H-210. The Rise of Periodical Print Culture, 1700–1830
Jennie Batchelor
Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 12–17 July 2026
Format: in person, University of York in York, UK
Fee: $1,495
This course focuses on the diversity and proliferation of periodical publications from 1700 to 1830. It will pay particular attention to how the material forms and multimedia dimensions of newspapers, periodicals, and magazines shaped their reception and popularity. Among the topics that will be covered are: the differences between periodical forms; technological innovations in printing and illustration; business models for periodical publication; relationships between publishers, printers, editors, artists, contributors and readers; the growth of audience specialization, such as the rise of the women’s magazine; the culture of pseudonymity; the relationship between the book, newspaper and periodical trade, and regional and national press; and the periodical’s complex status in eighteenth-century copyright law.
Taught primarily at the Borthwick Institute of Archives at the University of York, the course will take advantage of the rich collections it holds. The course will also involve a visit to another local archive. Students will have the opportunity to work with a diverse range of periodical titles and forms across these three collections. They will benefit additionally from sessions that facilitate deep engagement with runs of individual, long-running titles including: The Gentleman’s Magazine, The Lady’s Magazine, and York newspapers. This course is suitable for students with little or no experience with periodicals from this period. In their personal statements, applicants should describe their interest in and experience with periodicals (if any) and how the course might fit into their current work.
Course History
Faculty
Jennie Batchelor
Jennie Batchelor is Head and Professor of English at the University of York, which she joined in 2023 after a little over two decades at the University of Kent, the University of Southampton, and Chawton House Library. The author of three monographs and four co-edited collections, she has published widely on eighteenth-century and Romantic literature and culture, with a particular focus on the rise of periodical print culture, women’s writing, material culture, book history, and the history of work. In 2013, she was appointed Consultant Editor for Adam Matthews Digital’s Eighteenth-Century Journals database. Shortly thereafter, she was PI on two Leverhulme grants, including “The Lady’s Magazine (1770-1818): Understanding the Emergence of a Genre” (2014-16), a digital humanities research project which produced a metadata-rich index for the c.15,000 text-based items the periodical published in its first half century. Among her relevant publications are Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1690–1820s (EUP, 2018) and The Lady’s Magazine (1770–1832) and the Making of Literary History (EUP, 2022), which won the Research Society of Victorian Periodicals Colby Book Prize in 2023.
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