Trollope and the Magazines: Gendered Issues in Mid-Victorian Britain

Almost every Victorian novelist we read today published fiction in the diverse range of nineteenth-century magazines. The great middle-class reading public first encountered Dickens, Thackeray, Gaskell, Trollope and others in serial rather than book form. Despite the importance of popular magazines in the circulation of fiction in the nineteenth century, relatively little criticism has focused on the magazines as a site of publication. Trollope and the Magazines examines the serial publication of several of Trollope's novels in the context of the gendered discourses present in a range of Victorian magazines. From the hugely popular and influential Cornhill Magazine to the radical, Liberal Fortnightly Review, this study seeks to understand Trollope's fiction as it intersects with the other fiction and non-fiction alongside which is was first published. By reading Trollope as serial novelist, we can better appreciate the interesting ways his fiction engaged with cultural debates around issues such as the 'Woman Question', middle-class manliness, and sensationalism, and we can understand more clearly the cultural importance of the periodical press to the Victorians.