A Fleet Street In Every Town: The Provincial Press in England, 1855-1900

doi:10.11647/obp.0152

A Fleet Street In Every Town: The Provincial Press in England, 1855-1900 - cover image

DOI

https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0152

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright

Andrew Hobbs

Published On

2018-12-13

ISBN

Paperback978-1-78374-559-3

Hardback978-1-78374-560-9

PDF978-1-78374-561-6

HTML978-1-80064-571-4

XML978-1-78374-654-5

EPUB978-1-78374-562-3

MOBI978-1-78374-563-0

Language

English

Print Length

469 pages (xii + 456)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 24 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.94" x 9.21")

Hardback156 x 25 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback1437g (50.69oz)

Hardback1829g (64.52oz)

Media

Illustrations64

Tables27

OCLC Number

1089418876

LCCN

2018487805

BIC

KNTJ
JFD
3JH

BISAC

SOC052000
LAN008000

LCC

H63 2018
PN5117

Keywords

Victorian culture
newspaper
local newspapers
print culture
journalism

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A Fleet Street In Every Town

The Provincial Press in England, 1855-1900

Andrew Hobbs (author)

Winner of the 2019 Robert and Vineta Colby Scholarly Book Prize for best book on Victorian newspapers and periodicals – awarded annually by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals.

At the heart of Victorian culture was the local weekly newspaper. More popular than books, more widely read than the London papers, the local press was a national phenomenon. This book redraws the Victorian cultural map, shifting our focus away from one centre, London, and towards the many centres of the provinces. It offers a new paradigm in which place, and a sense of place, are vital to the histories of the newspaper, reading and publishing.

Hobbs offers new perspectives on the nineteenth century from an enormous yet neglected body of literature: the hundreds of local newspapers published and read across England. He reveals the people, processes and networks behind the publishing, maintaining a unique focus on readers and what they did with the local paper as individuals, families and communities. Case studies and an unusual mix of quantitative and qualitative evidence show that the vast majority of readers preferred the local paper, because it was about them and the places they loved.

A Fleet Street in Every Town positions the local paper at the centre of debates on Victorian newspapers, periodicals, reading and publishing. It reorientates our view of the Victorian press away from metropolitan high culture and parliamentary politics, and towards the places where most people lived, loved and read. This is an essential book for anybody interested in nineteenth-century print culture, journalism and reading.

Endorsements

Beautifully written and skilfully argued, Andrew Hobbs’s book makes a significant contribution to the study of the Victorian newspaper and periodical press. He reminds us that readers—the ordinary working people whose mindset historians care about—looked to the journalism of their local communities. The book also contributes to a broader social and cultural historiography—not only of Preston but of the whole concept of ‘locality’ and communication in Britain’s nineteenth century.

Prof. Leslie Howsam

University of Windsor

Reviews

[This book] will hopefully encourage more scholars to explore the many different facets of the provincial press […] to help build a national history of print culture of which A Fleet Street in Every Town would be a foundation stone.

Lisa Peters

Publishing History, 2020.