'The Long and Short of It: Rethinking the Longevity of Nineteenth-Century Periodicals'

This essay argues that short-lived newspapers, often overlooked as the expected casualties of a developing industry, were actually a significant proportion of the nineteenth century’s press. It explores the methodological problem of how to gauge the ‘shape’ of the nineteenth-century press, particularly in terms of relative longevity of publication, offering a critique of the sources and systems of knowledge that have moulded our conception of the industry. Analysing datasets drawn from nineteenth-, twentieth- and twenty-first-century sources, this approach provides a fresh perspective that restores short-lived nineteenth-century newspapers to greater prominence, suggesting an imbalance in historical research focused on longstanding newspapers.