A Victorian "Rosetta Stone"

July 14, 2015 2:45 PM

Charles Dickens (of previously, previously, previously, &c.) was, of course, a novelist. But he was also a journalist and editor, most importantly of Household Words (1850-59) and All the Year Round (1859-70; continued until 1893). As in many Victorian periodicals, the articles in All the Year Round appeared anonymously, meaning that later scholars have had to piece together (and guess at) authorship using correspondence, stylistic comparisons, and so forth. Well, until now.

Particularly striking are the revelations about women writers (about "forty percent" of the contributors, according to the Independent) and the newly-attributed publications by Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell. Eliza Lynn Linton is a name known only to specialists, but the news that she wrote dozens of articles for the journal will cause many Victorianists to prick up their ears.

posted by thomas j wise (13 comments total)

Pretty neat! Also, that bookseller must kicking themselves, for not bothering to investigate the annotations. Somehow I suspect Dickens' own copies would have gone for more than the 10 to 50 pounds a volume that ordinary ones do.
posted by tavella at 3:09 PM on July 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

From The Guardian link:

“The fact they are authentic is the most exciting thing,” he said. “This is the file set, probably kept in the flat Dickens had above the office of the periodical.” Slater speculated that after Dickens’s death, “it is quite likely they got sold off … and as it’s a very handsome looking set, people didn’t bother to look inside, and it ended up in the antiquarian book trade”.

The books were so pretty nobody bothered to read them until now. Sigh...
posted by Kevin Street at 3:16 PM on July 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

So Victorian literary journals had more women authors than contemporary literary journals. That is fucking grim.
posted by latkes at 4:01 PM on July 14, 2015 [10 favorites]

The anonymity probably helped women authors back then. Articles and stories were just articles and stories, with no extra weight put on them by the expectations of the audience. It's hard for me to imagine what motivated the authors (besides payment of course) when no one knew their names, but in a close knit, relatively small intellectual society they could get feedback from readers in the letter column, and gauge response to specific pieces through drawing room gossip and the like.

I wonder if there was an etiquette to that sort of thing. Would it be considered rude to obviously troll for responses from one's friends? "Say, did you read that article on veneral disease in this week's "All The Year Round? What a shocking expose!"
posted by Kevin Street at 4:10 PM on July 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Sorry. That should have been "trawl," not "troll."
posted by Kevin Street at 4:21 PM on July 14, 2015

There was considerable discussion about anonymity in nineteenth-century literary and journalistic circles (this sums up the major points). One of the more amusing side-effects of anonymous book reviewing, of course, was the phenomenon of authors like Walter Scott secretly reviewing themselves--although Scott's self-review is, rather surprisingly, a pretty honest assessment.
posted by thomas j wise at 4:24 PM on July 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

The C19th literary scene is also full of writers with seething grudges against the people they wrongly suspected of panning their books. Sometimes this would lead to savage revenge reviews, thus perpetuating the cycle of hatred.

Come to think of it "trolling" might be the right word to bring in here.
posted by yoink at 4:43 PM on July 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm imagining some grad student in the middle of finishing his thesis that "Voyage on a Gunboat to China" was a collaboration between Fergus Hume and Shedian Le Fanu, taking a quick break to browse the Web, coming upon this post, staring at it for a good six minutes, then grabbing a fifth of bourbon and a very thick blanket and heading to bed.
posted by lore at 5:08 PM on July 14, 2015 [17 favorites]

I think trolling might be perfectly appropriate in the example you give.

Great story, and another reason to save!! rare books and their marginalia.
posted by Miko at 5:09 PM on July 14, 2015

The Dickens you say!

(Sorry, that was hacky as hell. I just needed two more comments to make 1000 comments on Metafilter.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:09 PM on July 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

WHEN MEFI POSTS COLLIDE: All the Year Round had an article mentioning a certain desert snail!
posted by nicebookrack at 7:13 PM on July 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

Particularly striking are the revelations about women writers (about "forty percent" of the contributors, according to the Independent)

I'm thinking of the popularity of Victorian annuals and gift books and the number of women who wrote for them. The evidence that a significant number of the contributors to All Year Round were women seems more like a confirmation that Dickens is continuing a similar practice?

Anyway, what amazes me here is that something like this could have escaped all of the collectors and all of the bibliographers of one of the most studied and collected English authors for 150 years.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:30 AM on July 15, 2015

It was surprising more because CD wasn't considered a particularly big booster of women writers.
posted by thomas j wise at 10:27 AM on July 15, 2015 [1 favorite]