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Books by Andrew Hobbs

Anthony Hewitson (1836-1912) was a typical Victorian journalist, working in one of the largest se... more Anthony Hewitson (1836-1912) was a typical Victorian journalist, working in one of the largest sectors of the periodical press, provincial newspapers. His diaries, written between 1862 and 1912, lift the veil of anonymity hiding the people, processes and networks involved in the creation of Victorian newspapers. They also tell us about Victorian fatherhood, family life, and the culture of a Victorian town.

Diaries of nineteenth-century provincial journalists are extremely rare. Anthony Hewitson went from printer’s apprentice to newspaper reporter and eventually editor of his own paper. Every night he jotted down the day’s doings, his thoughts and feelings. The diaries are a lively account of the reporter’s daily round, covering meetings and court cases, hunting for gossip or attending public executions and variety shows, in and around Preston, Lancashire.

Andrew Hobbs’s introduction and footnotes provide background and analysis of these valuable documents. This full scholarly edition offers a wealth of new information about reporting, freelancing, sub-editing, newspaper ownership and publishing, and illuminates aspects of Victorian periodicals and culture extending far beyond provincial newspapers.

The Diaries of Anthony Hewitson, Provincial Journalist are an indispensable research tool for local and regional historians, as well as social and political historians with an interest in Victorian studies and the media. They are also illuminating for anyone interested in nineteenth-century social and cultural history.

Open Book Publishers gratefully acknowledge funding for this book from the Marc Fitch Fund, the Historic Society of Lancashire & Cheshire, and the University of Central Lancashire.

At the heart of Victorian culture was the local weekly newspaper. More popular than books, more w... more At the heart of Victorian culture was the local weekly newspaper. More popular than books, more widely read than the London papers, the local press was a national phenomenon. This book redraws the Victorian cultural map, shifting our focus away from one centre, London, and towards the many centres of the provinces. It offers a new paradigm in which place, and a sense of place, are vital to the histories of the newspaper, reading and publishing.

Hobbs offers new perspectives on the nineteenth century from an enormous yet neglected body of literature: the hundreds of local newspapers published and read across England. He reveals the people, processes and networks behind the publishing, maintaining a unique focus on readers and what they did with the local paper as individuals, families and communities. Case studies and an unusual mix of quantitative and qualitative evidence show that the vast majority of readers preferred the local paper, because it was about them and the places they loved.

A Fleet Street in Every Town positions the local paper at the centre of debates on Victorian newspapers, periodicals, reading and publishing. It reorientates our view of the Victorian press away from metropolitan high culture and parliamentary politics, and towards the places where most people lived, loved and read. This is an essential book for anybody interested in nineteenth-century print culture, journalism and reading.

Reviews:

Beautifully written and skilfully argued, Andrew Hobbs’s book makes a significant contribution to the study of the Victorian newspaper and periodical press. He reminds us that readers—the ordinary working people whose mindset historians care about—looked to the journalism of their local communities. The book also contributes to a broader social and cultural historiography—not only of Preston but of the whole concept of ‘locality’ and communication in Britain’s nineteenth century.
—Prof. Leslie Howsam, University of Windsor

Hobbs’ new book on the local press in Britain is remarkable for its original research, its granularity and its diversity. On a topic that has been genuinely neglected by scholars, it is a convincing illustration that the difficult task of documenting the ‘historical’ reader is achievable on a convincing scale, which will inform our understanding of the ‘implied’ reader. Hobbs’ huge array of sources is clearly shaped and presented accessibly. A Fleet Street in Every Town is unparalleled in studies of the local press.
—Prof. Laurel Brake, Birkbeck, University of London

Papers by Andrew Hobbs

I love being part of a scholarly community, and I owe so much to the generosity, time, encouragem... more I love being part of a scholarly community, and I owe so much to the generosity, time, encouragement and practical help of other members of this community. Thanks to Dave Russell and Steve Caunce for taking this project seriously in the first place, and for their excellent supervision, with the help of Dawn Archer; to other historians at the University of Central Lancashire, past and present, who have offered encouragement and inspiration to so many mature students like myself, including

Victorian Periodicals Review, 2020

Open Book Publishers, Nov 1, 2018

Open Book Publishers, Sep 22, 2022

Thursday 1 January 1874 God, our universal father, let this year be a more prosperous & a happier... more Thursday 1 January 1874 God, our universal father, let this year be a more prosperous & a happier year than any I & mine have had. Rose at 8.50 this morning; breakfast; work; at 11.25 to annual general sessions at Court house; in af[ternoo]n sent off report to M[an]chester & L[iver]pool papers. At night to Chapman's 2 juvenile party (Cattle Market Hotel) where my wife had previously gone with Bert, Florence & Horace. Home about 11 o'c[loc]k. Friday 2 January 1874 Up at 8.30. Working hard; at night had another difficulty with the machine in printing paper. John Forshaw, 3 solicitor, elected a member for St Peter's ward today , in place of Mr Thos Edelston,* solicitor, who was yesterday made an alderman in place of late Mr M Myres. 4 Saturday 3 January 1874 Got to sleep at 5.5 this morning; up at 6.20. Working till 11o'c[loc]k at night. Sunday 4 January 1874 Rose at 1 pm. In af[ternoo]n & evening read a work on the Devil a Myth, Death bed scenes of infidels & Dr Brewer's Greek History Questions & Answers. 5 At 9.45 went to France's* for my wife & sister in law Jane;* stayed awhile; then home & to bed. Monday 5 January 1874 Working all day. This day Mr E Myres, 6 nephew of late coroner, & a candidate for his place as such issued his retiring address.

Open Book Publishers, Nov 1, 2018

Open Book Publishers, Sep 22, 2022

Manchester Region History Review, 2023

This article describes the birth of one of Britain's most successful regional magazines, Cheshire... more This article describes the birth of one of Britain's most successful regional magazines, Cheshire Life, in 1934, in the context of the economic and social changes of the times, analysing it as a media product and historical source. Cheshire Life is part of a publishing genre-the county and regional magazine-which includes some sixty-five titles across England, with a monthly readership in the millions. This significant readership alone makes it worthy of academic study. But magazines like Cheshire Life can tell us about county identities and their history, attitudes to the countryside, the relationship between social class and sense of place, the changing role of the country house, countryside and nature writing and publishing, landscape photography and the broader regional media ecology. The magazine began as the mouthpiece for an economic development council during the Depression, but came under new ownership in 1935, leading to rapid and significant changes in its content and fortunes. The new publisher, Christopher Nicholls, had a huge influence on Cheshire Life and on county magazines as a genre, setting a template which is still in use today. Nicholls successfully created an advertising vehicle which grew fat on the 1930s' consumer advertising boom, filled with photographs and other editorial benefiting from the cachet of the county set. The decline of the gentry as political and economic leaders can be seen in the magazine, but their social world of 'county society' lived on, eagerly adopted by a segment of the rising middle class.

The Future of Quality News Journalism: A Cross-Continental Analysis, 2014

This chapter argues that UK TV news and current affairs are currently in rude health, with sound ... more This chapter argues that UK TV news and current affairs are currently in rude health, with sound prospects for the short to medium term. The situation for radio is more mixed. As far as TV is concerned, a new respect for the audience has led to high-quality, imaginatively crafted output, still watched by millions, despite a growing choice of TV channels and other media devices—TV is the main source of news for 74% of the UK population; the internet is the main source for only 7% (Foster 2011, 15). We use three case studies to demonstrate how weighty issues such as regulation of private health care and globalisation can be intelligently presented in ways that are still attractive to mass audiences and in line with the understanding of quality set down in chapter one. Our conclusions are based on a review of the academic literature, interviews with seven senior broadcasters across TV and radio, BBC, ITN and Sky News and our own focus group research.

Andrew King (ed), Work and the Nineteenth-Century Press Living Work for Living People (Routledge), 2023

What was the best day on which to publish a nineteenth-century provincial weekly newspaper? Manch... more What was the best day on which to publish a nineteenth-century provincial weekly newspaper? Manchester’s Exchange Herald (1809-36), Manchester Advertiser (1825-48?) and Manchester Commercial Journal (1825) all chose Tuesday, the busiest day on the town’s cotton exchange; the Dumfries and Galloway Standard (1843-) chose Wednesday, market day, as did the Oswestry Advertizer (1849-); in East Anglia most weeklies published on a Friday, a common market day in that region. The Manchester papers were explicitly business-oriented, but for most local weekly papers also, the day of publication revealed their primary purpose in the first half of the century: to provide the market information or “commercial intelligence” needed by business people near and far. Most provincial publications were not specialist trade or professional titles, but in aggregate they published as much, if not more, information about trade and work (less so for the professions). This chapter uses content analysis and close reading to provide the first detailed examination of business and work information in the nineteenth-century provincial press, revealing the surprising scale and ubiquity of such information, which was gathered to serve unique local readerships in a way that the national trade press could not rival. It also shows how the local press published material celebrating the cultural aspects of occupational identities, such as the work of shoemaker poets.

The Diaries of Anthony Hewitson, Provincial Journalist, vol. 1

In his study of the political press in the twentieth century, Stephen Koss noted that if his work... more In his study of the political press in the twentieth century, Stephen Koss noted that if his work neglected provincial newspapers it was because they had 'received short shrift in reality'. 1 His implication was that political parties wished to utilize the growing national (London) press and saw little use for provincial titles. Certainly, there are several studies which have demonstrated that the sale of national newspapers, such as the Daily Mail, grew rapidly in the 1920s and 1930s. 2 Not only did the national press expand, the market was increasingly dominated by a small number of press groups. By the late 1930s they accounted for 43% of press ownership. 3 Colin Seymour-Ure argued that the content of the provincial press became less partisan in this period and, with the growth of national newspapers, there was a decline in the abilities of political parties to express 'regional particularism.' 4 Matthew Dawson agreed that these processes, in addition to the use of the wireless, weakened the relationship between politics and the provincial press after 1918. 5 Whilst historians agree that the sale of national newspapers increased, the extent to which they dominated has been challenged. Tom O'Malley questioned the definition of the term 'national' which he sees as being too generalised for the interwar period. 6 He referred to several issues, such as the lack of appeal to female readers, and the regional variations in

The Diaries of Anthony Hewitson, Provincial Journalist, vol. 1

Open Book Publishers gratefully acknowledge funding for this book from the Marc Fitch Fund, the Historic Society of Lancashire & Cheshire, and the University of Central Lancashire.

Reviews:

Victorian Periodicals Review, 2020

Open Book Publishers, Nov 1, 2018

Open Book Publishers, Sep 22, 2022

Open Book Publishers, Nov 1, 2018

Open Book Publishers, Sep 22, 2022

Manchester Region History Review, 2023

The Future of Quality News Journalism: A Cross-Continental Analysis, 2014

Andrew King (ed), Work and the Nineteenth-Century Press Living Work for Living People (Routledge), 2023

The Diaries of Anthony Hewitson, Provincial Journalist, vol. 1

The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, Volume 2, 2020

Quarry owner William Saunders (1823-95) applied industrial methods to the supply of news as a com... more Quarry owner William Saunders (1823-95) applied industrial methods to the supply of news as a commodity, experimenting with centralised and networked solutions to the problem of news distribution. He entered the newspaper industry in Plymouth, launching the Western Morning News in 1860, and in 1863 he and his brother-in-law Edward Spender set up one of the first UK news agencies, the Central Press, in London, supplying news and other editorial matter to provincial papers. He founded or purchased other papers around the country, and shared content between them – to some resistance, mainly from journalists. Saunders’s career highlights the dependence of many provincial papers on central sources of news and content, and challenges simple ideas of local, national and provincial. It also shows the contrast between the romantic myths about local journalism peddled by journalists, and the industrial reality of the syndication processes by which those myths were disseminated.

The local newspaper was one of the most popular types of publication in Victorian England. Most o... more The local newspaper was one of the most popular types of publication
in Victorian England. Most of the content was written by full-time
journalists, but between a quarter and a third of editorial texts were
produced by a hidden army of district correspondents, campaigners,
experts in regional history and topography, poets, inveterate
letter-writers and dialect aficionados, and officers of clubs,
societies and local institutions. The uniform columns of print
disguise the number and variety of amateur authors, comprising men,
women and children from all classes. Their writings and their lives
take us beyond the canonical fraction’ (Moretti 2000) of journalism
and literature, requiring us to rethink questions of professionalism,
authorship, place, the nature of the newspaper and of citizenship
itself.
A focus on amateur writers allows us to reassess post-Habermas debates
about the rise and fall, re-emergence and limitations of the public
sphere. It forces us, at least, to consider the uneven development of
a space in which private citizens could join public debate. ‘The
process of professionalisation … requires the “invention of
amateurism”’ (Taylor 1995). Journalists failed to establish
themselves as a profession (Hampton 1999), and therefore failed to
differentiate themselves from amateurs, dilettantes and dabblers. This
may explain the scholarly neglect of this penumbra of non-journalists
who produced journalism.
This paper begins to recover and interrogate the hidden world of the
amateur local newspaper contributor by examining these writers and
their writing. Who were these amateur contributors and what did they
write? Why did they write, and in what circumstances? Case studies of
three types of contributor are discussed: the district correspondent,
the social and political activist (a survival of Chalaby’s
‘publicist’) and the learned local expert. Some became
‘professional’ journalists and literary celebrities, most did not.
They shared a sense of place, but were differentiated by class,
gender, age, religion, politics and motivation. They were readers who
wrote, forming ‘interpretive communities’ (Fish 1976) around each
newspaper.
This paper aims to cast new light on debates about the
professionalization of journalism and the chronology of the public
sphere. It challenges conventional perceptions that the local
newspaper was a minor part of Victorian print culture; that few
non-professional writers were published; and that literary culture was
situated largely in London. It redefines the local newspaper as a
porous, culturally democratic and broadly inclusive publishing
platform, encouraging popular participation the local hub of a
geographically distributed, truly national print culture.

Preliminary study of history publishing in weekly local newspapers of the Victorian era. Quantita... more Preliminary study of history publishing in weekly local newspapers of the Victorian era. Quantitative analysis suggests that more history was published in local papers than in books, which promises to change our ideas about how the public consumed history writing.

The glossy county magazine, plump with ‘property porn’, fluffy feature articles and photographs o... more The glossy county magazine, plump with ‘property porn’, fluffy feature articles and photographs of nouveau-riche guests at charity balls, is mocked more often than analysed. Yet by the end of the twentieth century, almost 300 county and regional magazines were published across Britain, with a monthly readership in the order of ten million. Readers of this genre developed strong relationships with their chosen publication, and this loyalty was partly due to the promotion and exploitation of local, county and regional identities. This chapter will offer a twentieth-century publishing history of the county magazine as genre, using interviews with publishers and editors, case studies of particular titles, and content analysis, including the use of readers’ letters. It will trace their development from learned, patrician and instrumental publications in the 1930s, often set up to promote rural and industrial development during the Depression; through a more popular, progressive middle-brow phase in the 1950s and 1960s, to their present consumerist identity, beginning in the 1980s. Throughout, the chapter will identify the techniques used to promote county and other geographical identities, and assess reader response; it will also interrogate the ancient, complex and diminishing identity of the county, and analyse the intersection of class identities. Reference will also be made to the genre’s relationships with other media, particularly newspapers, books and regional broadcasting.

"This paper uses Stead’s New Journalism to examine the relationship between provincial and metrop... more "This paper uses Stead’s New Journalism to examine the relationship between provincial and metropolitan newspapers in the Victorian era, and to complicate current narratives of British press history. Stead established his journalistic reputation on a provincial newspaper, the Northern Echo, and brought many journalistic innovations from North-East England when he joined the Pall Mall Gazette in London in 1880. These facts are generally fitted into two narratives: the decline of the press from Fourth Estate to the ‘feather-brained’ populism of the New Journalism, and the backward provinces as training-ground for the brightest and best journalists who inevitably made their way to London.

However, such narratives are only sustainable when the majority of Victorian newspapers - those of the provinces - are ignored in favour of the metropolitan press. Local and regional newspapers employed more journalists, sold more copies and were more widely read than London papers from mid-century onwards, and this provincial dominance requires a re-thinking of press historiography.

This paper traces the development of New Journalism techniques, chronologically and geographically, throughout Britain. Such ‘markers’ of New Journalism include a more personal address to the reader, the interview, bold headlines, shorter words, sentences, paragraphs and stories, moral crusades, maps, illustrations and indexing. The results of this analysis suggest that Stead’s journalistic style was part of a tradition, especially prevalent in Scotland and northern England, but also related to developments in the United States and in London, in newspapers and periodicals.

By highlighting the ‘where’ as well as the ‘when’ of newspaper history, this paper makes a preliminary attempt to develop a coherent narrative from the contradictory strands of historiography on the London and the provincial press."

This paper focuses on the most common type of Victorian periodical, the local newspaper. It offer... more This paper focuses on the most common type of Victorian periodical, the local newspaper. It offers a survey of techniques used by the provincial press in the second half of the nineteenth century for the exploitation of local patriotism. Such techniques wove these publications into the fabric of cultural life in a provincial town, as a mirror, magnifier and maker of local culture. Newspapers did more than report their localities, they became part of the loop of making and re-making culture, giving them the status of local institution. From the inclusion of a town’s name in a newspaper’s title to its partisan reporting of the local football team, sense of place was central to its cultural work.

Conceptualising local identity as a complex and dynamic set of ideas, feelings and habits, this paper argues that the miscellaneity of the press enabled it to function as a portmanteau, a box with ‘local’ emblazoned on its side, so that whatever was put in the box automatically became local – or locally mediated. In this way, the press was able to roll together many of the factors involved in local identity formation.

Techniques for promoting local identity included visual devices such as symbols, emblems, maps and drawings of local scenes and people. Content was arranged by geographical proximity, distinguishing between local, district, ‘general’ and foreign news. Thus, each of the hundreds of local papers in Britain challenged metropolitan ideas of core and periphery, instead presenting their publishing centres as the core of their readers’ lives. Foreign news was often localised, through letters by expatriates from newsworthy parts of the world, and in other ways the world was seen through a local lens, so that Rome’s most famous avenue could be compared to the high street of a Lancashire cotton town, for example. Local and localised poetry, serial fiction, dialect literature, history and topography was published, bestowing the prestige of print on each place mentioned. Journalists’ rhetorical techniques encompassed the use of inclusive first-person plural pronouns, and dialect expressions. Advertisements for local businesses and events unwittingly made each district’s newspapers distinctive, reflecting the local economy and local concerns. More direct interventions included the initiation of social, charitable and educational activities, and the physical presence of newspaper offices in town centres as prominent local businesses.

Journalists believed that such techniques made their newspapers more attractive and profitable, and also enhanced local cultural life. Readers’ diaries, letters to the editor and the records of public reading places bear out this belief, confirming that the expression of local identity was important to readers, particularly at moments when local identities were under threat. The paper concludes that local newspapers played a part in the cultural work of creating community and argues that place, and readers’ sense of place, are valuable analytical categories in the study of Victorian periodicals.

County and local magazines are flourishing, unlike the regional newspaper press. But where did th... more County and local magazines are flourishing, unlike the regional newspaper press. But where did these publications come from? This paper begins to map the history of the magazine outside London, with a focus on twentieth-century county magazines.
After suggesting some definitions to differentiate between periodicals and newspapers, and between national publications produced outside London and those with local content, this paper offers a timeline and a typology from the early nineteenth century to the present day, with illustrative examples. It then focuses on the development of the county magazine as we know it today, beginning with the Sussex County Magazine in the 1920s, and the output of the largest mid-century publisher of this genre, English Life Publications of Derby, working in collaboration with rural development agencies. The editors and contributors of these publications included novelists, poets and personnel from national magazines, such as JB Priestley, Raymond Postgate (founder member of the British Communist Party and founder of the Good Food Guide), and the northern editor of Picture Post.
Factors in the success of the twentieth-century provincial magazine are examined, including the decline of the regional morning newspaper, the growing interest in the countryside, and the post-war boom. While this history does not challenge the supremacy of London as a magazine publishing centre, it does highlight the reader appeal and commercial value of local identities and sense of place in this fascinating and neglected sector of magazine publishing.

Tripe, a type of offal made from the cow’s stomach, was once eaten all over Britain and Ireland. ... more Tripe, a type of offal made from the cow’s stomach, was once eaten all over Britain and Ireland. It is mentioned in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, Pepys was fond of it and Dickens portrayed it as a cheap, hearty, filling dish, eaten in the South of England (indeed it is absent from his northern novel, Hard Times). Yet today it is seen as comical and repugnant, eaten only by old people in certain backward parts of Northern England. This paper traces the changing perceptions of this foodstuff, and relates them to regional identities in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. It argues that there were three strands in the changing perception of tripe: first, a decline in status and a descent down the class gradient; second, a growing association with a particular region of England as a ‘regional survival’, and third, the development of comic associations. Using a wide range of evidence, from literature, social commentary such as George Orwell, popular music and film (George Formby and Gracie Fields), comedians such as Ken Dodd and cartoonists such as Bill Tidy, this paper compares such representations with indicators from social history, such as quantitative analysis of tripe recipes and numbers of tripedressers by region. This evidence is marshalled to demonstrate that food is an important element in regional identity, that such identities can mediate broader influences such as Bourdieu’s ‘distinction’, and that internal cultural representations produced from within Northern England interact with external representations, constructed largely in London, the centre of English cultural power. Perceptions of a foodstuff such as tripe can reveal a great deal about wider perceptions of the region with which it has become associated.

The Times was a mid-19th-century newspaper phenomenon, defeating rival metropolitan newspapers th... more The Times was a mid-19th-century newspaper phenomenon, defeating rival metropolitan newspapers through its technology, editorial resources and access to powerful politicians. It was greatly valued for its political and diplomatic news, and particularly for its leading articles. Its authority enabled it to bring down governments. However, the uniqueness of the Times limits its usefulness as a historical source in many ways.

The Times was not typical of 19th-century newspapers. It was published in London, whereas the majority of newspapers were published in the provinces; about half its content was advertising, and it concentrated on political, foreign and commercial news, with little non-news content. Coverage of news outside the South-East of England was minimal. For most of the 19th century, its sales were unremarkable in comparison with other titles, and it was outsold by some provincial newspapers. As an institution it has been unusually self-conscious, and has fostered myths about itself more successfully than other newspapers. These myths, and the accessibility of its content via Palmer’s index, have made it attractive to many historians.

As a historical source, its strengths are in the fields of traditional Parliamentary political history and diplomatic history, and as ‘an organ of the common, satisfied, well-to-do Englishman’, in Matthew Arnold’s words. Its weaknesses are that it can tell us little about public opinion, about news events around the nation, about the lives of the vast majority of the population, nor about the majority of political activity in 19th-century Britain, making it an unreliable and insignificant source for ‘national’ histories. The status of the Times has led many historians to believe that most newspapers were equally humourless, news-oriented and male, that, anachronistically, the Times was a ‘national’ newspaper, and that metropolitan newspapers were more popular or influential than provincial titles.

This paper examines the limitations of the Times as a historical source and how undue emphasis on one London title has distorted 19th-century newspaper historiography.

This paper examines theories of media sociology in the light of evidence from Victorian local new... more This paper examines theories of media sociology in the light of evidence from Victorian local newspaper readers, to suggest that readers related to other readers and to other inhabitants of their locality, rather than to local publications.

While there is concrete evidence that some behaviour was affected by the content of the Victorian local press, such clear influence is probably not representative. The connection between what journalists wrote, and how readers responded, was usually much looser. Analysis of readers’ letters to newspapers in Preston, Lancashire in the second half of the 19th century found that readers responded more readily to other actors in their locality, or to other readers, than to the traditionally accepted repository of newspaper opinion, the leader column.

Stanley Fish’s theory of ‘interpretive communities’ is developed to enable reading to be put into place, a category often neglected in the history and theorisation of reading. The concept of interpretive communities helps us to understand the nature of 19th-century local newspapers: how they were expressions of communities such as Nonconformism, how political techniques such as ‘kite-flying’ could be seen as gentle repositioning of frames or interpretive strategies, how the serial nature of newspapers enabled repetition of frames, and the building of trust or ‘source credibility’, how their interactive nature made interpretive communities dynamic and historically and geographically specific, and how tropes such as oppositional journalism could bind communities of readers together.

Other reader evidence shows that the local press confirmed readers’ attitudes rather than changing them, following James Carey. Little reader evidence was found in support of theories that local print culture created or developed an ‘imagined community’, suggesting that Benedict Anderson’s theory may only have value where communities and identities are seriously threatened or disputed.

A significant trade in secondhand newspapers and periodicals was conducted by nineteenth-century ... more A significant trade in secondhand newspapers and periodicals was conducted by nineteenth-century news rooms and reading rooms, and (for periodicals) by circulating libraries such as Mudie’s and WH Smith. At yearly or quarterly auctions, members of news rooms bid in advance for the right to take home copies of each title, once the next issue arrived. Records of this ‘futures market’ in back issues provide a fascinating index of popularity, and were reported as such by provincial and metropolitan newspapers. Calculating their re-sale values as a proportion of their cover price gives a rough measure of the perceived value of these secondhand publications. A representative sample of three types of publications – periodicals, big city newspapers and local papers – auctioned at a provincial gentlemen’s club (the Winckley Club, Preston, Lancashire) reveals marked differences in the value of each genre, and change over time. This method of distributing newspapers and periodicals gives clues as to how readers valued different types of reading material, and reveals the long ‘after-life’ of supposedly ephemeral publications.

Nineteenth and twentieth century newspapers routinely published multiple editions bearing the sam... more Nineteenth and twentieth century newspapers routinely published multiple editions bearing the same date, either to cater for different geographical areas, to provide updated news, or both. However, historical and literary understandings of newspapers struggle with these facts.

In the early nineteenth century, the Northern Star published up to nine editions, all carrying the same date. Later in the century and well into the twentieth century, evening newspapers published similar numbers of editions. Editionising was the key to the Daily Mail’s breakthrough as the first genuinely national mass-market newspaper, made possible by the simultaneous publication of a northern edition from Manchester in 1900. Editionising was also central to the invention of the newspaper chain, for example the 24 titles owned by WE Baxter in Sussex, Hampshire and Kent, or the seven titles owned by Alexander Mackie in Lancashire and Cheshire.

The ability and the need to editionise changed over time, with the growth of the railways and the telegraph, and the rise in newspaper reading and purchase.

From the reader’s point of view, choice over which edition to read or purchase was constrained by the decisions of publishers, newsagents and owners of reading rooms and news rooms. Reader awareness that multiple editions existed was also limited, particularly for editions of ‘national’ newspapers. Where there was reader awareness, editionising may have reinforced notions of cultural and economic core and periphery, for example with Welsh editions of English papers. When back copies of papers were bound for reference (challenging ideas of newspapers as ephemeral), further decisions were made about which edition to keep and which to discard.

An implicit hierarchy of print culture, with books at the top and newspapers near the bottom, has guided librarians, historians and literary scholars, so that certain texts, for example late Saturday football editions of evening papers, have often not survived. Scholars have too often been oblivious to the many decisions behind the survival of a single edition of a publication. This has led them to ignore the complexities of the serial as a material and cultural product and to make assumptions about the texts available to readers, based on surviving editions which may have been seen by only a minority of that publications’ readers.

Some of these issues were identified by the editors of the ‘nineteenth century serial edition’ (www.ncse.ac.uk), who chose to include all available variant editions in their digitisation of six titles. This brave and costly course has been followed by few publishers, thereby condoning the invisibility of editionising into the digital age.

This paper aims to briefly outline the evidence for editionising, and to show how an awareness of the phenomenon can challenge and illuminate current ideas about the history of the newspaper. It urges the importance of bringing together the material, commercial and cultural aspects of newspapers in order to better understand these complex examples of print culture.

‘It would be doing a great service to the cause of Catholic Truth if our friends up and down thro... more ‘It would be doing a great service to the cause of Catholic Truth if our friends up and down through the country would send us – immediately they come across it – any slander upon the Catholic religion published either in the Press or from the platform. A prompt refutation will be given in these columns, and the evil can be met by circulating THE ANTIDOTE freely on the spot where the slander arose.’ This was the manifesto of The Antidote (1890-1892), in effect a ‘rapid rebuttal’ weekly, published nationally from Preston, England’s most Catholic town, 1890-92 (it began as, and later reverted to, a column in The Catholic News). The Antidote supplied theological and rhetorical ammunition to Roman Catholics, enabling them to conduct controversies in the letters pages of local and national newspapers. It encouraged and critiqued exchanges between readers, with a clear agenda of defending the Roman Catholic faith in a largely hostile newspaper environment. This paper will describe the content and context of The Antidote, and what this tells us about exchanges between Roman Catholic readers and their opponents, and how Catholic readers understood the mainstream press and their role in shaping its content.

This paper argues that there was no national press in the 19th century, as we understand the term... more This paper argues that there was no national press in the 19th century, as we understand the term ‘national’ today (the category was not used by contemporaries). Some London publications such as radical unstamped newspapers, popular Sunday papers, the Illustrated London News and The Times could be described as national –however, they had an incomplete geographical reach, were read by small minorities and only carried news of certain areas of the country. In contrast, if we consider the local and provincial press as one system rather than a collection of isolated publications, the local press was a national press. There are good reasons for treating it as a system – that is how advertisers, publishers and journalists saw it; it functioned as a system, with personnel, content, business and editorial innovations moving freely around a national network of local papers. Further, local matter (editorial and advertising) usually constituted a minority of the content of the local press these newspapers carried considerable Parliamentary and foreign news, plus stories from across the British Isles (gathered directly or indirectly from other local papers) and national advertisements. Syndicated fiction, features, leader columns and London letters, press agency material, pre-printed ‘middles’, chains of local papers and non-resident editors all cast doubt on the notion of ‘local’ papers. The historiography of 19th-century newspapers acknowledges all these matters, alongside the far greater numbers of provincial papers; yet the implications have not been pursued: that the local press as a system was more integrated into the everyday lives of individuals and communities than metropolitan publications; its wider circulation and greater relevance to readers meant that it probably had more influence than the London press, and it therefore deserves much more study.

The 19th-century development of mass literacy occurred at the same time as an explosion in newspa... more The 19th-century development of mass literacy occurred at the same time as an explosion in newspaper publishing, particularly outside London. Changes in central government policy on literacy produced a torrent of cheap literature from publishers, and at the centre of this new reading world was the local newspaper. This talk examines the relationship between the growth of literacy and the growth of local newspapers, using the town of Preston as a case study.

The Victorian local press was ubiquitous. Manchester supported 206 titles by 1888, while more tha... more The Victorian local press was ubiquitous. Manchester supported 206 titles by 1888, while more than 40 titles came and went in the much smaller Lancashire town of Preston during the 19th century. For most readers, local newspapers and periodicals were central to their reading world, so it seems likely that these readers were influenced, to some extent, by the languages of class found in such publications. This paper examines the use of Lancashire dialect in local newspapers in Preston for what it reveals about attitudes to class, among editors and journalists, occasional contributors, and newspaper readers. Dialect appears mainly in three forms in the Preston local press – in the established literary genre of dialect literature, mixed with standard English in letters from readers, and in the reported speech of court cases. In the first two contexts place trumps class, and the common interests of all groups are emphasised, but in the third context class trumps place, and dialect is used as a marker of the working-class status of witnesses and defendants. Here, it appears that readers are invited to laugh at figures who talk in ‘mere provincialisms’, despite evidence that most of the Lancashire middle classes also spoke in dialect, and were avid readers and sponsors of dialect literature. This paper examines change over time in local newspapers’ handling of dialect, as the proportion of their working-class readers grew, and analyses the interaction of place and class, particularly for middle-class newspaper readers.

Some periodicals have stronger personalities than others. This paper attempts to identify and ana... more Some periodicals have stronger personalities than others. This paper attempts to identify and analyse some of the factors involved in making a publication distinctive, through a case study of a local weekly newspaper in Preston, Lancashire. In 1868 the Preston Chronicle, one of four newspapers then published in Preston, was bought by Anthony Hewitson (1836-1912), a journalist and local historian. Through 22 years, until he sold the paper in 1890, Hewitson remade the Chronicle in his own image, largely in the articles he wrote under the pen-name ‘Atticus’. This study is based on two sources: Hewitson’s diary, and the British Library’s newly digitised edition of the Preston Chronicle. The latter source has been analysed using simple ‘text mining’ methods. Hewitson gave his publication a distinctive character, both as a means of self-expression for an accomplished writer, and as a commercial necessity in a small but crowded marketplace. This paper attempts to delineate some of the techniques he used, and to assess his readers’ responses.

One way to make concrete the reading experiences of the past is to piece together the scraps of e... more One way to make concrete the reading experiences of the past is to piece together the scraps of evidence available for a particular place at particular times. This paper builds on the methods and insights of Richard Altick and David Vincent to foreground place in the history of reading, with a focus on local newspapers and periodicals. Reading places in the industrial town of Preston, Lancashire have been mapped during the second half of the 19th century, from evidence in trade directories, library reports, autobiographies, newspaper articles and advertisements, oral history and photographs. Plotting the location over time of reading rooms and newsrooms, libraries, newsagents and other reading places confirms a move from public to private reading, and an increase in non-local reading matter. However, local newspapers and periodicals remained a significant and popular part of this geographically specific reading world. Quantitative and qualitative methods are used to show how reading habits and readers’ responses changed between the abolition of Newspaper Stamp Duty and the advent of the popular national daily.

This paper focuses on collective identities at the local level, and attempts to clarify the idea ... more This paper focuses on collective identities at the local level, and attempts to clarify the idea of ‘local identities’ and related concepts, by synthesising secondary literature from the fields of geography, sociology and the histories of media, sport, regions and localities. Many scholars believe that, among territorial identities, it is those related to locality, rather than to region, nation or other geographical and political areas, that are most important to the individual. Yet terms such as ‘local identity’, ‘sense of place’, ‘community’ and similar terms are used in widely different ways, and are too often taken for granted by historians. This paper brings together disparate literatures to show the power and complexity of local identity, clarifies definitions in this area and highlights three key factors in local identity formation in the late 19th century: the ‘other’, the local press and sport. It concludes that the local needs to be problematised in the same way that ideas of nation and national identity have been challenged.

Some arbitrary points in an Anglocentric history of journalism

theconversation.com, 2018

Contrast between present-day collapse of local newspaper industry and its heyday in the second ha... more Contrast between present-day collapse of local newspaper industry and its heyday in the second half of the nineteenth century. The reason for its success? -- because it promoted local identities.

How I worked with an actor and playwright to produce a sell-out performance based on the diaries ... more How I worked with an actor and playwright to produce a sell-out performance based on the diaries of a Victorian journalist.

Lancashire Evening Post, Jan 24, 2013

Lancashire Evening Post, Jan 16, 2013

I'm revising a journal article, arguing that historians' over-use of The Times has had a deleteri... more I'm revising a journal article, arguing that historians' over-use of The Times has had a deleterious effect on nineteenth-century historiography.

Link to download from journal website -- free to first 50 downloads.

SHARP News (newsletter of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing) 23:1, 2014

Stephen Donovan and Matthew Rubery, eds., Secret Commissions: An Anthology of Victorian Investiga... more Stephen Donovan and Matthew Rubery, eds., Secret Commissions: An Anthology of Victorian Investigative Journalism. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2012. 311 p. ill. ISBN 978-1-55111-330-2. $CDN/US37.95. These powerful tales of child abuse, child prostitution, animal cruelty, sweat-shops, slums, abortion, infanticide and poverty still shock, more than a century after they were first published. They also show the growing social role of periodicals, their links to the book trade and the expansion of journalistic identity.

SHARP News (Society for the History of Reading, Authorship and Publishing) 24:3, 2015

This clear, confident and deeply thoughtful study of eighteenth-century newspaper culture in Brit... more This clear, confident and deeply thoughtful study of eighteenth-century newspaper culture in Britain and America is the first book-length history of newspaper reading, whose many insights should form a programme of study in this new field. Its greatest achievement is to dispel the ahistorical idea that newspapers were ephemeral reading matter, suggesting instead that readers used them in three time-frames: short-, medium-, and long-term. This is only one of the ways in which Heyd develops the familiar idea that newspapers reshaped readers' time and space: he also explores their globalising 'glocalising' power (3), sharpening local identities whilst supporting the diverging national identities of two nations before and after American independence; their rapid spread into many aspects of culture, notably drama; their broad variety of content and function, reaching far beyond news and information; and in particular, their commercial role. Heyd's combination of old and new techniques -comparative history, geographical specificity, and the study of historical readers -enables a double-barrelled assault on unchallenged twenty-firstcentury assumptions, demonstrating conclusively that it did not have to be this way.

Jhistory, H-Net Reviews, Feb 2013

Jared Gardner's stimulating and highly readable reconceptualization of early American magazines i... more Jared Gardner's stimulating and highly readable reconceptualization of early American magazines is one of a growing number of books to wrestle with the relationship between the novel and journalism. Straddling the fields of periodical studies, book history, and the histories of American literature and the early republic, this is an ambitious project to reinterpret a group of early American novels as attempts to establish a new genre, an experimental, multivocal type of literature, in which editing, rather than authoring, was central and in which the periodical displaced the novel (p. 38). Gardner believes that those attempts had failed by the 1820s, "but in the previous generations, the outcome was by no means certain" (p. 3). He also suggests that late 18 th -century principles and practices of what we might now call curating can illuminate 21 st -century debates about the creative politics of the World Wide Web.

in SHARP News (newsletter of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing) 24:2, 2015

in SHARP News (newsletter of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing) 22:2, 2013

Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History 5, 2013

Victorian Periodicals Review 45:3, 2012

Social History 40:2, 2015

This paper argues that the local weekly newspaper was the most popular platform for the publishin... more This paper argues that the local weekly newspaper was the most popular platform for the publishing of history in the 19 th century. This finding, based on quantitative content analysis, has farreaching implications for the history of publishing, for historiography, and for the history of journalism. The paper gives a brief background to the scale and content of local newspaper publishing, presents the quantitative evidence for newspapers' leading role in history publishing, and compares the quantity of content published in newspapers, magazines and books. A typology of historical content in local newspapers is offered, with examples including chronologies, news of archaeological finds, dedicated 'Notes and Queries'style columns, folklore, dialect and wholesale scholarly transcription of historical sources. While historical topics from across the world were covered, the focus was on local history. This huge mass of history writing was produced mainly by gentleman amateurs, local newspaper editors, and readers, all part of a 'local history community' (Kidd). These individuals also wrote books and articles for transactions of learned societies and for popular magazines. Local history material often moved from the columns of local newspapers into books, usually published from the same newspaper office. The scale of 19 th century local newspaper publishing and the popularity of local history articles, suggests that historical writing, often of a high scholarly standing, reached all levels of society, regardless of class, gender or literacy. The volume of history (and many other genres) disseminated in this way places the weekly local newspaper at the centre of 19 th century writing and publishing. The paper engages with the conference theme in two ways. First, history is part of the language of journalism as a discursive field (Zelizer and TenenboimWeinblatt, eds), seen in historical context, chronologies and commemorations, for example. These and other journalistic discourses gain added power when allied to local identities, for which memory and continuity are central. Place, and sense of place, deserve more attention in book 1 history. Second, the centrality of newspapers and magazines in 19 th century publishing once again highlights the difficulties of the term 'history of the book'. The bulk of 19 th century publishing in terms of material objects produced, volume of material of almost any genre published, numbers of writers and numbers of readers is in fact the publishing of newspapers and magazines, with books in distant third place. But the language of 'book history' misleads us and distorts our scholarship.

“Publishing popular history in the 19th century British newspaper” (ref: RS/16/14) University of ... more “Publishing popular history in the 19th century British newspaper” (ref: RS/16/14) University of Central Lancashire, UK

The upside: A great project with plenty of scope to pursue personal interests.
The downside: Fees-only studentship (pay your own living expenses), and start date 1 July 2017, full-time only.

Applications are invited for a full-time 3 year fees-only PhD studentship (via MPhil), exploring the publishing of popular history in the 19th century British newspaper. The successful candidate will assess the scale and content of history publishing in newspapers, particularly local newspapers. The project will involve analysis of digitised and non-digitised newspapers, and comparisons with history publishing via magazines and books. Material such as chronologies, news of archaeological finds, dedicated ‘Notes and Queries’-style columns, folklore, dialect and wholesale scholarly transcription of historical sources will be analysed, and case studies selected. Qualitative, quantitative and ‘digital humanities’ methods can be used, according to the student’s interests and skills. The project could also study the writers of this material, and links between newspaper and book publishing. Director of Studies: Dr Andrew Hobbs.

The project combines the histories of journalism, publishing, provincial literary and scholarly cultures, history as an academic profession, and amateurism versus professionalism. There is scope for the student to pursue personal scholarly interests under these broad headings.

This is an opportunity to realign current thinking on the publishing of history, away from books and towards newspapers and periodicals; to challenge established 19th-century historiography; to contribute to public history, and to explore historical consciousness among ordinary people, beyond the universities and metropolitan salons.

The University of Central Lancashire is close to substantial archival collections related to 19th-century local history and antiquarianism, including the Lancashire Archives, Chetham’s Library (Manchester) and Manchester Central Library. The student will be encouraged to use other relevant archives in the UK and Ireland.
International applicants may apply for the studentship but will be required to pay the difference in tuition fees. It is expected the successful applicant will commence 1 July 2017.

Application deadline: 30 April.
Email me for further info/informal enquiries: ahobbs2@uclan.ac.uk

Details here (ref: RS/16/14, last project at bottom of page)
http://www.uclan.ac.uk/research/study/studentships.php

Dr Andrew Hobbs
Course leader, BA (Hons) International Journalism
School of Journalism, Media & Performance
University of Central Lancashire
UK
01772 895993

Programme for Place and the Periodical: An International Conference on the Regional Magazine, 25-... more Programme for Place and the Periodical: An International Conference on the Regional Magazine, 25-26 June 2024, University of Chester, UK

University of Chester, UK, 25-26 June 2024 Keynote speakers confirmed so far • Professor Béatric... more University of Chester, UK, 25-26 June 2024

Keynote speakers confirmed so far
• Professor Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, University of Geneva, leader of the Visual Contagions project, studying the global circulation of images in the 20th century
• Joanne Goodwin, editor of Cheshire Life, the UK’s most successful county magazine

Call for Papers 11th International ESPRit Conference (Leeds, 2023) Periodicals and Belonging... more Call for Papers
11th International ESPRit Conference (Leeds, 2023)

Periodicals and Belonging
27-29 June 2023
Leeds School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University, UK

The European Society for Periodical Research, ESPRit 2023 conference will be held in Leeds, UK, on the theme of Periodicals and Belonging.

This fruitful and timely theme is designed to encourage discussions and collaborations on the ways that ideas, emotions, declarations, and imaginings of belonging or not belonging manifest in relation to periodical production and reception.

The notion of belonging to a family, a local culture, a national, regional, and international group, or a diaspora, including a host of cultural and political ideas, is intrinsic to periodical studies, as is research on communities of authors/contributors, readers, literature and the arts, history, cultural history, linguistics, sociology and memory studies amongst other disciplines. Constitutive to belonging is the notion of not belonging, and as such, we are interested in exploring themes of exclusion, forms of othering, racialisation, agonism, and conflict.

The conference aims to further problematise concepts of association and organisation such as communities (e.g. ‘imagined communities’, ‘interpretive communities’), groups etc., to periodical readerships; enquire into notions of belonging as oppression (periodical policing of boundaries, identities, or stereotypes); the use of belonging in marketing/advertising of periodicals, and the role of labour in periodical production (e.g., staff who belong loyally to one publication versus freelance journalists who sell their labour to many titles). Lastly, the conference will consider periodicals as visual and material objects that belong to certain places and spaces (e.g., when used as props or symbols by artists, photographers, film directors and others, or in dentists’ waiting rooms), as well as in circulation and movement across geopolitical locations and chronological periods.

We are particularly interested in exploring the following:
Periodical groups and communities (diasporas; artistic; literary; feminist; LGBTQ/H; and, or ethnic groups/cultures; language variants (dialects and sociolects, slang, etc); children; youth; subcultures; identities; academic fields; social, political and professional communities)
Periodical communities of readers (explored through case studies and/or specifics and/or theoretically), including genres, formats, classifications or hierarchies; in relation to geography and geopolitics (local, regional national, European, ‘Western’, 'other', residents, indigenous, host, exiles, expatriates, colonisers and colonised, migrants and refugees whilst simultaneously interrogate notions of home, homeland, Heimat and terroir, mobility and [im]mobility).

The conference is hosted by the Leeds School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University, in partnership with the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. We aim for linguistic inclusiveness by welcoming multilingual presentations with primary material in the original language accompanied by a translation into English.
We welcome proposals from researchers at all career stages. Proposals of around 250 words (references not included) for 20-minute papers and a short CV (no more than 200 words) should be sent to ESPRit23@leedsbeckett.ac.uk.

The deadline for abstracts is 31 January 2023.

We also welcome proposals for joint panels of three papers and for round tables or other formats. Please include a brief rationale for the panel or round table and an abstract and CV for each presenter.

ESPRit 2023 Organising Committee:
Dr Mary Ikoniadou, Leeds School of Arts m.Ikoniadou@leedsbeckett.ac.uk
Dr Andrew Hobbs, UCLan AHobbs2@uclan.ac.uk
Dr Annemarie McAllister, UCLan AMcallister1@uclan.ac.uk

ESPRit 2023 Scientific Committee:
Prof. Fionnuala Dillane, University College Dublin
Prof. Brian Maidment, Liverpool John Moores University
Prof. James Mussell, University of Leeds
Prof. Simon Morris, Leeds Beckett University
Dr. Nora Ramtke, Ruhr University Bochum

You can also access the call online here: https://www.espr-it.eu/news/events/170-esprit-conference-2023