PAMLA member Alberto Gabriele’s book Reading Popular Culture in Victorian Print: Belgravia and Sensationalism has just been published to glowing reviews:
 
http://us.macmillan.com/readingpopularcultureinvictorianprint
 
Reading Popular Culture in Victorian Print: Belgravia and Sensationalism is a comprehensive study of the whole run of the monthly periodical Belgravia under the direction of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. It traces the material history of the magazine, its production and global distribution while at the same time placing its history and content in the context of Victorian popular culture and Victorian discursive formations. Among the questions Reading Popular Culture in Victorian Print investigates are the status of authors in the marketplace, the innovative place Belgravia holds in the history of print culture, the rhetoric of sensationalism in fiction, journalism and pre-cinema, the representation of trade with India, and the use of urban space as a branding strategy. It makes the claim that the periodical is the sensation novel of the 1860s.
 
“Reading Popular Culture in Victorian Print uncovers clues to Victorian reading practices that anticipate our engagement with digital hypertextuality. By placing Belgravia in the context of an emergent modernity, Gabriele also illuminates a critical episode in Victorian history and shows how periodicals helped shape Victorian culture.”—Mary Poovey, New York University and author of Genres of the Credit Economy