Introduction

This introductory chapter consists of three main parts: first, an analysis of the argument and provenance of the strikingly original series of articles by E. S. Dallas on ‘Popular Literature’ appearing in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine during 1859; second, an overview of Dallas’s career as a journalist, charting his known contributions according to the generic periodicity of the periodicals concerned; and third, an outline of the organization of the book and the key questions it tries to answer. This concerns whether the concept of a communications revolution put forward by Dallas is indeed applicable in analysing the rapid changes taking place in periodical publication, the dominant communications system of the nineteenth century, and, if so, whether we should see the dominant forces driving the change as technological or sociological.