ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes some of the larger-scale geo-cultural implications in the London Journal’s title and how the periodical utilized specific areas of the metropolis, overlaying the geographical with the textual in what he shall call a ‘politography’ of the city. He is concerned with how a periodical is both the product and consolidation of a social network of producers who attempt to translate their cultural capital into economic and symbolic forms. The London Journal immediately claimed an ancestry in the 1820s illustrated miscellany through the typography of its masthead and the wording of its sub-title. The London Journal copied other, basic, units of reading from the Family Herald, including the combination of serial novels and one-episode tales, poems, and departments headed ‘Scientific and Useful’ and ‘Statistics’. The choice of ‘The London Journal’ as a brand-name was therefore overdetermined, initially meant to suggest the social project, exposés and excitement of The Mysteries of London and Huntian aesthetic pleasure.
