“Tales and Adventures”: G.A. Henty’s Union Jack and the Competitive World of Publishing for Boys in the 1880s’

In the competitive publishing environment of the late nineteenth century, writers and magazines had to distinguish themselves carefully from potential rivals. This article examines how G.A. Henty’s quality boys’ weekly, Union Jack (1880-83), attempted to secure a niche in the juvenile publishing market by deliberately distinguishing itself from other papers as a literary, imperialist and “healthy” publication. The article explores the design and marketing techniques of the magazine, its status as a fiction paper, the high calibre of its contributors, and its aggressive rhetoric in targeting an exclusively masculine audience. It argues that while Union Jack was marketed as a niche publication, it eventually failed to distinguish itself sufficiently to survive in an extremely competitive environment

Towards a theory of good history through gaming

History computer games have become an economic and cultural phenomenon, and historians should seize the opportunity to participate in their development. Players of history games are interested in the past and in the big questions that drive historical scholarship. In this way, games have the potential to draw players into the discipline if we can discover the best way to express history though simulation. But what research do we draw on as we study how to accomplish this transformation? This essay is the product of a meeting of historians, educators, and gamers who joined previously separate lines of inquiry to identify literature and models that we believe form the foundation for developing a theory of good history through gaming

Revisiting the walking city: A geospatial examination of the journey to work

The daily commute to work and its related social histories have long been of interest to historical geographers and urban historians. This article revisits the existing scholarship on the nineteenth-century journey to work and outlines a new methodological framework that uses a historical GIS to overcome many of the challenges identified in previous studies. These challenges include a reliance on small, atypical samples of workers, approximations of the spatial relationship between home and work, and unrealistic interpretations of journeys travelled by using only Euclidean paths. Combining city directories and decennial censuses through the use of probabilistic record linkage techniques uncovers the relationship between work and home for over 5,000 workers in London, Ontario in 1881. A GIS network-derived journey to work model re-creates more realistic journey that considers the many natural and built environment barriers that influenced the paths and distances workers travelled on a daily basis. Empirical results of the journey to work along the lines of occupational class, coincident home–work location, and gender are presented and contextualized to studies in other cities. The results highlight that the experiences of commuting differ widely along the lines of social class and gender