Overview

A glance over the back pages of mid-nineteenth-century newspapers and periodicals published in London reveals that Wellington Street stands out among imprint addresses. Between 1843 and 1853, Household Words, Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper, the Examiner, Punch, the Athenaeum, the Spectator, the Morning Post, and the serial edition of London Labour and the London Poor, to name a few, were all published from this short street off the Strand. Mary L. Shannon identifies, for the first time, the close proximity of the offices of Charles Dickens, G.W.M. Reynolds, and Henry Mayhew, examining the ramifications for the individual authors and for nineteenth-century publishing. What are the implications of Charles Dickens, his arch-competitor the radical publisher G.W.M. Reynolds, and Henry Mayhew being such close neighbours? Given that London was capital of more than Britain alone, what connections does Wellington Street reveal between London print networks and the print culture and networks of the wider empire? How might the editors' experiences make us rethink the ways in which they and others addressed their anonymous readers as `friends', as if they were part of their immediate social network? As Shannon shows, readers in the London of the 1840s and '50s, despite advances in literacy, print technology, and communications, were not simply an `imagined community' of individuals who read in silent privacy, but active members of an imagined network that punctured the anonymity of the teeming city and even the empire.

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9781472442062

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'Mary L. Shannon's informative book offers an entirely new way to think about print culture. In focusing on Wellington Street off the Strand, where important Victorian writers such as Dickens, Mayhew, and Reynolds maintained their offices, she demonstrates the significance of geography for understanding the print networks that developed in midcentury London.' Anne Humpherys, City University of New York, USA, author of Travels into the Poor Man's Country: The Work of Henry Mayhew 'Shannon's ambitious project reflects extensive reading in contemporary critical theory. ... By investigating a print culture being created within a specific time and space, she opens interesting avenues for further exploration. Her monograph stands as a lively and valuable contribution to contemporary research into Victorian periodical publications.' NBOL-19

'Mary L. Shannon's informative book offers an entirely new way to think about print culture. In focusing on Wellington Street off the Strand, where important Victorian writers such as Dickens, Mayhew, and Reynolds maintained their offices, she demonstrates the significance of geography for understanding the print networks that developed in midcentury London.'Anne Humpherys, City University of New York, USA, author of Travels into the Poor Man's Country: The Work of Henry Mayhew'Shannon's ambitious project reflects extensive reading in contemporary critical theory. ... By investigating a print culture being created within a specific time and space, she opens interesting avenues for further exploration. Her monograph stands as a lively and valuable contribution to contemporary research into Victorian periodical publications.'NBOL-19

Author Information

Mary L. Shannon received her BA from the University of Cambridge and her PhD from King's College London. She is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of English and Creative Writing, University of Roehampton, London. She works on early nineteenth-century print culture and visual culture, with particular interests in literary networks, cultural geography, periodicals, and literature about London.

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