British Periodicals and Romantic Identity

Book excerpt: When Lord Byron identified the periodical industry as the "Literary Lower Empire," he registered the cultural clout that periodicals had accumulated by positioning themselves as both the predominant purveyors of scientific, economic, and social information and the arbiters of literary and artistic taste. British Periodicals and Romantic Identity explores how periodicals such as the Edinburgh, Blackwood s, and the Westminster became the repositories and creators of "public opinion." In addition, Schoenfield examines how particular figures, both inside and outside the editorial apparatus of the reviews and magazines, negotiated this public and rapidly professionalized space. Ranging from Lord Byron, whose self-identification as lord and poet anticipated his public image in the periodicals, to William Hazlitt, equally journalist and subject of the reviews, this engaging study explores both canonical figures and canon makers in the periodicals and positions them as a centralizing force in the consolidation of Romantic print culture.