1st Edition
William Maginn and the British Press A Critical Biography
By David E. Latané
Copyright 2013
378 Pages
by
Routledge
384 Pages
by
Routledge
384 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
The first scholarly treatment of the life of William Maginn (1794-1842), David Latané’s meticulously researched biography follows Maginn’s life from his early days in Ireland through his career in Paris and London as political journalist and writer and finally to his sad decline and incarceration in debtor’s prison. A founding editor of the daily Standard (1827), Maginn was a prodigal author and... Read more
Contents: Preface; Part I 1794-1823: 'And the city is Cork!'; The Cork correspondent; 'The whiskey of the compound'. Part II 1824-1829: London is London; 'A very prosopopoeia of the public press'; Bearing the Standard. Part III 1830-1835: Regina; 'Something shabby about Bulwer'; 'Put the rogues to rout in the year 32'; 'Prison spikes'; 'A strange mystery’ ’Attila’ and ’the sweep’. Part IV 1836-1842: 'Shot at by Doctor Maginn!'; 'The wits of Bentley'; 'Can unhappy poverty sing songs?'; The heart leaps up; 'Reduced to want'; Epilogue: 'a famous subject for moralizing'; Appendices; Sources; Index.
Biography
David E. Latané is Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, USA.
Prizewinner: Joint winner of the Robert and Vineta Colby Scholarly Book Prize 2013, awarded by The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals 'Shakespeare, [Maginn] commented, recreates for us the wonderful court of princes, beggars, judges, swindlers, heroes, bullies, gentlemen, scoundrels, justices, thieves, knights tapsters and the rest whom he drew about him, and this is what David Latane, in the teeth of considerable difficulty, has done for Maginn’s world.' Times Literary Supplement '... What this biography does achieve is to piece together, at times ingeniously, the fragmented and wayward life of a unique man of letters.' Library and Information History '... Latané's book thus makes an unusually valuable contribution to modern scholarship on early-nineteenth-century British periodical culture. ... with its wealth of literary and political details and anecdotes, this is a book that belongs in the library of any scholar interested in Blackwood's, Fraser's, and nineteenth-century British periodicals in general.' NBOL19 ’Latané’s study does a fine job of balancing a careful assessment of Maginn’s excesses with an appreciation of his immense productivity. Latané has offered an extraordinary picture of the bustling world of literary London that[...] runs against the grain of Romantic stereotypes of creative genius.’ BARS Review '[The book] is a significant study of the dilemma of working with words that has troubled writers, authors, editors, publishers and scholars from the nineteenth century to the present day. ... a pleasure to read. Always clear and well-crafted, the prose is often enhanced with unexpectedly apt turns of phrase ...' Victorians Institute Journal
