Author: Lorraine Janzen Kooistra
File Type: pdf
In Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing eminent Rossetti scholar Lorraine Janzen Kooistra demonstrates the cultural centrality of a neglected artifact the Victorian illustrated gift book. Turning a critical lens on drawing-room books as both material objects and historical events, Kooistra reveals how the gift books visualverbal form mediated high and popular art as well as book and periodical publication. A composite text produced by many makers, the poetic gift book was designed for domestic space and a female audience its mode of publication marks a significant moment in the history of authorship, reading, and publishing. With rigorous attention to the gift books aesthetic and ideological features, Kooistra analyzes the contributions of poets, artists, engravers, publishers, and readers and shows how its material form moved poetry into popular culture. Drawing on archival and periodical research, she offers new readings of Eliza Cook, Adelaide Procter, and Jean Ingelow and shows the transatlantic reach of their verses. Boldly re-situating Tennysons works within the gift-book economy he dominated, Kooistra demonstrates how the conditions of corporate authorship shaped the production and reception of the laureates verses at the peak of his popularity. Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing changes the map of poetrys placein all its sensesin Victorian everyday life and consumer culture. **Review Thoroughly researched and lucidly argued, Kooistras study makes a convincing case for the centrality of the gift book to understanding Victorian poetry, illustration, book production, and consumer culture. Elizabeth Carolyn Miller, author ofFramed The New Woman Criminal in British Culture at the Fin de Siecle Janzen Kooistra makes a superb contribution to the literature on the history of the book. . . . This volume itself is a beautiful artifact, generously illustrated with examples of gift-book engravings, often displaying the entire printed page in order to display the interplay between text and illustration. Summing up Highly recommended. Choice Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing is an important book that identifies a fertile area for future study. Kooistra provides consistently acute analysis on the commodification of poetry, the impact that this had on author-publisher relationships, and the interaction between material and literary culture. This is a mature piece of scholarship that shows a profound grasp of the subject and the related methodological and theoretical implications. Tennyson Research Bulletin (Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing) is a model of lucid analysis and a valuable addition to the understanding of nineteenth-century book production and consumer culture. Studies in English Literature, 15001900 Over five lavishly illustrated chaptersKooistra presents case studies of individual texts, including many examples from Tennyson, and illuminates different phases of production, from commissioning and marketing to illustrating and to facsimile engraving. Victorian Poetry Janzen Kooistra writes with formidable insight into the vast, intermingled range ofinfluencesartists, engravers, businessmen, and consumersupon 1860s gift-book production. Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing does much to recapture the dual importance of the gift book as commercial and cultural object. Victorian Periodicals Review ...(A)n important contribution to Victorian studies, as well as to the fields of visual and material culture, popular literacy, and book history...confirming (Lorraine Janzen Kooistra) as the leading authority on Victorian illustrated books of poetry. The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies Kooistra persuasively argues that in the 1860s, the illustrated book of poetry became one of the most important literary commodities of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. With great clarity and depth, she articulates the central relevance of ornamental, illustrated poetic gift books to literary culture, British identity, and the place of poetry in histories of authorship, reading, and publishing. There is nothing stale about her contribution to book history studies. Review 19 About the Author Lorraine Janzen Kooistra is the author of The Artist as Critic Bitextuality in Fin-de-Siecle Illustrated Books and Christina Rossetti and Illustration A Publishing History. She is co-editor of The Culture of Christina Rossetti Female Poetics and Victorian Contexts and The Yellow Nineties Online. She teaches at Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada.