Conviction and career: writing for temperance

Abstract

This is the introductory chapter to 'Writing for Social Change in Temperance Periodicals: Conviction and Career,' a monograph published by Routledge in the 'The Nineteenth Century Series.'
This book suggests alternative ways of looking at what made a writer, what people gained from writing, and explores the alternative world of temperance periodicals of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It introduces some of the now-forgotten writers who, in their thousands, kept the Victorian periodical presses rolling, and the public entertained. Locating their writing in the context of their personal commitment, the study takes seven prolific writers who were outside what we now think of as the circuits of conventional publication and authorship, and looks at how they found ways to make their voices heard. Their absorption in a cause led them to forge impressive writing careers in a variety of genres and media, focusing around high-circulation temperance periodicals. Examining their cultural contributions as well as their professional lives confirms the importance of the temperance movement in the second half of the nineteenth century, and raises questions about distribution practices and values, and distinctions between ‘life’ and ‘work.’
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. Conviction and Career
2. Clara Lucas Balfour: writing and lecturing as symbiotic vocation
3. William Hoyle: editor, poet, and songsmith
4. Mary Anna Paull: the flowering of a temperance novelist
5. Frank Adkins: special agent with a drive to write
6. Alfred J. Glasspool: juggling the Guildhall and the lecture hall
7. Walter N. Edwards: a life in scientific temperance
8. Mary Magdalen Forrester: from the dye tub to the editor’s chair
9. Conclusion