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Civic identity, municipal governance and provincial newspapers: the Lincoln of Bernard Gilbert, poet, critic and ‘booster’, 1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2014

ANDREW J.H. JACKSON
ANDREW J.H. JACKSON*
Affiliation:
Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln LN13DY, UK
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Abstract:

The provincial press played a significant role in forming local attitudes and senses of civic identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Local and regional newspapers often adopted a ‘boosterist’ language, a style that enthusiastically promoted the particular qualities of places. The persistence of boosterism into the early twenty-first century makes it a concept worthy of further exploration. This study considers just one ‘booster’, Bernard Samuel Gilbert, and his illuminating series of articles on Lincoln for the Lincolnshire Echo in 1914. His correspondence illustrates the contrasting stances towards improvement typically employed within the local press – including the boosterist alongside the more critical.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 113 - 129
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

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20 Ibid., 81–2.

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43 Cooper, ‘Housing and social structure’, 27–8; Scott, ‘Early days’, 185–204.

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45 Ibid., 102.

46 Ibid., 102.

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