'The expansion of publishing for a mass market in early Victorian Britain was a major factor in creating popular fiction as we now know it. Yet we still know very little about this dark underworld of print culture that emerged in London. This is now transformed through the prodigious research of Robert Kirkpatrick who has given new life to the publishers and writers like Edward Lloyd and G.W.M. Reynolds who shaped the imagination of a generation. Many figures in this volume have previously been unknown to historians. This will become a standard work in the history of popular literature.'Rohan McWilliamProfessor of Modern British History, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

Fleet Street in the 19th century was not just home to daily and weekly newspapers, but more importantly radical publishers who campaigned for political reform, a free press and the repeal of newspaper taxes; and a growing market in cheap and sensational literature—penny bloods, story papers and popular magazines and books aimed at the masses. This was Bohemian Fleet Street, which took place not just on Fleet Street itself, along with its courts and alleyways, but also neighbouring thoroughfares such as the Strand, Holywell Street and Paternoster Row. This book charts the lives and careers of around 100 of these publishers. It highlights the wealth of those who grew rich with the poverty of those who struggled. It also reveals new biographical information, filling in gaps and correcting mistakes in previously-published biographies and directory entries, and also about those whose lives have been hitherto unrecorded, but who played an integral part in the development of cheap, accessible and popular literature.
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781036445935
Publisert
2025-06-01
Utgiver
Cambridge Scholars Publishing; Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Høyde
212 mm
Bredde
148 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
479

Om bidragsyterne

Robert J. Kirkpatrick is an independent researcher who has written widely on the subjects of boys' school fiction, boys' story papers and penny dreadfuls. His books include From The Penny Dreadful to the Ha'penny Dreadfuller: A Bibliographic History of the Boys' Periodical in Britain, 1762–1950 (2013), Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby and the Yorkshire Schools: Fact v Fiction (2017), and Before Tom Brown: The Origins of the School Story (2024). He has been Secretary of the Children's Books History Society since 2012.