The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale

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The nineteenth century saw major developments in the fairy tale as a popular genre; it also witnessed dramatic changes in the cost and accessibility of print, resulting in an explosion of newspapers and magazines. The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale will be the first book to focus on that dynamic relationship, arguing that the supposed 'golden age' of fairy tale and fantasy was intimately shaped by that magazine culture. My book will reveal that periodicals played a seminal role in establishing a canon of classic fairy tales, in spreading folktale scholarship, and in politicising and fostering new experiments with the genre. Whether used to grapple with the implications of Darwinism, to imagine a socialist utopia, or to engage with new aesthetic movements and strategies, the fairy tale played a central role in Victorian cultural debates. From Charles Kingsley to Keir Hardie, children's monthlies and socialist newspapers to avant-garde magazines, my book reveals the true complexity of that role, uncovering the fairy tale's appropriation for (and by) a range of forgotten readerships. This project uses publishing history to write a new history of the Victorian fairy tale, and challenges some key assumptions made in existing work on the genre.