Age and generation dynamics in Victorian periodical culture

This article seeks to open up an exploration of the influence of age and in particular of generational identity as a key dynamic in the sociology of Victorian authorship, by exploring the barriers which have hitherto limited sociological investigations, and the potential that might be offered by digital humanities approaches. It argues that despite a number of important Digital Humanities (DH) projects addressing aspects of Victorian writing and authorship in the past 15 years, our knowledge of the sociology of Victorian authorship remains underarticulated. It points to the importance of developing scalable methodologies beyond the traditional ‘bag of words’ analyses of texts, and especially to the need for effective integration of literary and demographic data. By way of illuminating the sorts of questions that might be addressed by such methods and the potential insights that might result, the article summarises the outcomes of two related projects which have sought to consider age dynamics, one focusing on a sample of the journals covered by the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, and a second using data from the Curran Index. Both projects use the generational schema for the Victorian period proposed by Hewitt, initially in the JVC in 2019. In both cases, it is argued, the data lends strong support to the presence of significant generational patterns in periodical authorship, patterns which align in suggestive ways with current understandings of the sub-periods of Victorian Britain. The article concludes with some thoughts about the directions future work in this space might take.