19 research outputs found
Fraserâs Magazine and the Instability of Literary Fashion
This chapter examines the relationship between literature and fashion in one of the most influential nineteenth-century literary periodicals, Fraserâs Magazine. Established in 1830 under the editorship of William Maginn, Fraserâs became known for its scathing satirical treatment of âfashionable novelsâ and the cult of dandyism, most notably embodied by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Yet texts such as Thomas Carlyleâs Sartor Resartus (1833â4) and William Thackerayâs Yellowplush Papers (1837), both serialized in Fraserâs during the 1830s, express a more ambivalent fascination with the analogy between literature and fashion than their satirical mode might suggest. Fashion in clothing becomes a productive metaphor for considering the nature of literary production within an expanding market economy, characterized by the proliferation of periodicals and other forms of print ephemera