British Writers, Popular Literature and New Media Innovation, 1820-45

The emergence of a mass reading public during the early decades of the nineteenth century sparked a period of creative innovation in the popular press. This collection focuses on the early decades of the nineteenth century as a key period of innovation in the popular press. Steam printing, popular education campaigns, and new technologies of illustration led to new trends in book and periodical production.

Alexis Easley is Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of First-Person Anonymous: Women Writers and Victorian Print Media, 1830-70 (2004) and Literary Celebrity, Gender, and Victorian Authorship, 1850-1914 (2011). She has also co-edited four books, most recently Women, Periodicals, and Print Culture in Britain, 1830s-1900s, with Clare Gill and Beth Rodgers (2019). Her most recent book publication is New Media and the Rise of the Popular Woman Writer, 1832-60 (2021). This project was a 2019 recipient of the Linda H. Peterson Prize awarded by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals. She is currently at work on a biography of Eliza Cook.