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Photography and the Rural Press, 1880–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2014

JONATHAN BROWN
JONATHAN BROWN*
Affiliation:
Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading, Redlands Road, Reading RG1 5EX, UKj.h.brown@reading.ac.uk
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Abstract:

The 1880s saw the introduction of the half-tone as a means of reproducing photographs on the printed page in books and magazines. No editor could afford to ignore this technology and this article examines how it was introduced into magazines catering for a farming and rural readership. It considers the impact of new illustrated magazines and the demand for photographs for reproduction and gives some thought to how historians might profitably use these photographs as evidence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , October 2014 , pp. 223 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

Notes

1. K. Flint, Victorians and the Visual Imagination (2000), pp. 1, 5; J. Taylor, A Dream of England (1994); M. Warner Marien, Photography and its Critics (1997); Elizabeth Edwards, The Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination, 1885–1918 (2012).

2. John Feather, A History of British Publishing (2006), pp. 148–50.

3. Goddard, Nicholas, ‘The Agricultural Press’, The Agricultural History of England and Wales, vol. VII, 1850–1900, ed. Collins, E. J. T. (2000), pp. 672 ffGoogle Scholar.

4. Harris, John, ‘Fifty Years of the Farming Weeklies’, Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, 145 (1984), 101Google Scholar; Goddard, ‘Agricultural Press’, 678.

5. Goddard, Nicholas, ‘The Development and Influence of Agricultural Periodicals and Newspapers, 1780–1880’, Agricultural History Review, 31 (1983), 116–31Google Scholar.

6. Ibid., p. 123.

7. Keller, Ulrich, ‘Photojournalism around 1900: The Institutionalization of a Mass Medium’, in Shadow and Substance, ed. Collins, Kathleen (1990), pp. 284–5.Google Scholar

8. D. L. LeMahieu, A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communication and the Cultivated Mind in Britain between the Wars (1998), p. 67.

9. Agricultural Gazette, 1 (1874).

10. Andrews, Martin, ‘Hare & Co., Commercial Wood Engravers: Jabez Hare, founder of the firm, and his letters 1846–1847’, Journal of the Printing Historical Society, 24 (1995), 53–73Google Scholar.

11. Allen Hutt, Newspaper Design (1960), pp. 169–71.

12. Country Life, 3, 11th June 1898, 708–10.

13. Implement and Machinery Review, 14 (1888–9), 10571, 10589, 11545, 11647.

14. Rigby, Joseph, ‘The Practice of Cheshire Cheese Making’, Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 50 (1889), 427–37Google Scholar; Kemp, G., ‘The Practice of Stilton Cheese Making’, Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 50 (1889), 437–46Google Scholar.

15. Implement and Machinery Review, 18 (1892), 15808–12.

16. Agricultural Gazette, 16th January 1899, 45; 13th March 1899, 215.

17. Kelly's Directory of Hertfordshire, 1899. www.hertfordshire-genealogy.co.uk accessed August 2012.

18. R. D. Brigden, Success in the Press: A Journalistic Perspective on Inter-War Farming, Rural History Centre discussion paper, 1997. Also, R. D. Brigden, ‘Farming in Partnership: The Leckford Estate and the Pursuit of Profit in Inter-War Agriculture’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Reading, 2000), incorporates almost all the information in the paper, including the list of Robinson's articles.

19. Harris, ‘Fifty Years’, 102: A. J. P. Taylor, Beaverbrook (1972), p. 332. On Hulton see the entry by Colin Seymour-Ure in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/40161/40161?back=,40161,34048

20. Farmers Weekly, 1:1, 22nd June 1934.

21. These figures are calculated from a sample of Farmers Weekly, June–December 1934.

22. Harris, ‘Fifty Years’, 102; Griffiths, Clare, ‘Heroes of the Reconstruction? Images of British Farmers in War and Peace’, in Brassley, Paul, Segers, Yves and van Molle, Leen, eds, War, Agriculture and Food: Rural Europe from the 1930s to the 1950s (2012), pp. 210–12Google Scholar.

23. Farmers Weekly, 6th July 1934; Farmer and Stockbreeder, 7th January 1935.

24. Calculations are from issues of Famer and Stockbreeder published in March and June 1921 and 1933.

25. Farmer and Stockbreeder, 30th September 1935, and subsequent issues.

26. MERL P FS PH4/1 Farmer and Stockbreeder register of negatives 1924–48.

27. See definitions of photojournalism given on such websites as the Victoria and Albert Museum (www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/p/photojournalism accessed August 2012).

28. Farmer and Stockbreeder, 12th August 1935, 1747.

29. Farmer and Stockbreeder, 5, 12th December 1932.

30. Guy's photographic archives are at the Museum of English Rural Life, P DX289.

31. John Stevenson, British Society 1914–45 (1984), p. 406. Graham Clarke, The Photograph (1997), pp. 145–65 has a useful discussion of the range of documentary photography.

32. I chose the Wigan example because it was readily available to view on the internet: www.wiganworld.co.uk (accessed August 2012). For examples published in book form, see Tom Hopkinson, Picture Post 1938–50 (1970).

33. Farmers Weekly, 1:1, 22nd June 1934.

34. Allen Hutt, Newspaper Design (1960), p. 169.

35. Everitt, Alan, ‘Past and Present in the Victorian Countryside’, Agricultural History Review, 31 (1983), 163Google Scholar.

36. See, for example, the themed issue of History and Theory, 48: 4 (2009); Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (2001).

37. Crosby, Alan, ‘The Camera as Historian’, review article, Local Historian, 42 (2012), 243–7Google Scholar.