George Newness and the New Journalism in Britain, 1880-1910: Culture and Profit (Nineteenth Century Series)

This book brings a vast amount of new evidence to bear upon issues which currently preoccupy the scholarly community. It explores the boundaries between history, literary criticism, cultural and media studies and intellectual biography, embracing the debates surrounding the commercialization of culture and concerning the relative importance of production versus reception in the process by which cultural texts create meaning. It is informed by recent developments in the field of periodical research which have produced a model of the periodical text as a culturally embedded and uniquely interactive medium. The subject of the study is George Newnes and his involvement in the "New Journalism" in Britain in the late 19th century. It begins with a survey of the historiography and methodology of periodical research and examines the relevant biographical context. Then it goes on to analyze eight of Newnes' most successful periodicals in terms of his own role in their conception and development, the phase of journalistic evolution to which they belonged, and the cultural environment of which they were a constitutent part.