The new volume Scribal News in Politics and Parliament 1660–1760, which has just been published as a special issue of the journal Parliamentary History, gathers twelve essays by scholars from Britain, Europe, and North America on the role of scribal news in reporting about parliament and politics in Britain between 1660 and 1760. The volume grew out of a one-day conference held between the History of Parliament and the German Historical Institute London (both institutions are neighbours on Bloomsbury Square) in December 2018 to explore a hitherto underinvestigated topic at the intersection of political and media history.
Continue reading New Publication on Manuscript Newsletters around 1700Tag: prints
Vicarious Observation: Conveying Pleasure and Sensory Experience in Eighteenth-Century British Periodicals
The time I spent perusing the British Library’s early modern treasures—thanks to a scholarship from the German Historical Institute London—left me with much to think about for my current research project on the body and pleasure in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century periodicals. First and foremost, my time in London gave me a heightened sense of how newspapers and magazines functioned as a medium for conveying pleasure, not least as a sensory experience.
Continue reading Vicarious Observation: Conveying Pleasure and Sensory Experience in Eighteenth-Century British Periodicals
Manuscript News Sheets: A Neglected Medium of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe
At the turn of the eighteenth century, newspapers had established themselves as the principal port of call for readers with a strong taste for current affairs. One hundred years after the first newspaper had been printed in Strasbourg in 1605, the new medium had spread to all parts of western and central Europe.
Continue reading Manuscript News Sheets: A Neglected Medium of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe