Kathleen McIlvenna – författare

This four-volume collection contextualises primary sources related to nineteenth-century communications, including periodical articles, institutional and administrative records, material artefacts, and manuscript material such as correspondence, minutes, and memoirs. This resource contributes to knowledge in its own right as well as stimulates and facilitates future investigations, by students, academics, and other researchers, into the topic of the history of communications. The collections contributes to improving understandings of how nineteenth-century, especially Victorian, communication media, infrastructure, and technology have shaped the globalised, networked world in which we live today.The collection draws on materials held in archives across Britain as well as internationally. Following a broad chronology within each volume, the collection gathers sources dating from the period between 1780 and 1918. It takes for its starting point John Palmer’s proposal for a new mail coach design and ends with the demise of universal penny postage in 1918. The majority of sources, however, date from the years between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the beginning of the First World War in 1914.

This volume focuses on the development of mail services between ca. 1780 and 1860. It takes as its starting point John Palmer’s proposal to reform the mail coach system in the 1780s. As part of this volume, the following themes and subjects are covered: Mail services prior to the introduction of the penny post, including the rise and fall of the mail coach; correspondence and surveillance during the Napoleonic wars; the emergence of local penny posts; and debates about the franking privileges of Members of Parliament. Campaigns for and against the introduction of Rowland Hill’s scheme for penny postage between 1837 and 1840. Cultural responses to, and repercussions of, the introduction of the penny post in 1840. The 1844 letter opening scandal. The development of mail infrastructure from 1840 onward, including the development of rural post routes and the use of the railways for the conveyance of the mail.

This volume foregrounds the close, and mutually informing, relationships between mediated communication and technological innovation during the nineteenth century. It draws attention to the fact that communication was a driver of innovation, but also considers how communication practices adapted to new media and technologies. The following themes and subjects are covered: The development of the telegraph, from the semaphore in the late eighteenth century to the wireless in the late nineteenth. Rhe shift from privately owned to nationalised telegraph infrastructure and services. Mail trains, travelling post offices, and accelerated public communication. The development of and cultural responses to steam-packet technologies and infrastructures, and accelerated international communication. The development of and cultural responses to submarine and transoceanic telegraphy. The beginnings of telephony.

This volume illuminates some of the manifold ways in which Britain’s communication infrastructure affected everyday life in nineteenth-century Britain. Accordingly, it highlights socio-economic, cultural, and material repercussions of selected aspects of mediated communication. It covers: The rise and role of the communication worker and the Post Office’s status as Britain’s largest employer as well as pioneering employer of women. The campaigns surrounding Sunday labour. The connections between new leisure opportunities and activities and new media of communication such as the postcard. Concerns about morally suspect uses of new media and technologies of communication, e.g. the use of the telegraph for gambling.The presence of changing communication practices in material culture, e.g. the increasing popularity of greeting cards and new types of stationery.