Mussell, J. orcid.org/0000-0002-5697-1557 (2025) Media Technologies, the Organization of Knowledge, and 1870s Literary Culture. In: Chapman, A., (ed.) Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1870s. Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition . Cambridge University Press , pp. 43-63. ISBN 9781108954792
Abstract
Taking the nationalisation of the telegraph in 1870 as a starting point, this chapter considers how information was understood as immaterial yet depended upon a complex material infrastructure. The first section addresses telegraphy as a technology of the present, enabling people to experience new kinds of contemporaneity, while, at the same time, ensuring that it remained stubbornly uneven. The second turns to text, exploring how it was made suitable for transmission by new information technologies and the new kinds of workers employed to process it. The third looks at the print archive. To ensure the right information could be readily retrieved, systems of bibliographic control were developed to manage the material from which it derived. Throughout, I return to Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now (1875). Trollope’s novel is deeply interested in the contemporary, attending to the technologies that structure the moment and those that make that moment pass.
Metadata
Item Type: | Book Section |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This book chapter has been published in a revised form in https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108954792.003. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution or re-use. © copyright holder. |
Keywords: | Antony Trollope, telegraphy, telegraphists, typewriter, news, information, technology, bibliography, print, media |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of English (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 Dec 2023 16:43 |
Last Modified: | 31 Jan 2025 10:09 |
Published Version: | https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/nineteent... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
Series Name: | Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition |
Identification Number: | 10.1017/9781108954792.003 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:206199 |
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