Introduction

Abstract

This book focuses on the unique characteristic of the Victorian periodical press – its development of encounters between and among readers, editors, and authors. By encounters in the press, we mean any set of articles or letters to the editor in which the writer, whether journalist or reader, responds to a published article in a periodical, often as a reply to special topics or issues of the day, or to other articles with which the respondent agrees or disagrees. These encounters may be in the form of debates or dialogues, and they function in several ways, notably as mediations of the topic under discussion in the press or as the content itself.