). Towsey notes how an “emotional connection to place … palpably informed how many … readers of the Georgian era engaged with historical writing” (178).Chapters 5 and 6 “deal with the related themes of empire and revolution,” following American readers from colonial times through independence to the early republic and observing how they used histories written by British authors for entirely different purposes, such as William Robertson's History of the Reign of Charles V (1769), a sixteenth-century Spanish monarch, to justify their revolution against the British empire. Chapter 6 focuses on the reception of another book by Robertson, An Historical Disquisition Concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients Had of India (1791), an Enlightenment history of the subcontinent, read eagerly by British soldiers and colonial employees of the East India Company. One reader, army officer Thomas Turner Roberts, made selective notes which changed Robertson's meaning, from praise for advanced Indian civilization to criticism of unchanging backwardness (230). Other readers filleted the book for handy tips on how to control the Indian population, while some back home in Britain used the same book to question the whole idea of empire. Throughout, Towsey skilfully balances “the idiosyncrasies of individual readers and … the interpretive constraints that acted upon them” through the intellectual and political climate of the times (21).This elegantly written book is hard to fault, although it has made me very self-conscious about my own note-taking. Towsey cites reviews and commentary from some London newspapers and periodicals, but I suspect that further studies of the history of history-reading will find a great deal more material in papers and magazines published outside London, including extracts, reviews, and readers' letters. But that is a different book. This one achieves what it sets out to do, establishing that readers were active and unpredictable agents in intellectual history.

The Academy of Ancient Music (1726–1802): Its History, Repertoire and Surviving Programmes

AbstractIt was way back in the mid-1960s that I first became interested in the Academy of Ancient Music, and I have been collecting stray scraps of information relating to them ever since. Fifty years on, methinks it’s high time I shared my findings with the world of eighteenth-century musical scholarship at large. Others meanwhile have dealt with various bits of the story, but no one so far as I know has yet attempted to bring it all together in one place. What follows here is in three self-contained parts and two appendices. The first part surveys the history of the society from cradle to grave so to speak, and deals with all the main personalities and events involved. The second, and by far the longest, part provides details of all the Academy programmes known to have survived together with various references to be found in diaries, letters and other manuscript material of the period; there is also, for the 1780s and 90s in particular, a good deal of supporting comment in the London newspapers. Also duly noted in this section are the present-day whereabouts of all those individual works that can be identified as having once formed part of its celebrated library. Part III is an editorial conflation of the 1761 and 1768 editions of The Words of such pieces as are most usually performed by the Academy of Ancient Music (plus a short and hitherto unnoticed addition to the latter to be found only in some copies), and keyed to it are the dates of all known performances tabled in Part II. Appendix A provides an annotated list of all those who were named as subscribers on 9 April 1730. This is the last such list to have survived, and here, for the first time, an attempt has been made to identify those various City merchants, clerics and others who are not among those well-known musicians usually named as being members. Appendix B refers to an interesting document now in the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale. It contains not only the names of the subscribers to the 1785–86 season but also a list of all those singers and instrumentalists who were employed by the Academy in 1786–87 (and how much they were paid). Only the latter, however, is reproduced here, and its content has been reordered in the interests of greater clarity. Standard RISM sigla are used for all but a very few library references.

Insights into the social context of living with a dual diagnosis of HIV and cancer: a qualitative, thematic analysis of popular discourse in London newspapers

ABSTRACTAs growing numbers of people living with HIV also develop cancer, a holistic understanding of their experiences is essential to the provision of patient centred care. Both conditions are linked to powerful beliefs in our society that may affect experiences. This study explored how HIV and cancer were represented in UK newspapers to gain insight into the social context of living with a dual diagnosis. We performed an initial content analysis of HIV articles and of cancer articles published in the free London newspapers, The Metro and The Evening Standard between 2012 and 2017, followed by qualitative thematic analysis and in-depth analysis of selected articles of exemplar cases. Both conditions were presented very differently. The underlying subtext was that cancer could happen to any of us. HIV was framed as a potentially dangerous, stigmatising phenomenon affecting “others”. Popular discourse about HIV within news media remains largely negative and stigmatising. People living with a dual diagnosis of HIV and cancer may choose to prioritise the sharing of the more socially acceptable condition, cancer, in order to access support. The negotiation of cancer healthcare services is likely to be adversely influenced by the social burden of HIV related stigma.

“A Requirement of the Age Supplied”: Thomas Atkins &amp; Son and the Business of Water Filtering

“A Requirement of the Age Supplied”: Thomas Atkins & Son and the Business of Water Filtering James Gregory (bio) Other things being equal, of two nations at war with each other the one that manages to supply the soldiers of its army with wholesome food to eat and pure water to drink, will always conquer. What Tommy Atkins wants is “bulk on his inside,” and he wants it pure. (“After-Thoughts” 169) [End Page 216] So observed a Chicago medical journal in 1898. Tommy Atkins was the representative British soldier’s nickname in the nineteenth century; his equipment for Victoria’s “little wars” in Africa and elsewhere included a “pocket” moulded-carbon water filter produced by Thomas Atkins & Son. Captain Walter Ludlow wrote in Zululand and Cetewayo (1882) that had “each man been provided with one of Atkin’s [sic] pocket filters, there would not have been half the sickness among the troops” (97), and Pearson’s Magazine noted in 1903 the “curious coincidence” that the regulation army water filter was known as the “Atkins” (Fitzgerald 249). Pure water was not only a precious commodity for the British armed forces but also valued by civilian travellers abroad. Of course, water filters were also used and valued in the British domestic sphere, in which access to clean water for drinking and washing was a major concern. While there are only fleeting references to commercially produced water filters, such as the Atkins filter, in Victorian literature (in, for example, Charles Reade’s A Terrible Temptation [129]), these items and their makers warrant closer examination than they have received to date.1 Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Glazed earthenware water filter manufactured by Atkins of Fleet Street. Illustration by author. Atkins was a gas engineer, a supporter of Owenite socialism from the 1840s, and a leading manufacturer of domestic filters. As Atkins told a meeting of engineers at the Royal Society of Arts, he had studied the question of water filtration for about a decade before he acquired Charles Harrison’s filtration business in 1860 (“Discussion”). The filters he made and sold were available as glass decanters or in earthenware or stoneware vessels; figure 1 shows an example produced by his son Frank Atkins.2 This short essay about [End Page 217] Victorian-era water filters draws on my ongoing research on Atkins and his associates in order to explore the design, marketing, and use of these easily overlooked but far from insignificant objects. A notice in the London newspaper the Morning Advertiser on 22 July 1862 proposed that “next to the standing problems of perpetual motion, there is probably no other object of human ingenuity upon which so many efforts have been expended.” As this comment indicates, developing filter technology involved much scientific investigation. Nineteenth-century discourse on water drinking expressed and spread fear about the invisible dangers of contamination even in water that appeared “perfectly limpid . . . beautifully transparent and sparkling” (Morning Advertiser). Although the efficacy of their products is difficult to assess, Atkins and his commercial rivals claimed their inventions filtered out impurities and purified water, securing users a safe supply for drinking. Primitive ways of filtering water included using hollowed-out porous stone, and sanitary reformers proposed cheap alternatives to the expensive equipment used by the middle class. During an outbreak of cholera in 1866, one metropolitan newspaper described a “poor man’s filter,” a flowerpot plugged with sponge and containing layers of powdered charcoal, sand, pebbles, coarse gravel, and stones (London Standard). Commercial filters came in various forms and made use of filtering materials that included loose charcoal, wood shavings, iron filings, and asbestos. Atkins’s filter employed finely powdered animal charcoal to which “Norway tar, mixed with a combination of other combustible ingredients, equally finely powdered” was added. Mixed with liquid pitch and kneaded into a paste, the filtering medium was moulded into blocks of varying sizes. These were then subjected to such intense heat that what was left, still in the same shape, was pure carbon “radiated with innumerable extremely fine pores and interstices, from which the combustible ingredients have been burnt out” (Vigilans, Hints to Sanitary Legislators, qtd. in Gori 50). Attitudes...

Magic and Fate in Eighteenth-Century London: Prosecutions for Fortune-Telling, c. 1678–1830

London newspaper and court records of the long eighteenth century constitute good records for the study of magical beliefs and practices, provided that allowances are made for the nascent middle-class prejudices of their compilers. These records reveal, nonetheless, that both middle- and lower-class Londoners resorted to fortune-telling. Popular prognostic services, long called upon to answer specific queries, began more to resemble counselling after 1700, in so doing supplying their clients with self-knowledge and a greater sense of agency.

Gossip and Fiction in Summer 1858: the Dickens Scandal and The Gordian Knot

Gossip and Fiction in Summer 1858: the Dickens Scandal and The Gordian Knot William F. Long (bio) This paper draws attention to a contemporary fictional context of the Dickens marital breakdown in the summer of 1858. Scandal The breakdown of the marriage of Charles and Catherine Dickens in May 1858 provoked speculation about the involvement of a “third party.” Dickens addressed the gossip on 25 May in a letter seemingly intended only for private circulation among the London literati and clubmen to whom the gossip was then largely confined. Locating the origin of the breakdown solely in differences between himself and his wife, and highly critical of Catherine, he referred to “a young lady” whose name had been “coupled with this separation” and who he knew “to be innocent and pure.” In August, the account found its way into public print and thereafter was referred to by Dickens as the “Violated Letter.” He also composed a more guarded “Personal” statement directed to his public. In it he wrote of “Some domestic trouble of mine […] of a sacredly private nature” and “misrepresentations, most grossly false, most monstrous, and most cruel” which implicated “innocent persons.” The statement appeared on 7 June in The Times and elsewhere and was widely reproduced. Mainstream London newspapers, operating in a culture restrained when it came to printing unsubstantiated scandal and mindful of British libel law, published Dickens’s statement with little if any explanatory gloss. More explicit accounts of the rumors, supplied by London correspondents, appeared in contemporary American, provincial British and Irish, and Australian newspapers. (Leary “Viral”; Long “Miss Ternan”, “Third Party”) Several reported that the gossip included reference to a young actress with whom Dickens had acted in Manchester the previous year.1 [End Page 207] An Author and a Novel Denied accounts in their newspapers of commentary on the Dickens scandal, readers in London were nevertheless able in the summer of 1858 to follow the sensational progress of another contemporary marital breakdown. The hit novel of the season, issued in monthly numbers from late December 1857, was an eminently readable story written “with more than the usual refinement.”2 Its opening number received almost universally positive notices.3 Such enthusiasm did not, in general, diminish. By the seventh installment the reviewer in the Era was writing of its author: we linger over every word of his pages with a keen sense of intellectual enjoyment. His characters are not the mere reflections of external life, they are the shadowings of the inward spirit, and it augurs a high order of merit to so represent them. In this graphic and admirable story […] the reader will find something more than the surface manners of society; something above the superficial tone of life and events, with which popular authors usually regale us; and we have no hesitation in saying, that from this work [… the author] will take a literary status, second to no writer of the day.4 The author of this remarkable work was a former Morning Chronicle reporter and soon-to-be editor of the Literary Gazette. He was a contributor to, salaried staff member of and future editor of Punch. (Some said in the 1850s that he wrote all–or at least all the best–letterpress of that comic journal5). As such, he was an intimate of Thackeray, John Leech and Mark Lemon (the then editor of the magazine) among many others, and participated prominently in the gossipy “table talk” at the weekly dinners attended by its staff. He contributed to a wide range of other periodicals and wrote for the theater. A former parliamentary reporter, he wrote entertainingly on (among many other things) topical political matters. He was a member of [End Page 208] the Garrick Club. He was witty, had a bitingly sharp way with words both orally and in print, and was erudite, sociable and hardworking. He moved in the world of the newspaper and periodical office, the private dinner party and the formal gentlemen’s dinner, the green room and the gentleman’s club. In short, he inhabited the circle in which the rumors about Dickens’s marital troubles were then circulating, and to which Dickens had addressed his...