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Commenting on the news : the serial press and political culture in Britain, 1641-c.1730
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Taylor, Edward (2019) Commenting on the news : the serial press and political culture in Britain, 1641-c.1730. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3494583~S15
Abstract
Where most scholars have approached current affairs discourse in early modern Britain from the perspective of ‘news’, this thesis argues that commenting on current affairs was a tangible concept and practice in its own right. ‘Comment’ took conceptual shape through a specialist lexicon, including keywords such as ‘observations’, ‘reflections’ and ‘remarks’, and through physical differentiation of news and comment within and between publications. There was a substantial ‘comment media landscape’ that took oral, manuscript and printed forms, centred especially on pamphlets.
From the 1640s, comment was increasingly published through regular printed publications: the serial press. Most comment in serials was political and partisan, supporting royalists or parliamentarians in the civil wars, or Tories or Whigs during the ‘rage of party’. ‘Newspapers’, or printed news serials, were important vehicles for comment (as well as news) in the 1640s and 1650s, and again from the 1710s onwards, and they increasingly challenged pamphlets’ dominance during the eighteenth century. Between the 1680s and 1720s, there was a new tradition of ‘comment serials’ – previously overlooked as a holistic phenomenon by scholars – comprising regular publications whose explicit purpose was to provide comment rather than news, such as Roger L’Estrange’s Observator (1681- 87) and Daniel Defoe’s Review (1704-13). The famous Tatler (1709-11) and Spectator (1711- 12, 1714) can be usefully regarded as moral comment serials.
Finally, this thesis argues that the circulation of published comment contributed to the development of public political awareness and partisanship between the 1640s and 1720s, building on scholarship about the ‘public sphere’ and political culture. Focusing on the consumption of comment serials, it argues that encounters with comment serials were widespread, that they were read along partisan lines (both supportive and hostile), and that they emerged as de facto public voices of party through paper wars and through representations as direct party ‘mouthpieces’.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) |
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| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | British newspapers -- Sections, columns, etc. -- Editorials, Editorials -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century, Editorials -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century, British newspapers -- History -- 17th century, British newspapers -- History -- 18th century, British periodicals -- History -- 17th century, British periodicals -- History -- 18th century, Political culture -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century, Political culture -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century | ||||
| Official Date: | September 2019 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
| Theses Department: | Department of History | ||||
| Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
| Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
| Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Knights, Mark | ||||
| Sponsors: | University of Warwick. Department of History | ||||
| Format of File: | |||||
| Extent: | ix, 319 leaves : illustrations (some colour) | ||||
| Language: | eng |
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