| My dissertation examines the nineteenth-century British periodical as the primary medium in which the modern practice of criticism was forged. In the roughly sixty years covered by this dissertation, periodical criticism underwent rapid changes. At the beginning of the century, criticism was most commonly found in book reviews, and its original purpose, as reflected in quarterlies like the Edinburgh Review, was to convey the periodical's political positions. Reviews were published anonymously and addressed their readers in a collective first-person plural voice. By the 1860s, in an indication that the function of criticism had changed, periodicals like the Fortnightly began to print signed criticism. Such criticism expressed the personal convictions of an individual critic rather than the interests of a larger group. I examine how the success of the mid-century literary monthly magazine (Bentley's Miscellany), with its serial novels and familiar essays, influenced this transformation. Periodical criticism after 1865 began to incorporate the friendly, approachable guide found in the mid-century literary magazines in order to reinvigorate criticism and keep it relevant for a readership experiencing rapid technological and political changes. |
