Introduction

This chapter focuses on ‘Women, Children and Gender’, and addresses ‘Religious Audiences’ which, as Josef Altholz has established, were among the most voracious consumers of periodicals. It offers, by contrast, studies in the popular, highly contested arena of cultural and scientific debate around the occult. Historians recognize that one of the ways that nineteenth-century astrology, phrenology, mesmerism, and spiritualism achieved their cultural status was through dedicated journals. The chapter examines how the periodical format was used as a forum for conducting debates on the efficacy and desirability of new technologies. It explores historically important area of confluence between science and the periodical press. Finally, the chapter addresses one of the era’s most crucial intersections of scientific and cultural debate.