Introduction: Waterloo and is afterlife in the nineteenth-century periodical and newspaper press

This article contextualises the battle of Waterloo and its impact on cultural life through the pages of the printed press. It looks at specific case studies and selects a number of issues to demonstrate how this event was possible the most defining battle of the nineteenth century

Waterloo as a small 'Realm of memory': British writers, tourism, and the periodical press

This article focuses on the role played by periodicals in the creation of Waterloo as a British realm of memory or how Waterloo became Waterloo. The question is first explored and illustrated by means of David Wilkie’s painting The Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo Dispatch. The paper then especially zooms in on texts about the battlefield by famous poets and the ways in which contemporary journals and newspapers used those texts to construct and celebrate a shared national pride in Wellington’s victory. In the last analysis it will reveal how the press enhanced the popularity of Waterloo as a physical lieu de mémoire that was to become a fixed destiny in the pilgrimages of authors – and, later in the century, all British tourists – to the continent in search of an affirmation of their national identity

Authorship as cultural performance: new perspectives in authorship studies

This article proposes a performative model of authorship, based on the historical alternation between predominantly 'weak' and 'strong' author concepts and related practices of writing, publication and reading. Based on this model, we give a brief overview of the historical development of such author concepts in English literature from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. We argue for a more holistic approach to authorship within a cultural topography, comprising social contexts, technological and media factors, and other cultural developments, such as the distinction between privacy and the public sphere

Laurence Binyon and the modernists: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and Marinetti

This article will claim that Laurence Binyon deserves a re-assessment for two reasons: his critical work has echoes in the poetic theory of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, and, secondly, he was a pivotal figure for the avant-garde in Britain. Although Binyon started his career in the late Victorian period and his work may not appear to diverge from that of his direct predecessors, he was susceptible to some of the most innovative artistic movements of the early twentieth century. His early texts on Chinese and Japanese art show that Binyon was much more modern than Pound’s biographers claim, and his work needs to be assessed in that light. Binyon’s use of the term “make it new” long before Pound first mentioned it, and his progressive poetics in “Poetry and Modern Life”, are particularly interesting for our thesis

Between the shells : the production of Belgian, British and French trench journals in the First World War

This comparative essay focuses on a small set of representative publications created on the Western front, including the Wipers Times (British army), Bellica, Le Bochofage and Le Poilu du 6-9 (French army) and Antwerpen en Omheining, Ik ben Roeland and Saint-Trond Poilufié (Belgian army). First, it explores the production context of Entente magazines. That little presses were established against the odds of warfare fascinated the contemporary public: the French avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire, for instance, contributed a short anecdotal essay entitled “L’Histoire d’une gazette du front” to the Mercure de France in January 1917. The essay then goes on to profile the editors, readers and contributors involved, and shows how a comparative approach can complement what we already know of the ostensibly limited distribution and scope of the trench press. Finally, it asks how trench journals fit into the framework of periodical studies, arguing for their textual affinity with school magazines. The trench press has exclusively been read and studied by historians, who consider it a phenomenon distinctive of the cultural history of the First World War. The benefit of situating these magazines firmly within contemporary print culture is that it nuances that notion of exceptionality. It also provides a space for addressing some of the confusions in definition and categorisation that underlie much historical analysis

La Revue des marraines (1916–17) : a journal for war godmothers and their godchildren

This article is situated at the crossroads of First World War and periodical studies. It sheds light on the phenomenon of ‘war godmothers’ [‘marraines’], women who supported soldiers at the front by sending them parcels and letters. The so-called godmothers made use of the mainstream press to advertise their services, and founded periodicals of their own. In this article, we examine the representation of war godmothers in the periodical press and uncover La Revue des marraines, a handwritten journal created by the Melles Picard in Paris. The analysis addresses the little-known phenomenon of the war godmothers, the relation between godmother and godson, and changing gender roles. It further questions the importance of handwritten journals during the war, when paper and other means were scarce