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3 - Women Editors’ Transnational Networks in the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine and Myra's Journal
- from Part I - (Re)Imagining Domestic Life
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- By Marianne Van Remoortel, associate professor at Ghent University specialising in nineteenth-century periodicals and women's history.
- Edited by Alexis Easley, University of St Thomas, Minnesota, Clare Gill, Beth Rodgers, Aberystwyth University
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- Book:
- Women, Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1830s–1900s
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 25 October 2019
- Print publication:
- 03 April 2019, pp 46-56
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- Chapter
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Summary
IN MARCH 1860, LONDON publisher Samuel Beeton contracted with his French colleague Adolphe Goubaud to import monthly fashion plates and dress patterns from Goubaud's Le Moniteur de la mode to the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, the periodical for women that he had established in 1852. The deal marks a pivotal moment in the history of the British fashion press. On 1 May, the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine appeared in a slightly larger format and on better quality paper, with attractive full-page, hand-coloured plates by leading French fashion illustrator Jules David captioned, ‘The Fashions. Expressly designed and prepared for the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine.’ Pieces on domestic matters gave way to descriptions of the latest dresses and dressmaking instructions accompanied by fold-out patterns. According to Margaret Beetham, this ‘shift away from [the] practical domesticity’ of everyday cooking and household management was ‘crucial’ (1996: 71). The revamped Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine promoted a new kind of femininity predicated on the pleasures of consumption. At sixpence (or a shilling with the supplement), it was the first cheap magazine for British middle-class women to turn fashion into a major selling point.
The new Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine secured Samuel Beeton's lasting reputation as a trailblazer in the fashion magazine industry. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes him as ‘one of the pioneers of popular print’; for Beetham, he embodies the ‘class archetype’ of the ‘mid-Victorian entrepreneur’ (1996: 58), and Cynthia L. White similarly writes that he was among the ‘first to recognise the untapped potential of the middle-class market’ (1970: 44). In her 2006 biography of Isabella Beeton, Kathryn Hughes challenged this image of the solitary business genius, demonstrating that Beeton's wife played a crucial role in his publishing firm, not only as author of the successful Book of Household Management (1859–61) but also as editor of the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine. In this chapter, I build on this earlier work by arguing, in turn, that the Beetons’ feats as a publishing power couple need to be seen in the larger context of the transnational professional network in which they participated.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI AND THE ECONOMICS OF PUBLICATION: MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE, “A BIRTHDAY,” AND BEYOND
- Marianne Van Remoortel
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- Journal:
- Victorian Literature and Culture / Volume 41 / Issue 4 / December 2013
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 October 2013, pp. 711-726
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- Article
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Impelled to seek relief from a “peccant chest” (L233) at the seaside, Christina Rossetti travelled to Hastings in December 1864, taking a carefully wrapped bundle of unfinished manuscript poetry with her. Throughout the winter until the following March, a series of letters to Cheyne Walk kept her brother Dante Gabriel abreast not only of her gradual recovery, but also of her efforts to complete her second book of poetry, two years after she had made a successful debut with Goblin Market. Shortly after her arrival, Rossetti reported that she was struggling to finish “The Prince's Progress,” the long narrative poem that was to lend its title to the new volume:
In the past few decades, Rossetti's lifelong effort to see what critics have variously called “the divine spiritual essence of material beauty” (Harrison 56), the “moral and spiritual significance in physical signs” (Arseneau 279), and “the spiritual in the sensuous, the numinous in the material” (Kooistra, Illustration 38) has become a mainstay of Rossetti scholarship. This excerpt from her correspondence, in contrast, reveals her equally profound preoccupation with the materiality and economics of writing. Issues of textual ownership, authorial control, and literary marketability confronted Rossetti in the 1860s as her financial situation forced her to balance book publication with regular contributions to the periodical press, notably Macmillan's Magazine, the magazine owned by Rossetti's publisher Macmillan and Co., which carried more of her poetry than any other British periodical in the nineteenth century. These issues extended beyond Rossetti's personal dealings with Macmillan, however, shaping the material and interpretive consumption of her work throughout her career. This arc may be seen in the publication and adaptation history of one of her most popular poems, “A Birthday,” from its first appearance in Macmillan's Magazine in 1861 until her death. Over time, the poem underwent various types of mediation: reprints in gift books and poetry anthologies, musical adaptation, vocal performance, and quotations in fictional works. Finally, her reaction to the three parodies of her poems published in an 1888 comic magazine – particularly to “An Unexpected Pleasure,” the parody of “A Birthday” – demonstrate her perspective on the increased commodity value of the original poem.[M]y Alchemist still shivers in the blank of mere possibility: but I have so far overcome my feelings and disregarded my nerves as to unloose the Prince, so that string wrapping paper may no longer bar his “progress.” Also I have computed pages of the altogether-unexceptionable, and find that they exceed 120: this cheers though not inebriates. Amongst your ousted I recognize sundry of my own favourites, which perhaps I may adroitly re-insert when publishing day comes round. . . . Meanwhile I have sent 3 (I hope) pot-boilers to Mac's Mag. (L233)