Conservative Politics, Revolutionary Fiction, and the Constructed Reader in Victorian Penny Paper Pearson’s Weekly
Adam Baldwin
Abstract
The penny paper Pearson’s Weekly was one of several that emerged in the 1880s and 1890s. These papers offered readers short general interest articles, a letters page, and often sensational fiction. In this article I examine some contemporary responses to the late-Victorian penny press, mapping them onto Pearson’s Weekly’s own editorial construction of the reader. I then go on to look at a scientific romance serialised in the paper during 1893, George Griffith’s The Angel of the Revolution, whose radical revolutionary politics and socialist new world order seem at odds with the paper’s editorial tone. After reading the novel’s apparent radicalism alongside the contents of Pearson’s Weekly, I conclude that The Angel of the Revolution’s utopian new world is rooted in the 1890s society from which it has emerged, ultimately endorsing the socially conservative nature of the paper.
Keywords
Pearson’s Weekly; George Griffith; Penny papers; scientific romance; future-war
Date of Acceptance: 7 July 2025
Date of Publication: 10 July 2025
Double Blind Peer Reviewed
Recommended Citation:
Baldwin, Adam. 2025. “Conservative Politics, Revolutionary Fiction, and the Constructed Reader in Victorian Penny Paper Pearson’s Weekly.” Victorian Popular Fictions, 7.1: 80-96. ISSN: 2632-4253 (online) DOI: https://doi.org/10.46911/HNXP9067
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
