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Publisher: Academia Press and The British Library, Gent and London, 2009, £65.
ISBN: 978 90 382 1340 8 (Academia Press); 978 0 7123 5039 6 (British Library)
The nineteenth century was very much the century of the newspaper and the periodical press: if it was also the century of many other innovations or developments, good and bad, the press was fundamental as recording and commentating on them all. Before radio and television, but with huge advances in physical communications and widening literacy, the press flourished in its myriad forms and for seemingly myriad audiences. This is a subject that has been studied in great detail, as evidenced in this volume by a bibliography occupying more than a hundred pages, so a work such as this serves as an invaluable quick-reference tool, and as more besides.
The editors themselves use the term "snapshot", but in doing so I think they short-change themselves. The nineteenth century was one of enormous change and the press in the time of Charles Dickens had developed into something much broader and even more powerful by the time of Queen Victoria's jubilee: a moving picture is required rather than a static snapshot, and that in fact is what we are given in this excellent encyclopaedia: the "dictionary" of the title is really only relevant in the book's A-Z arrangement. The introductions make clear, if the contents themselves did not, the resources and effort needed to compile this work, which the editors compare with Don Quixote in their utopian aims but claim, quite correctly, that unlike the knight they have managed their windmills.
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