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IN THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY, Great Britain developed a new way of thinking and living increasingly based upon the possession of material goods. The Great Exhibition of 1851 marked a pivotal moment in this change, acting as a catalyst that crystallised the transformation of the advertising industry and contributed to the formation of a new commodity culture. While at the beginning, advertising was used as the self-definition of one class rather than the subjugation of another, by the Edwardian era this focus had altered. Advertising became the coordinating frame within which very different forms of social life were grouped.
This article is concerned with a particular aspect of advertising that has its roots in the late nineteenth century: the prize book (a book given as an award by an educational or religious institution to disseminate approved fiction to children). It uses prize-book catalogues from six major prize-book publishing houses of the early twentieth century (Religious Tract Society, S. W. Partridge & Co., Thomas Nelson & Sons, Robert Culley, Frederick Warne & Co., and Blackie & Sons) to explore how prize books were marketed to educators in Edwardian Britain, how boys and girls were framed by the advertisements and whether differences existed between secular and religious publishers. It also investigates attitudes towards books and the context of that use, especially in terms of their strategy of appeal and the values invoked by phrasing.
While advertising has been explored in great depth within a range of disciplines from media studies and cultural studies to linguistics and history, most tend to focus on modern advertising practices, as well as the history of advertising throughout the twentieth century. With the exception of Thomas Richards and Gerald Curtis,1 scant attention has been paid to the origins of advertising in the United Kingdom, namely the 1851 Great Exhibition. The Victorian era was essential in moving commodity from its trivial role in society to becoming the centrepiece of everyday life. Richards argues that it is the one subject of mass culture that has remained a focal point of all representation and the dead centre of the modern world.2 The use of advertising in prize books has not yet caught the attention of scholars. Thus, this discussion highlights the benefits of investigating this domain...