The volumes of the British Literary Magazines series (three out of four of which have now been published) are primarily works of ready reference. Alphabetically arranged within historical period, entries supply brief profiles of around four hundred 'representative' journals, together with some bare-bones factual data. The coverage is wider (but less full) than the 48 titles covered by the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals; less wide (but fuller) than the Waterloo Directory of Victorian Periodicals which heroically aims (one day) to bring all the age's thirty thousand journals under bibliographic control. Although its range extends from Augustan to Modern, the BLM project shares with these other catalogues a central interest in the 19th century, and marks another forward leap in charting what Michael Wolff twenty years ago called the 'golden stream' of Victorian periodical writing.

LRB 1 August 1985 | PDF Download