ABSTRACT
Queen Victoria wrote to Tennyson late in their respective careers as monarch and Poet Laureate on 9 October 1883 and expressed her opinions about periodicals: “How I wish you could suggest means of crushing those horrible publications whose object is to promulgate scandal and calumny which they invent themselves!” 1 Like the poet, the Queen hated the aggressive production of texts and resultant loss of control. Pressured by the rush of deadlines and the incessant, competitive acquisition of copy for daily, weekly, and monthly issues of periodicals, Tennyson complained that “All the magazines and daily newspapers, which pounce upon everything they can get hold of, demoralize literature. This age gives an author no time to mature his works”—no time, that is, if an author wanted to embrace the financial and promotional opportunities provided by periodical publication, in which Tennyson repeatedly showed acute interest (423). In spite of their complaints, the Poet Laureate and his Queen were public figures whose agency throughout the span of their tenure depended upon imaging available mainly through periodical print. Yet the material form of the periodical created its own text of both Tennyson and Victoria, simultaneously making them cultural icons while providing an outlet for poet and Queen to promote their own ideological agendas.
