As the Madden/Dixon bibliography shows there was scant investigation of Victorian periodical literature before the l950s. The largest part of what existed was composed of lists of titles drawn up by individual city or county librar ies to document their own holdings; or sometimes to determine holdings available in a given geographic area. An example of the former is a manuscript listing "Lincolnshire Newspapers and Magazines" (n.d.) drawn up by the Lincoln City Library; a bibliography of newspapers and periodicals for the Inverness area (l902) is a good example of the latter. Earlier librarians sensed they held valuable primary source material offering an important picture of cultural history, but were uncertain what to do with it - other than save it. The Madden/Dixon bibliography lists only 29 items devoted to journals, either in manuscript or privately printed, written between l90l and l940, less than one a year; these dribble off to a trickle during the war years; and then reappear, triumphantly, in a section in an important book by W. D. Templeman, A Bibliography of Studies of Victorian Literature (l945).
Serious and systematic research into Victorian periodicals belongs to the second half of the twentieth century. In l957 the late Walter E. Houghton published his landmark book, The Victorian Frame of Mind, the research for which was constantly frustrated by the Victorian journalistic practice of anonymity among journal authors. He contended that it was important to know who was writing a piece in order to understand its possible prejudices. It was at this point that he began to contemplate an index to 40 or 50 of the major literary periodicals for which he would seek to identify the authors of the articles. Thus it was that one of the great scholarly achievements of this century was born: The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824 - 1900, complete in 5 volumes, a work which completely revolutionized study of periodical literature.
A similar and equally pressing problem for researchers was the need to count, identify, and locate journals. Early investigators estimated that there might have been as many as l6,000 periodicals published during the Victorian era; that figure has now been displaced by a new estimate of more than 50,000 titles, identified largely through the work of John North published in the Waterloo Directories . In the wake of these two pioneering projects many other major research t ools have been developed, such as: The British Union Catalogue of Periodicals (BUCOP), l955-l958 ; The Union List of Serials in Libraries of the United States and Canada (ULS), l965 ; The Catalogue of the [British Library] Newspaper Library ( CNL), l975; and the Union List of Victorian Serials (ULVS), l985. (For further description see: Nineteenth-Century Prose, vol. 24, no. l, Spring, l997, pp. l. - 4).
Two very important bibliographies for periodical research are:
"The Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press in Britain," covering the years l90l - l97l, compiled by Lionel Madden and Diana
Dixon, (see Victorian Periodicals Newsletter, A Supplement, vol.
VIII, no. 3, September , l975); a second
study, bearing the same title, but covering the years l972 - l987, appeared in l992, compiled by Larry Uffelman (see Victorian
Periodicals Review, Summer, l992). Care has been taken to employ the
same format for each survey, so together they provide a steady view of
periodicals scholarship with a sweep from l90l to l987. Each compilation
is divided into four sections:
Each bibliography is cross-referenced for individual journalists and the periodicals to which they contributed. An alphabetical author index links material with in different sections Although now somewhat outdated, each is an excellent and thorough resource for the period covered. For the years following l987 scholars may rely on the annual bibliography of periodical research published by Victorian Periodicals Review , as well as a "Periodicals Section" published as part of the annual bibliography in Victorian Studies.
Finally, note should be taken of the fact that the professional organization which represents periodicals scholars is the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) which sponsors an annual scholarly conference and also the quarterly publication Victorian Periodicals Review (VPR).
Today, periodicals research is a fully recognized and acknowledged literary specialty and constitutes an important part of the British nineteenth-century prose legacy. It provides a particularly attractive field for younger scholars or graduate student s because of its distinct interdisciplinary nature. Collections of periodicals have been identified for such varied fields as: the professions (law, medicine, architecture, the military, and science); the arts (music, illustration, authorship, and theatre ); occupations and commerce (transport, financial and trade, advertising, and agriculture); popular culture (temperance, comedy, and sport); and the specialties of both workers' and student journals. Doubtless, many similar collections could be assembled pertaining to other fields. Preliminary analysis has also been carried out on the development of the periodical press in British colonial society (see two references: Vann and VanArsdel, Victorian Periodicals and Victorian Society [l994] and Periodicals of Queen Victoria's Empire [l996]). Periodicals research is also a promising field because there is an enormous amount of valuable work left to be done, and with modern technological equipment there are many opportunities for fresh research which formerly would have seemed too daunting.
Distinguished Professor of English, Emerita
University of Puget Sound