Telegraphic Realism: Victorian Fiction and Other Information Systems

FAIN: FT-52310-04

Richard Menke
University of Georgia (Athens, GA 30602-0001)

This book-length project analyzes British fiction and informatics from the Penny Post to the wireless, viewing the development of a distinctive Victorian literary realism as part of an emerging culture of information. It argues that we cannot understand the history of the nineteenth-century novel without recognizing its relationships to the history of media and communication. But more broadly, it also aims to explore the new possibilities for humanities scholarship suggested by our own experiences of the power and pitfalls of new media. I am requesting a summer stipend to help fund research travel to the British Library and the Royal Mail Group’s Heritage archive.