The Advent of Periodical Indexes and the Event of Victorian Studies

When does Victorian studies begin? How does the field understand its own history? In contrast to more conventional stories about the origin of Victorian studies, this article recovers the constitutive work of bibliographers, list makers, librarians, and uncelebrated knowledge workers who envision and support the archives of a field. I demonstrate how the field forms in relation to the regeneration of nineteenth-century texts in twentieth-century mediums. Notable scholars including Walter Houghton and Michael Wolff – among the founding editors of Victorian Studies – were each involved with large bibliographic projects to document nineteenth-century periodicals and newspapers. But I shift the spotlight to a cohort of lesser-known scholars who recognised the potential of micropublishing and the computerisation of bibliographic records. Arguably, these projects helped to establish the infrastructure and institutional contexts in which Victorian studies continues to be practised, now in digital forms. The advent of periodical studies helps to reveal an infrastructural rather than intellectual history of Victorian studies, and to recover the uncelebrated collaborative labour that significantly shaped the field.