Introduction

Of the many memorable events of 1922, annus mirabilis of modernism, one of the least-noted in modernist studies is the passing of Alfred Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe.1 No one doubted its signifi cance at the time. The press baron and Daily Mail founder died on 14 August at the age of 57, and his death dominated the front pages of his million-selling newspapers and their competitors. Tributes poured in to London from foreign heads of state. Thousands lined the sidewalks of Westminster to see his funeral cortege make its way to the Abbey. In the weeks that followed, cultural commentators weighed in on the legacy of the man thought to have engineered the most important change in British culture of the past 50 years: the introduction and explosive growth of “papers for the millions,” daily papers that, with their brightly written articles, blaring headlines and advertising placards, and perpetually mutating variety of content, sought and won readers respectable papers of 50 years ago had ignored, among them women and working class men.2 This “revolution in Fleet Street” made newspaper publishing England’s twelfth largest industry and sent deep and long-lasting ripples of anxiety through the culture (PEP report 3).3