ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses how the efforts to unpack George Eliot's periodical work for the Westminster Review were enabled by methodological questions that turned on the issue of genre. The slippage between "form" and "genre" illustrates why nomenclature is an issue in any discussion of researching a periodical genre. The periodical presents multiple, interlocking genre factors that relate to differentiated texts, such as poems, reviews, or letters to the editor, and to the capacious genre in which the work appears, the periodical. This genre admixture presents difficulties for researchers investigating a periodical genre, and it is one reason why a genre approach to periodical studies is sometimes controversial. A genre approach calls for particular attention to the repetitive structures, paratexts, editorial conventions, and patterns of organization, which together with thematic content and interacting genre conditions constitute key aspects of the periodical's identity as a form that is distinct from other print materials.
