Andrew King
After a degree in classical and medieval Latin (when I spent most of my time studying Wagner, Strauss, Mahler and Berg rather than Horace, Virgil, the Carmina Burana or Aquinas), and an MA in Medieval Studies (both at Reading), I taught English at the University of Catania for most of the 1980s (now writing music for a semi-professional theatre group in Sicily). There I met Prof. Alba Floreale (Nini Marangolo). She became a dear friend and mentor and her influence still lasts well beyond her untimely death. I then did a 2nd MA in English at Sussex, where, querying Foucault's stress on high-status sources in La Volunte de savoir and seeking alternative views of Victorian society, I discovered the joys of mass-market periodicals. I eventually did a part-time PhD on one of them under the amazingly energetic and energising Laurel Brake at Birkbeck.
In 2003, I joined the Media Department of Canterbury Christ Church University which provided a supportive environment for the continuation and publication of research for almost a decade. There I developed my interest in advertising and media economics, hosted the electronic hub of the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism and explored areas for that publication which others less foolhardy shied away from - not least the relationship of the press to the professions. At the same time I started work on that literary refusnik of commerce, the paradoxical popular Victorian novelist, Ouida.
2008-9 I was lucky enough to be awarded a stipendiary research fellowship at the English Department, University of Ghent, Belgium which resulted in (amongst other things) a special number of Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies (September 2009) on the relationship of the nineteenth-century press to the professions.
In May 2012 I joined the Department of Literature, Language and Theatre at the University of Greenwich as Professor of English Literature and Literary Studies, where I'm yet again lucky enough to have colleagues who are not only very clever and learned but very nice and hard-working indeed.
In the autumn of 2014 I was fortunate to be a Visiting Scholar at the University of Macerata, Italy, sharing teaching and research with my excellent colleagues there. While there I raided various archives and found far more than I expected for my ongoing biography of Ouida, and also continued work on the two volumes I edited with Alexis Easley and John Morton for Routledge, both of which won the annual Colby Prizefor the book that most forwards our thinking about Victorian periodicals. Besides inaugurating the two, editing and contributing to the Introductions, I wrote a chapter on "Periodical Economics" for the first volume, another daunting task.
My current research is focussed on two main areas, all continuations of previous work: Victorian popular fiction and in particular Ouida, on whom Jane Jordan (Kingston) and I edited a collection of essays and whose biography I am contracted to write; and the idea of work and nineteenth-century press on which I contributed a chapter to the Edinburgh History of the Press, and on which I run a website: BLT19.co.uk.
I edit the Victorian Fiction Research Guides which Victorian Secrets now generously hosts:
https://victorianfictionresearchguides.org
and co-edit the OA double-blind peer-reviewed journal *Victorian Popular Fictions* ( https://victorianpopularfiction.org/publications/1200-2/ )
I have made a series of videos on detective fiction, which can be found on my Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkhzmJVrl0ZSb0Bx4X_MAqw
Phone: +44 (0)20 8331 9052
Address: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Greenwich
Old Royal Naval College
SE10 9LS
UK
In 2003, I joined the Media Department of Canterbury Christ Church University which provided a supportive environment for the continuation and publication of research for almost a decade. There I developed my interest in advertising and media economics, hosted the electronic hub of the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism and explored areas for that publication which others less foolhardy shied away from - not least the relationship of the press to the professions. At the same time I started work on that literary refusnik of commerce, the paradoxical popular Victorian novelist, Ouida.
2008-9 I was lucky enough to be awarded a stipendiary research fellowship at the English Department, University of Ghent, Belgium which resulted in (amongst other things) a special number of Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies (September 2009) on the relationship of the nineteenth-century press to the professions.
In May 2012 I joined the Department of Literature, Language and Theatre at the University of Greenwich as Professor of English Literature and Literary Studies, where I'm yet again lucky enough to have colleagues who are not only very clever and learned but very nice and hard-working indeed.
In the autumn of 2014 I was fortunate to be a Visiting Scholar at the University of Macerata, Italy, sharing teaching and research with my excellent colleagues there. While there I raided various archives and found far more than I expected for my ongoing biography of Ouida, and also continued work on the two volumes I edited with Alexis Easley and John Morton for Routledge, both of which won the annual Colby Prizefor the book that most forwards our thinking about Victorian periodicals. Besides inaugurating the two, editing and contributing to the Introductions, I wrote a chapter on "Periodical Economics" for the first volume, another daunting task.
My current research is focussed on two main areas, all continuations of previous work: Victorian popular fiction and in particular Ouida, on whom Jane Jordan (Kingston) and I edited a collection of essays and whose biography I am contracted to write; and the idea of work and nineteenth-century press on which I contributed a chapter to the Edinburgh History of the Press, and on which I run a website: BLT19.co.uk.
I edit the Victorian Fiction Research Guides which Victorian Secrets now generously hosts:
https://victorianfictionresearchguides.org
and co-edit the OA double-blind peer-reviewed journal *Victorian Popular Fictions* ( https://victorianpopularfiction.org/publications/1200-2/ )
I have made a series of videos on detective fiction, which can be found on my Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkhzmJVrl0ZSb0Bx4X_MAqw
Phone: +44 (0)20 8331 9052
Address: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Greenwich
Old Royal Naval College
SE10 9LS
UK
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Books by Andrew King
The Introduction seeks to place the novel in the context of "Individualism" which is best known in Engluish studies today through Oscar Wilde's essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism."
Victorian Print Media: A Reader collects primary sources from nineteenth century journals, newspapers, and periodicals into an anthology that can be used for teaching purposes, but is also intended to complement and encourage ongoing research. The extracts are organised into ten themed sections. Each section addresses a specific conceptual or historical issue, such as the impact of serial publication upon practices of reading and authorship. The themed sections demonstrate the multiple factors upon which the aesthetics of print media depended, making this anthology of use to all researchers, teachers, and students of the period.
Andrew King argues the necessity for an interdisciplinary vision that recognises that periodicals are commodities that occupy specific but constantly unstable places in a dynamic cultural field. He elaborates the sociological work of Pierre Bourdieu to suggest a model of cultural 'zones' where complex issues of power are negotiated through both conscious and unconscious strategies of legitimation and assumption by consumers and producers. He also critically engages with cultural theory as well as traditional scholarship in history, art history, and literature, combining a political economic approach to the commodity with an aesthetic appreciation of the commodity as fetish. Previous commentators have coded the mass market as somehow always 'feminine', and King offers a genealogy of how such a gender identity came about. Fundamentally, however, the author relies on new and extensive primary research to ground the changing ways in which the reading public became consumers of literary commodities on a scale never before seen.
Finally, King recontextualizes within the Victorian mass market three key novels of the time - Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (serialised in the London Journal 1859-60), Mary Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1863), and a previously unknown version of Émile Zola's The Ladies' Paradise (1883) - and in so doing he lends them radically new and unexpected meanings.
Contents: Preface; Part 1 Periodical Discourse: Periodical questions; Periodical titles; or, 'The London Journal' as a signifier. Part 2 Periodical Production; 1845–9. Theoretical issues; or, genre, title, network, space; Cultural numerology; or, circulation, demographics, debits and credits; 1849–57. Moving from the miscellany; or, J.F. Smith and after; 1857–62. When is a periodical not itself? or, Mark Lemon and his successors; 1862–83. The secret of success; or, American women and British men; Part 3 Periodical Gender; or, the Metastases of the Reader: 1845–55. Gender and the implied reader; or, the re-gendering of news; 1863. Lady Audley's secret zone; or, is subversion subversive?; 1868–83. Dress, address and the vote; or, the gender of performance; 1883: The revenge of the reader; or, Zola out and in; Appendix; References; Index.
About the Author: Dr Andrew King is a senior lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University College, UK.
Reviews: '… King has taken on the task of correcting this historiographic imbalance by thoroughly excavating some of the more obscure purlieus of mid-nineteenth century Grub Street, and nearly every page of the book bears witness to the assiduity and ingenuity of his primary research... a detailed and illuminating contribution to the expanding list of books dealing with various aspects of Victorian print culture published as part of Ashgate’s impressive 'The Nineteenth Century' series.' SHARP News
'... this remarkable study. Its comprehensiveness and interdisciplinarity are likely to make it attractive to scholars in such diverse fields as media history, library science, cultural studies, journalism, and literary studies. King makes a convincing case for the London Journal as a key text in the history of the mass media, and provides a variety of interpretative tools that scholars are likely to find useful as they continue to explore the vast field of Victorian journalism.' The Library
'Andrew King has succeeded in writing a well-informed and thought-provoking study that breaks new ground, particularly in the way it balances theoretical insights with more traditional periodical historiography.' Victorian Periodicals Review
‘Andrew King's detailed examination of the production and reception of the London Journal during the mid-nineteenth century offers an excellent model for analyses of literary periodicals…’ Script and Print
Papers by Andrew King
work towards a consideration of the relationships between the press and professionalisation in the nineteenth century
Thesis Chapters by Andrew King
The Introduction seeks to place the novel in the context of "Individualism" which is best known in Engluish studies today through Oscar Wilde's essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism."
Victorian Print Media: A Reader collects primary sources from nineteenth century journals, newspapers, and periodicals into an anthology that can be used for teaching purposes, but is also intended to complement and encourage ongoing research. The extracts are organised into ten themed sections. Each section addresses a specific conceptual or historical issue, such as the impact of serial publication upon practices of reading and authorship. The themed sections demonstrate the multiple factors upon which the aesthetics of print media depended, making this anthology of use to all researchers, teachers, and students of the period.
Andrew King argues the necessity for an interdisciplinary vision that recognises that periodicals are commodities that occupy specific but constantly unstable places in a dynamic cultural field. He elaborates the sociological work of Pierre Bourdieu to suggest a model of cultural 'zones' where complex issues of power are negotiated through both conscious and unconscious strategies of legitimation and assumption by consumers and producers. He also critically engages with cultural theory as well as traditional scholarship in history, art history, and literature, combining a political economic approach to the commodity with an aesthetic appreciation of the commodity as fetish. Previous commentators have coded the mass market as somehow always 'feminine', and King offers a genealogy of how such a gender identity came about. Fundamentally, however, the author relies on new and extensive primary research to ground the changing ways in which the reading public became consumers of literary commodities on a scale never before seen.
Finally, King recontextualizes within the Victorian mass market three key novels of the time - Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (serialised in the London Journal 1859-60), Mary Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1863), and a previously unknown version of Émile Zola's The Ladies' Paradise (1883) - and in so doing he lends them radically new and unexpected meanings.
Contents: Preface; Part 1 Periodical Discourse: Periodical questions; Periodical titles; or, 'The London Journal' as a signifier. Part 2 Periodical Production; 1845–9. Theoretical issues; or, genre, title, network, space; Cultural numerology; or, circulation, demographics, debits and credits; 1849–57. Moving from the miscellany; or, J.F. Smith and after; 1857–62. When is a periodical not itself? or, Mark Lemon and his successors; 1862–83. The secret of success; or, American women and British men; Part 3 Periodical Gender; or, the Metastases of the Reader: 1845–55. Gender and the implied reader; or, the re-gendering of news; 1863. Lady Audley's secret zone; or, is subversion subversive?; 1868–83. Dress, address and the vote; or, the gender of performance; 1883: The revenge of the reader; or, Zola out and in; Appendix; References; Index.
About the Author: Dr Andrew King is a senior lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University College, UK.
Reviews: '… King has taken on the task of correcting this historiographic imbalance by thoroughly excavating some of the more obscure purlieus of mid-nineteenth century Grub Street, and nearly every page of the book bears witness to the assiduity and ingenuity of his primary research... a detailed and illuminating contribution to the expanding list of books dealing with various aspects of Victorian print culture published as part of Ashgate’s impressive 'The Nineteenth Century' series.' SHARP News
'... this remarkable study. Its comprehensiveness and interdisciplinarity are likely to make it attractive to scholars in such diverse fields as media history, library science, cultural studies, journalism, and literary studies. King makes a convincing case for the London Journal as a key text in the history of the mass media, and provides a variety of interpretative tools that scholars are likely to find useful as they continue to explore the vast field of Victorian journalism.' The Library
'Andrew King has succeeded in writing a well-informed and thought-provoking study that breaks new ground, particularly in the way it balances theoretical insights with more traditional periodical historiography.' Victorian Periodicals Review
‘Andrew King's detailed examination of the production and reception of the London Journal during the mid-nineteenth century offers an excellent model for analyses of literary periodicals…’ Script and Print
work towards a consideration of the relationships between the press and professionalisation in the nineteenth century