The Waterloo Directory of Victorian Periodicals, 1824–1900: Phase 1 ed. by Michael Wolff, John S. North, Dorothy Deering
1978; University of Western Ontario Libraries; Volume: 4; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/esc.1978.0018
ISSN1913-4835
Autores Tópico(s)Philippine History and Culture
ResumoR E V I E W S The Waterloo Directory of Victorian Periodicals, 1824.-1900: Phase 1, eds Michael Wolff, John S. North, Dorothy Deering (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier Press 1976). xxvii, 1187. $135.00 I A BALLADE OF DEAD PERIODICALS Tell me now in what earth doth rest The 'Germ' that was sown dull sods between? Where is the sheet that Praed impressed With schoolboy wit both gay and keen? Where may Trevelyan's 'Bear' be seen? Where are the columns that Thackeray Penned in the teeth of don and dean? But where are the 'commons' of yesterday? Where is the 'Meteor' ? sunk in the west; Where is the 'Cambridge magazine', That 'Journal of general interest' ? And where may the 'M ay bee' have been? What hidden lair, I pray, doth screen The prying 'Lynx', that hath fled away? And where is the bard of the blithe 'Light green' ? But where [are] the 'commons' of yesterday ? Where has the 'Cuckoo' made its nest? Where is the 'Star of the morning's' sheen? Is the matutinal 'Mail' 'non est', And the 'Summary' that was scant and lean? Lapped in libations of paraffin In Cook's uncritical 'auto-da-fe', Have they been sacrificed 'all' to cuisine? But where are the 'commons' of yesterday? (Pp 67-68) The above anonymous parody, reprinted from The Cambridge Fortnightly (1888) in H.C. Marillier's "Odd Volumes" lecture on University Magazines 239 (1898, reprinted 1902) alludes to only an "even" baker's dozen of the 29,017 entries in The Waterloo Directory of Victorian Periodicals, the most important reference work on Victorian serial publications to appear since the two volumes of Walter Houghton's Wellesley Index (also published in Canada), to which the Director is complementary. That some of the thirteen journals in the parody are incompletely or inaccurately described in the Directory will come as no surprise to the editors, who have forestalled criticism by their ready admission of the limitations of "Phase 1 ." Notwithstanding the impressive coverage of the Directory, it is essential that students using the volume be thoroughly apprised of its strengths and shortcomings as a basic reference tool. But before examining the volume in detail, it may prove instructive to rehearse briefly the background - especially the Canadian connection - of the Directory, which, like Rossetti's 1870 "Sonnets and Songs towards a work to be called 'The House of Life,'" is a prolegomenon to a more complete study to be produced at an unspecified time in the future. The idea (or ideal) for a comprehensive listing of Victorian periodicals was first advanced by Michael Wolff, that charter member of the Academy of Projectors who founded Victorian Studies, in an address to the second Univer sity of Toronto Editorial Conference on Editing Nineteenth Century Texts in November 1966, entitled "Charting the Golden Stream: Thoughts on a Direc tory of Victorian Periodicals." In that address, Wolff, after sketching the indisputable value of Victorian periodicals as an untapped source for a new historiography of the period and delineating the scope of his own researches, involving the identification of some 12,500 titles, proposed that a "co-ordinated assault" be made on a periodicals directory, arguing that "a proper finding list [the ultimate desideratum short of a utopian Wellesley] depends on having an adequate overall checklist to being with." Wolff's enthusiasm, coupled with support from the Chapelbrook Foundation of Boston, led, in just over a year, to a trial issue of The Victorian Periodicals Newletter (v p n ), circulated to subscrib ers to Victorian Studies, which canvassed interest of Victorian scholars in, and suggestions for, that "co-ordinated assault." Five numbers later, with v p n afait accompli, forty-seven Victorians gathered in the Graduate Centre of c u n y , on 18 October 1969, to found the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (r s v p ), one of the two sponsors -the other is the Waterloo Computing Centre in the Humanities - of the Directory. Central from the outset to Wolff's role in the creation of v p n and r s v p , of which he was founding editor and president respectively, was his vision of what he then called the...
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