Reading Langham Place periodicals at Number 19
Beth Palmer
19 Langham Place in centralLondon was the headquarters for a group of female reformers interested in increasing opportunities for female work and education and in reforming the unequal laws regarding property and electoral rights. The friendship between Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and Bessie Rayner Parkes was core to the group. It was their early activities in petitioning parliament and writing reformist articles that attracted other like-minded women to their cause.Key members includedthose with established literary interests such as the novelistMatilda Hays and the poet Adelaide Procter. There were also a significant number who found themselves plunging into roles for which they had no training but much enthusiasm such as Emily Faithfull and Emily Davies who becamepublishers and editors. Their membership was primarily middle-class, and well-off Langhamites such as Bodichon provided funding where necessary. Initially located in Princes Street[1], the expanding group soon moved to Langham Place, a location found by the wealthy Lady Theodosia Monson. This would provide the offices for their journals, meeting space for the associations and committees that the Langham Place Group formed, rooms for refreshments and, importantly, for reading.
The production and dissemination of feminist reading material which recorded and promoted their growing activities and interests was central to the group’s ethos. The periodicals they producedprovided regular updates on their work as well as spreading the message outwards from theLondon base. In writing of the English Woman’s Journalin particular Herstein argues that women ‘from all parts of Britain used the Journal to create the country’s first effective feminist network’ (Herstein1993: 24) and DiCenzo sees the larger body of feminist and suffrage periodicals functioning as vehicles ‘mobilizing collective action’ (DiCenzo 2011: 73).
The group was connected to other reformist collectives such as the National Association for the Promotion of Social Sciences (NAPSS), the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women (SPEW), and the Female Middle-Class Emigration Society. As Phillipa Levine puts it ‘The Langham Place women offered a central metropolitan conduit through which a variety of radical and feminist experiments flowed.’ (Levine 1987: 87) Many of the memberswere active acrossseveral liberal and reformist networks and 19 Langham Place provided offices for the operations of SPEW whose founders were the Langhamites Adelaide Procter and Jessie Boucherett. Expanding opportunities for female employment was a crucial concern put into practice by projects such asa register for recording the details of women in want of work. Maria Rye organised an Engrossing Office where women copied legal documents, and Rye and Isa Craigdirected women into the new profession of telegraph clerks. Emily Faithfull demonstrated women’s capability in the printing industry by setting up her own printing house, the Victoria Press. The press worked very successfully, printing several Langhamite publications and becoming ‘Printer and Publisher in ordinary to Her Majesty’. These projects promoting female employment intersected with agitation for better educational opportunities for women and girls.The campaign for women to be allowed to take university entrance exams, for example, was a lengthy one in which many Langham Place women were involved. Emily Davies would later become one of the key campaigners in the setting up of GirtonCollege first at Hitchin and then in Cambridge.
The Langham Place Group has provided a rich source of material and debate for scholars of nineteenth-century feminism (Levine, Hirsh, Lacey). This chapter, though, seeks to uncover the reading practices encouraged by the Langham Place Group and by the first feminist periodicals that they produced: the English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), the Englishwoman’s Review (1866-1910), and the Victoria Magazine (1863-1880). The editors of these magazines, Bessie Rayner Parkes, Jessie Boucherett, Emily Davies and Emily Faithfull, along with fellow Langhamites cared deeply and thought carefully about readership. They asked themselves how they would engage and maintain readers and how the seemingly passive act of reading might be converted into, or re-imagined as, a dynamic feminist activity.
The English Woman’s Journal
Several critics have emphasised the importance of the English Woman’s Journal(hereafter EWJ)in creating a community of female readers. In its first years it was unique in seeking to connect readers through a mutual interest in addressing and debating their shared social disenfranchisement. The EWJ did not only publish essays by members of the Langham Place Group and other early feminists but also‘invited their readers to participate in the construction of the Journal not only by reading it but also by submitting letters of suggestion and inquiry’ (King 1993:309). The ‘Open Council’ section of the magazine certainly provided a vigorous forum in which readers could participate. Their letters were often published in full and responded with knowledge and insight to previous articles. As well as printing and promoting insightful readerly interaction in ‘Open Council’ the EWJ’s other features and articles encouraged its subscribers towards a particular mode of reading that was rigorous, hard-working and analytical rather than emotional and leisure-oriented. The first article of the first issue of the EWJ sets out this mode of reading it expects its readers to undertake and refuses to sympathise if this is a difficult or strange model for the middle-class woman. ‘Profession of the Teacher’, probably written by Parkes, provides an almost unadorned list of the schemes and charities that have attempted to help the unfortunate governesses and a blunt appraisal of their successes and failures. She follows this information with ‘Our readers will perhaps be tired of all these dates and figures, but only by their aid can we present even the slightest outline of what has been done by this long series of labours.’ ([Parkes] 1858:4) Acknowledging that this article may require an effort to read and might even be tiresome, Parkes’s tone remains unerringly self-confident that readers will understand and adapt to her purpose. There is no sense that she will encourage passive acts of reading, or that her work will attempt to amuse readers.
To reinforce her point, Parkes goes on to criticise an article on female employment from Blackwood’s Magazine. The article claimed that women’s difficulties with employment were exaggerated and gave the very dubious example of the gainful employment of the Brontë sisters as evidence. Instead of mounting a full-scale attack on the Blackwood’s article, Parkes outlines the means by which the reader could unpick its argument for themselves. She outlines how women readers can refute the claims of articles like this which ignore facts.
The exact number of women who are unmarried or widowed, and such proportion of them as have to work for their bread, are to be found stated in the census. Female pauperism (in the workhouses) can be estimated, and female emigration told, to a head: nobody need dispute about “exaggeration” till they have checked it by figures. ([Parkes] 1858: 13).
She is encouraging women to be discerning readers and to verify the facts of an argument rather than be taken in by empty rhetoric. Such encouragement would be reiterated later in response to articles such as the Saturday Review’s ‘The Intellect of Women’ which argued,‘[Women] do not proceed by arriving at argumentative conclusions from clearly defined premisses [sic], but they throw out observations which they cannot tell how they came by’ (cited in Schroeder 2002: 249). The reading room at 19 Langham Place would soon become an ideal place to checkthe facts and figures of an argument and in doing so, to refute accusations of the illogical nature of female debate.For now, though, Parkes is content to point her readers in the direction of sources useful to them in making informed assessments of their reading.
This active and interrogative mode of reading was encouraged throughout the EWJ and especially in the regular book review section. Books reviewed by the magazineincluded novels, biographies, volumes of poetry, and journals.The emphasis in many of these reviews is the text’s links to the central concerns of the Langham Place Group. The January 1859 review of Gladstone’s weighty Homer and the Homeric Age concentrates only on the chapter entitled ‘Women in the Homeric Age’ and suggests that the rest of the book would not be of interest.Wasting valuable hours of reading time on ancient history irrelevant to most women is not recommended. The reviews of magazines alsoconsistently point the EWJ’s readers to articles relevant to questions of women’s education, employment or legal status. For example, in May 1858,Fraser’s magazine for the previous month is commended for printing in fullThomas Henry Buckle’s lecture on ‘The Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge’. The reviewer suggests that Buckle should follow this up with another lecture on female education.The following month she herself becomes the ideal active reader when we see her taking up her own suggestion and writing ‘Female Education in the Middle-Classes’.By demonstrating active responses to reading through its own contributors, the EWJ also inspires similar reactions in its readers, both in ‘Open Council’ and elsewhere.
Another strategy used in the book review section is for the reviewer to offer opinions but finally to refer the book to the judgement of the individual. For example, an 1858 review of The National Magazineclaims‘we must cease to turn over pages, where, among articles good, bad, and indifferent, there are so many of the former, that it will be shorter to say at once that the moderate sum of tenpence may be very profitably invested, and a judgement formed by the reader for himself’ (Anon 1858a: 130-1).And again in July of the same year the reviewer recommends ‘our readers to get the book [Intellectual Education, and its Influence on the Character and Happiness of Women], and judge of it from its own merits’ (Anon1858c: 347). Similarly, when critiquing A Lady’s Diary of the Siege of Lucknow, the reviewer informs us that ‘After reading this book we went to see the Panorama of Lucknow, the better to realize the vivid descriptions it contains’ (Anon 1858b: 270). Following reading with action of some kind: checking facts, joining a committee, writing a response, or even reading another perspective on the topic, demonstrates how reading was conceptualised as an impetus or catalyst in the EWJ. In her work on women’s magazines Margaret Beetham demonstrates that, while the female reader was usually constructed as leisured, the issue of work recurred ‘as a disruptive presence across the range of women’s journals, disappearing completely only in the cheapest serials – the fantasy ‘lady-land’, of mill-girl fiction, whose readers most needed some escape from the work which dominated their lives’ (Beetham 1996: 135). Work was certainly one of the areas of dispute amongst the Langham Place women, even the most radical members deemed some areas of industry unsuitable for women. Despite these internal differences, theEWJ did present a unified perspective that conceptualised reading as an important form of work.
Analysing the English Woman’s Journal through its content presents a coherent sense of the modes of reading its editors sought to encourage. However, when examining the correspondence of its editors – Bessie Parkes and Emily Davies – significant differences become apparent in the ways these women felt their magazine was actually being read. Parkes, who initially edited the journal with the help of Matilda Hays before Davies was brought in, held amodest but unwaveringly positive outlook on the effects her magazine would have on its readers. At the end of the first year of publication Parkes writes to Bodichon that she will continue to ‘trust to the gradual working of public opinion towards further extensions of principle’ (GCPP Parkes 5/87, 5 January 1859). Parkes connected increasing circulation with an increasing take up of the magazine’sreformist thinking. She seems to have homogenised her imagined readers by assuming that they would all comprehend the magazine’s purpose in the same way and to the same degree.Even in 1862, when Parkes was starting to worry about falling circulation she remained convinced that ‘the little EWJ will still ride on steadily doing its month’s portion of practical work’ (GCPP Parkes 5/14, Parkes to Bodichon, 1 April 1862). By conceptualising the magazine itself as undertaking the work, Parkes, in this letter, writes against the message conveyed through its content, that women readers should be ‘working’ to interrogate, critique and question existing assumptions about female capability.
To some degree, Davies shared Parkes’s idealism. She wrote enthusiastically to Barbara Bodichon:
I cannot think of any other better way in which I could spend time + money + thought than this [being editor of EWJ] …+ I cannot help thinking that to work upon the public mind is a very important thing. An inspiring thought, once printed, may kindle somewhere, + produce greater results than twenty printing presses. (GCPP Bodichon 2/3, undated)
While this letter is undated it was probably written in late 1862. This enthusiasm was soon tempered, however, by pressing financial concerns and clashes of opinion with Parkes. In a letter to Barbara Bodichon’s sister, Nannie, in January 1863 Parkes proposes that if the magazine is to continue it needs to aim at a ‘higher class of reader’. She suggests the fiction oriented shilling monthlies Macmillan’sandFraser’s magazines as useful models (GCPP Bodichon, 2/4). Less than two weeks later, Davies was presenting these concerns even more explicitly to Bodichon herself.
To create an atmosphere, we must be read, + the EWJ is not. I think it is of very little use as a rallying point... The Journal has been of no use in the Medical movement. It was of no use in the LondonUniversity matter, + is of none now, that I can see, in the Local Exams question. (GCPP Bodichon, 2/10, 14 January 1863)
The idea of kindling and inspiring readers, no matter how few, into action has ebbed away in this bleak appraisal.The letter goes on to show how Davies has moved significantly away from Parkes’s views on the effects of reading the EWJ.
One of Bessie’s notions is, that people read the Journal with so much more attention than other magazines, that an article read by 1000 people in the EWJ tells more than one read by 60,000 people in Good Words. This seems to me pure delusion. (GCPP Bodichon, 2/10, 14 January 1863)
Davies’s practical-minded deflation of the notion that a small number of attentive readers is better than a large number of any readers separates her from Parkes’s ethos with regards to readership.[2]The Victoria Magazine, the next Langham Place production with which Davies was associated, swings towards this focus on reader number rather than the perceived ‘quality’ of reading but carries over the EWJ’s interest in reading as active not passive.
Victoria Magazine
Davies, dissatisfied with the EWJ,combined forces with Emily Faithfull to ensure their new publication targeted a wider readership. Writing to Barbara Bodichon in 1863 Davies sought approval for the venture which will ‘afford an outlet for the expression of moderate + well-considered opinions on those questions, which while more directly bearing on the condition of women, are in their wider aspects, of the highest importance to society generally’ (GCPP Bodichon, 2/13, 12 March 1863). This new approach was successful in garnering between five and ten times the number of readers buying the Englishwoman’s Review (Ellegård 1971: 18). Its availability at Mudie’s circulating library attested to the fact that it was a well-recognised periodical amongst middle-class subscribers. Faithfull’s Victoria Press printed the monthly editions and also the six-number volumes of the magazine designed to last longer than individual issues. Her confidence in its longevity was not misplaced with the magazine lasting seventeen years.
In order to help create the Victoria Magazine’s appeal to a broader range of readers Davies and Faithfull included male writers in their contributor list, including Davies’s brother the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davies, the journalist R.H. Hutton, the theologian F. D. Maurice and the poet Thomas Hood. The first serial novel was provided by Thomas Adolphus Trollope.[3] In arranging contributions by men, Davies was hoping that her new audience might move towards a wider, family readership. This was not just an economically-motivated strategy. Davies had already stated in January 1863 that ‘I should like to represent good men as well as women’ (GCPP, Bodichon, 2/10). She felt their cause would be better served by working with existing reformist groups, rather than separating themselves with the concomitant risk of accusations of ‘Bloomerism’ (GCPP Bodichon 2/2, 3 December 1862). There is no specific evidence to suggest that male readers were attracted to the magazine in numbers, but the Victoria Magazine’s approximation to what Jennifer Phegley calls the ‘family literary magazine’ would have encouraged households to share the publication as they would with a monthly such as Cornhill (Phegley 2004: 2).