Between Text and Image: Print Media and Visual Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century

Written by Adele Douglas, a PhD student in History at Manchester Metropolitan University. Adele’s project is on PETERLOO IN MANCHESTER; MEMORY, LEGACY, AND LOCAL IDENTITY 1819-2019

‘Between Text and Image’, which took place on 14 September 2023, was the latest in a series of collaborative events brought together by the Long Nineteenth Century Network and the Special Collections Museum, both at Manchester Metropolitan University. Inspired by the museum’s collection of nineteenth-century periodicals, this symposium brought together researchers from across the globe looking to reflect on the variety displayed across this dynamic medium.

This is the second Long Nineteenth Century symposium I have attended, the first being May’s ‘Decolonising the Nineteenth Century Collections.’ The two events followed a similar format, with coffee and networking to begin with in the museum space itself, allowing attendees to take in source material pertaining to the upcoming lectures and workshops. It is an excellent way of informally setting the scene, and the objects on display are good talking points – especially for attendees like myself who find small talk overwhelming – to be able to connect over a shared interest in the materials is refreshing.

The event proper kicked off with a plenary lecture from Jennie Batchelor, Professor of English at the University of Kent (about to move to the University of York). Her lecture focused on format, on how meaning is writ through stylistic and layout decisions as much as through the text and image. Using The Ladies Magazine as a means to explore these ideas, Prof Batchelor considered how publications directed at women project specific approaches to consuming the material and how format and style impact the reading experience. Using examples of articles published in the magazine pertaining to marriage, she argued effectively that The Ladies Magazine saw itself as spearheading a revolution in female manners and was designed to prepare young ladies for the ‘real world’ – by warning them of the danger of tyrannical husbands, for example. The examples of articles discussed highlighted the importance of ongoing context in magazines and periodicals and showed that magazines were not a stand-alone nor frivolous form of media, despite years of academic dismissal. This idea of ongoing context came into play as Prof Batchelor approached the topic of digitisation; accepting that most researchers will view nineteenth century periodical publications in this format and acknowledging the accessibility of a digital format. It is, however, important to account for the failings of digitisation to fully replicate the original reading experience and thus how much we can truly ‘know’ the publication as intended when only reading articles in isolation, driven by targeted keyword searches.

After a short break, the symposium reconvened for the first panel session: Text and Image. The first speaker, Professor Emily Rohrbach from Durham University, focused on the work of poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon. Landon’s work is some of the most quoted within private scrapbooks and journals of the Nineteenth Century. Many of the scrapbooks held by MMU in the Sir Harry Robertson Page Collection contain lines of her work, either cut from magazines or transcribed by hand. Prof Rohrbach noted that despite her work lending itself to the medium of scrapbooking, and her own personal fascination with manuscript as a medium; most of Landon’s work was print work, appearing in magazines, monographs and gift books. However, by viewing poems published by Landon in The New Monthly Magazine, she argued effectively that Landon was aware of this secondary use of her work and structured it in order to appeal to the scrapbooker via use of format, quotation and epigraph. Dr Rohrbach’s enthusiasm for Landon’s work was genuine and evident throughout; and, as she stated at the closing of her lecture, this was a small insight into ‘a literary world that is both shared and individual.’

The second lecture in this section was by Dr Amy Matthewson (of both the University of Iceland and SOAS). Dr Matthewson focused on representation of Chinese culture during Nineteenth-Century conflicts- the Opium Wars and the Sino-Japanese conflict- focusing on one British publication, The Illustrated London News. This lecture was my personal favourite, potentially as it was closer to my comfort zone of examining historical sources, but also due to Dr Matthewson’s clear, well thought out and informative presentation. She noted that The Illustrated London News used a range of illustrative techniques, from traditional Chinese and Japanese wood block press to the ultra-modern medium of photography. However, some of the pictures were created in ways that today we would consider to be unscrupulous. Many of the illustrations were directly lifted from William Alexander’s late eighteenth century observational illustrations of China but reappropriated his celebratory and factual sketches to display the Chinese as warlike enemies during the conflicts. Dr Matthewson acknowledged the challenge depicting such far away conflicts must have been for the illustrators, and that the approach they took blended what the British public thought they knew about Chinese culture with new information; but did not shy away from the fact that many of these representations were both plagiarised and presented in a way we would now consider inappropriate- often captioned in ways that seem patronising, pandering to the idea the British public could not manage such ‘foreign’ material without guidance.
What linked the two lectures in this section is not just that intersection between text and image, but the concept of repurposing text and image, be that for personal or commercial reasons.

After a lunchbreak, the conference reconvened to look at one particular type of image- the caricature. Françoise Baillet, Professor of British History and Culture at Caen Normandie University, France, introduced us to the Punch Pocket Book. These books were produced yearly, at Christmas, ready for the next year. Part diary, part almanac, with a pleasing exclusive central cartoon by one of the leading Punch cartoonists- think Leech or Tenniel- and tables of information around topics as varied as contact details for Whitehall departments, or lists of population data for UK cities. Described as “a happy cumulation of business and pleasure,” the Pocket Book offered the Victorian public a portable centre of memory. Leatherbound, and with display cases available, this was a product designed to be retained after one had finished annotating it. Dr Baillet is part of an initiative to digitise these items, but believes, as she clearly articulated, that turning them into a durable resource raises questions not only about the reading experience (similarly to Dr Batchelor’s lecture around digitised periodicals), but around intimacy. The Pocket Book was designed to be used as a diary and this is reflected in the copies held in the Punch archive. Some have had the handwritten pages removed, others have left them in. Some have evidence of having been used by an entire family, not just one individual. This creates very different source material, as each copy, even those of the same edition, become very different documents. This juxtaposition of the public and private sphere creates a challenge for digital archivists, but the wealth of knowledge we can glean from the Pocket Books will be invaluable.

This was followed by Sourav Chatterjee, a PhD candidate at Columbia University, who introduced the symposium to his work on Basantak, or The Bengali Punch. Only in print for three years, and initially a reaction to attempts to curb press freedom, it took a stance against colonialism by mocking British officials in India. But, Chatterjee argued, it went deeper than pure imitation. In a climate where media suppression of local publications was contrasted by a deluge of British periodicals and newspapers (more often than not used as a vehicle for colonial soft power); to use the tropes often found in publications such as Punch to mock the colonial regime was an act of subversion. By using characterisations that were well known to local people, but not widely understood by the British, Basatak occupied the same satirical space as Punch and deconstructed the colonial narrative via the appropriation of one of the most potent mediums of the oppressor.

Following the lectures on satire, the symposium ventured into the exhibition area for a short introduction by Dr Emma Liggins and Professor Brian Maidment to the new exhibition- Nineteenth Century Mass Media: Magazines, Annuals and Scrapbooks. This was coupled with an opportunity to view some of the collection that inspired the exhibition, and to hear Professor Maidment discuss how he had begun the collection of these periodicals upon arriving at what was then Manchester Polytechnic in the 1970’s.

The final plenary lecture was from Deidre Lynch, Professor of English Literature at Harvard University. Titled “’The diamond quit – with me the pencil take’: Albums and the Enduring Ephemeral,” Prof Lynch focused on the nineteenth century scrapbook as a piece of memory work. Noting that the contents often gravitate towards inscription poetry, memorialisation, even copies of gravestone inscriptions to document visits. This raises questions of context dependency; the example given by Prof Lynch of does a poem, etched onto Lake District stone by William Wordsworth, lose something when transcribed in pencil into a scrapbook in London? Scrapbooks are all about the impermanence of the printed media. More traditional media sources are often cut up to create the scrapbook, and the transience of paper as a medium becomes very clear via the typical scrapbooks hodge podge, layered effect. Prof Lynch noted that the title of her lecture was a nod to these ideas of transience: “the diamond quit” a reference to the arcane practice of tagging glass- windows, drinking glasses, etc- as famously demonstrated by Robert Burns in the Dumfries pub The Globe Tavern. That Burns’ efforts remain to this day speaks to the permanence of this method of inscription. To do this required access to diamond, and many prolific taggers had a diamond-tipped stylus specifically for this activity. Conversely, “the pencil take” is about a more transient, softer, impermanent method of inscription, and pencils were certainly more widely available than diamonds. Prof Lynch noted that despite the obvious contrast in the permanence of the mediums, glass can still break, drinking vessels can be replaced. In the end, one may as well write in pencil. The scrapbook straddles these ideas of permanence. At a time when the differences in print and self written media were hardening, the scrapbook, a transient medium for permanent feelings, collapses those divisions; holding a temporary, self created, often private album as cognate to other sites of memory or written epitaphs.

As the day concluded, it became clear just how much all of these papers related to each other. Ideas of transience, of imitation and appropriation, of subversion and of the relationship the print media has to the personal acts of scrapbooking, journaling and diarising. The theme of digitisation loomed large, as the patchwork nature of both scrapbooking and magazine publication does not lend itself well to linear reading and each piece suffers from being divided from the whole. This understanding is crucial in an increasingly online world; and although the digitisation of historical artefacts has huge benefits in terms of accessibility, preservation, and costs there are drawbacks in terms of how this media is consumed. Are we further removing the researcher from the original, authentic reading experience? What shone through each lecture was the enthusiasm each speaker had for their medium, and their appreciation of the romance of print media. It is clear that we must not, in an effort to preserve and share widely these sources, lose the context of consumption they would have originally held and thus move further away from the creation of meaning full physical interaction with the material will create, over and over for each reader.

The Long Nineteenth Century Network is co-directed by Dr Emma Liggins and Dr Sonja Lawrenson, and this series of collaborative events is organised jointly with Stephanie Boydell, Special Collections Curator at Manchester Metropolitan University. For more photos of the Nineteenth-Century Mass Media exhibition, please visit the Long Nineteenth-Century Network blog: https://long19thcenturynetworkmmu.wordpress.com/2023/10/27/between-text-and-image-print-media-and-visual-culture-in-the-long-nineteenth-century/

The exhibition will be up until August 2024, if you’d like to visit in person. Special Collections Museum is open Monday to Friday, 10-4 pm at All Saints Library, Manchester.

Please click below to watch a sample of the sessions recorded live at the event. These include plenaries by Professor Jennie Batchelor and Professor Deidre Lynch, as well as a paper presented by PGR contributor, Sourav Chatterjee.

Adele is a history PhD student at MMU, focusing on the commemoration and remembrance of the Peterloo Massacre. She is particularly interested in how collective memory and local mythology impact identity be that on a group or community, local, or national level. Adele is also a City Councillor in Manchester, and is the Deputy Executive Member dealing with libraries- the perfect role for her love of literature. Outside of history and literature, her main interest is music. She has see the Manic Street Preachers live over fifty times.