Journalism on the Move: the special correspondent and Victorian print culture

This project analyses the significance of 'special correspondence' as a new, highly popular form of Victorian journalism and its evolution in the context of developments in the periodical and newspaper press throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. It identifies and charts the careers of individual 'specials', many of whom also wrote as novelists and periodical reviewers. Characterised by a vivid, descriptive style of reportage that was criticised by some contemporary commentators as sensational, special correspondence played a key role in forming the discourses of literature and journalism at a time when the boundary between them was contested. The impact of this remains evident today in debate about the relationship between fact and fiction in the press, and in its exploration of the cultural resonance of this writing the project will help to chart the emergence of the modern mass media.

Who might benefit from the research and how?

1. Media organisations and members of the general public, by raising awareness of the histories associated with contemporary literary and journalistic formations through the communication of my research findings in forums that cross the town/gown divide.

While the current inquiry into media ethics in Britain has been triggered by the phone-hacking scandal, it is also part of a continuing debate about the role of the press and the commercial imperatives that drive it. Controversies associated with the fabrication of published memoirs or the manufacture of news in the press over the past decade indicate that the relationship between fact and fiction in contemporary print culture remains a vexed one. Such controversies are not new: they have their antecedents in the debates about the New Journalism and the relationship between literary and newspaper narrative in the latter part of the nineteenth century, although these connections have hitherto largely gone unnoticed. My project will bring them to light and help to inform public debate about contemporary journalistic formations. For example, the arguments about 'embedded' war correspondents used in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan may be illuminated by understanding the historical context of debate about journalists' involvement in and reportage of Victorian military campaigns. Similarly, the desire for immediacy that seems to drive developments in new media may be illuminated by recovering its history, evident in the 'word-painting' of the special correspondents.

2. Students and teachers of nineteenth-century literature and history, by imaginatively incorporating Victorian periodicals in my own teaching and contributing to wider discussion of their use in the high-school classroom through engagement with cross-sector English- and History-teaching groups.

Periodicals have long been seen as essential source or background material for the study of Victorian literature and history; but as online resources improve, teachers at both secondary and tertiary levels are increasingly attempting to weave periodicals in imaginative ways into their teaching of nineteenth-century literature and history. For example, the Dickens Journals Online project, which digitises some 1,061 tightly-printed weekly issues of 'Household Words' and 'All the Year Round', is designed to enable high-school teachers and students to access this compendium of nineteenth-century Britain for use in the classroom. I was a co-applicant for the Leverhulme grant that is funding this project, I am a member of its Editorial Advisory Board and thus I am already involved in new efforts to bring Victorian journalism into high-school classrooms. In adding to the body of knowledge available about Victorian journalism, my project will be of benefit to those using these periodicals in the classroom. Children learning History today are taught about the importance of sources and their evaluation, so my work will contribute to critical reflection upon the relationship between the press coverage of events and the historical record of them. In explicitly addressing the problematic nexus of literature and journalism and the origins of anxiety about it in the nineteenth century, my research will encourage discussion about the history of subject formations like English or Media Studies: a matter of particular relevance in the context of recent debates about the rift between the teaching of subject English in schools and in higher education.

3. Potentially, the tourism and heritage industries, by adding new culturally and historically significant knowledge to resources associated with existing sites.

In recovering the journalism associated with the travels and tribulations of such colourful special correspondents as Sala and Forbes as they crossed the globe, the project may generate material (reports, sketches) that would add interest to existing archives or tourist trails.