The Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press: Pictures, Print, and Power

Abstract

Rarely do I read either a Victorian periodical or an edited scholarly collection from front to back. Instead I read selectively, as I suspect most of us do, flipping back and forth between chapters, looking at illustrations and skipping text entirely, and charting my own path through the text. In preparation for this review, I read everything in a linear sequence. This allowed for a greater appreciation of the role of editors in shaping collections, and the role of authors who combine text and image in their scholarship, as Mainardi’s book does. My reading experience was also affected by format. Despite repeated requests, we were unable to obtain a review copy of one of the titles from the publisher. I finally asked my institution’s library to purchase a copy for me. Their preference was to purchase the e-book, making for a very different reading experience from the other two books.