British Periodicals and Romantic Identity The Literary Lower Empire [Hardcover]

When Lord Byron identified the periodical industry as the Literary Lower Empire, he registered the cultural clout that periodicals had accumulated by positioning themselves as both the predominant purveyors of scientific, economic, and social information and the arbiters of literary and artistic taste. British Periodicals and Romantic Identity explores how periodicals such as the Edinburgh, Blackwood s, and the Westminster became the repositories and creators of public opinion. In addition, Schoenfield examines how particular figures, both inside and outside the editorial apparatus of the reviews and magazines, negotiated this public and rapidly professionalized space. Ranging from Lord Byron, whose self-identification as lord and poet anticipated his public image in the periodicals, to William Hazlitt, equally journalist and subject of the reviews, this engaging study explores both canonical figures and canon makers in the periodicals and positions them as a centralizing force in the consolidation of Romantic print culture.PART I: CULTURE WARS IN THE LOWER EMPIRE Skirmishes in the Lower Empire Incorporating Voices: The Edinburgh Review Proliferating Voices: The Quarterly and the Maga Soldiers of Fortune in the Periodical Wars Repeating Selves: Hume, Hazlitt and Periodical Repetition Lord Byron among the Reviews Abraham Goldsmid: Financial Magician and the Public Image Spying James Hogg's Bristle in Blackwood's Magazine

Schoenfield thrillingly immerses us in the realm of romantic era periodicals, and reveals how they ushered in new forms of personal identity. This masterful study should be required reading for anyone interested in the intersection of politics and literature. The book as a whole stands as a model of impressively erudite but also totally engaging scholarship. I especially admired Schoenfield s bravura in reading Byron s embattled relationship with the reviewers. - Judith Pascoe, Professor of English, University of Iowa and author of The ls.