Overview

The nineteenth century saw the arrival of the mass media: high-volume illustrated newspapers and magazines, photography, and the telegraph which connected every part of the Empire. From the beginning, royalty was an essential subject for the media; Victoria's reign was documented in a detail never known before: her accession and coronation, her very public marriage, her travels at home and abroad, her Jubilees, and ultimately her death and funeral. John Plunkett's book is the first to study the role of the media in Queen Victoria's reign. He argues that the development of popular print and visual media in the nineteenth century helped to reinvent the position of the monarchy in national life. He reveals how the royal family was one of the principal beneficiaries of the growth of cheap newspapers and illustrated periodicals and the advent of new media. He brings to light a wealth of previously unexamined material, including a detailed account of the emergence of royal journalism and the role of functionaries like the Court Newsman, and shows how photographs of Victoria were routinely retouched and manipulated in the latter decades of the century.

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9780199253920

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Reviews

... fascinating new book ... Plunkett has given us an extensively researched, carefully argued and eminently readable study. Social History Society Bulletin The book offers surprises and delights: surprise that there is anything new to be said about Queen Victoria and her image, and delight in the fresh, wide-ranging and solid research. History ... attractively and usefully illustrated. History ... a truly splendid book that offers much to the reader interested in nineteenth-century print culture, the monarchy, or media studies. History The documentary side of the book is immensely impressive: Plunkett has done work for which other Victorian scholars will be permanently grateful ... We are made vividly aware of the complex, dynamic relation between social and technological change, and Plunkett's concentration on the monarchy gives the account a clarity and focus which more broadly based studies of Victorian progress often lack. Daniel Karlin, Times Literary Supplement It is the book's range, thoroughness and grasp of exemplary detail which are its real strengths. It is superbly illustrated, and Plunketts scholarship is, as its best, an illustrative rather than an analytic tool. Daniel Karlin, Times Literary Supplement ... a fascinating book. Matthew Engel, The Guardian, ... highly illustrated survey of the way the monarch was reported, the way she was photographed and her position in civic consciousness throughout her long reign. History Today ... fresh look at one of our most successful and popular rulers. The Lady

Author Information

John Plunkett is currently a Junior Research Fellow at the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture, Exeter University. His main research interests are in nineteenth-century print and visual media, especially photography, popular fiction and the periodical press. He is currently working on a book, Optical Recreations, which examines the different types of nineteenth-century domestic and public screen entertainment. In 2002, he held a visiting fellowship at Yale Centre for British Art for work on this project.

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