¹ These magazines were distinct from three other types of “American” periodical that circulated in mid-century Britain: first, newspapers that contained intelligence about Anglo-American trade, like Charles Wilmer's American News Letter (1843–45); second, magazines aimed at Americans resident in Europe, like the American Register and Morning News (1868–1914); third, periodicals primarily published in America that were also circulated in Britain, or had British editions – these included Putnam's Monthly Magazine (1853–57), Godey's Lady's Book (1830–98) and the North American Review (1815–1939). British periodicals also featured pieces by American writers. Some, like Bentley's Miscellany (1837–68) paid American contributors, and others reprinted without permission or payment, like the weekly sensation magazine Cleave's Penny Gazette of Variety and Entertainment (1837–44).

² Reed, Peter P., Rogue Performances: Staging the Underclasses in Early American Theatre Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ McGill, Meredith, American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 1834–1853 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. edn (London: Verso, 2006), especially 21–22, 37Google Scholar, 40–48. Arguments for the periodical's particular importance to American culture and nationhood pre-date Anderson, for example in Frank Luther Mott's understanding of the magazine as a particularly “democratic” form that “must keep close to their public” in order to ensure success. Mott, Frank Luther, A History of American Magazines: 1741–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), 2Google Scholar. For recent studies that connect periodicals and the development of American culture see Gardner, Jared, The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haveman, Heather A., Magazines and the Making of America: Modernization, Community, and Print Culture, 1741–1860 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015)Google Scholar; Patterson, Cynthia Lee, Art for the Middle Classes: America's Illustrated Magazines of the 1840s (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ For more information on copyright law and nineteenth-century periodicals see Slauter, Will, “Toward a History of Copyright for Periodical Writings: Examples from Nineteenth-Century America,” in Collé, Nathalie, Latham, Monica and Eyck, David Ten, eds., Book Practices & Textual Itineraries: From Text(s) to Book(s): Studies in Production and Editorial Processes (Nancy: PUN-Éditions universitaires de Lorraine, 2014), 65–84Google Scholar.

⁶ McGill, 17, argues that a “culture of reprinting” defined antebellum American print, in which authors’ “conjectures about their profoundly unknowable and unstable audiences shaped formal decisions about modes of address, tone, and genre.”

⁷ In 1854, the House of Lords ruled in Jeffreys v. Boosey that copyright in England could not be established via prior publication, and instead required residency in British territory at the time of publication.

⁸ For discussion of The New World and Brother Jonathan see McGill, 21–22, 83, 118–20; Lehuu, Isabelle, Carnival on the Page: Popular Print Media in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000)Google Scholar, 62, 67, 70, 72–73.

⁹ Phelan, Peggy, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar, 3, 146.

¹⁰ Schechner, Richard, Between Theater and Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Roach, Joseph, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 29Google Scholar.

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¹³ Ryan Cordell, Fugitive Verses: Popular Reprinted Poetry from Nineteenth-Century Newspapers (2016), at http://fugitiverses.viraltexts.org.

¹⁴ Josette Féral suggests that there is broadly a split between an Anglo-American performance studies tradition that opposes the excess and self-consciousness of theatricality and positions performance as naturalized within a culture, and a European tradition that sees theatricality and performance as aligned and interrelated. Josette Féral, “Foreword,” SubStance, 31, 2–3 (2002), 3–13.

¹⁵ For further discussion of the construction of theatricality through semiotic codes see Féral, Josette and Bermingham, Ronald P., “Theatricality: The Specificity of Theatrical Language,” SubStance, 31, 2–3 (2002), 94–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 96–98.

¹⁶ Féral, 5.

¹⁷ Richards, Jeffrey H., “Print, Manuscript, and Staged Performance: Dramatic Authorship and Text Circulation in the New Republic,” in Gustafson, Sandra M. and Sloat, Caroline F., eds., Cultural Narratives: Textuality and Performance in American Culture Before 1900 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 73–96Google Scholar, 77.

¹⁸ Horn, Anne, “Theatre, Journalism, and Thackeray's ‘Man of the World Magazine’,” Victorian Periodicals Review, 32, 3 (Fall 1999), 223–38Google Scholar, 229.

¹⁹ The most famous example of dramatic spectacle from mid-nineteenth-century America is the burning of a steamship in the fifth act of Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon (1859). Amy Hughes observes that in nineteenth-century America “books, newspapers, and illustrations frequently harnessed the scale, intensity, and excesses of spectacle,” often for didactic purposes. Hughes, Amy, Spectacles of Reform: Theater and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ Lehuu, Isabelle, Carnival on the Page: Popular Print Media in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 64Google Scholar.

²¹ Féral and Bermingham, 98, 105.

²² The editor of the American Miscellany is unnamed and unknown. A reference to “the literary productions of our transatlantic brethren” suggests that he or she was British, or at least wanted to be read as British. “Preface,” American Miscellany, 1, n.p. [i].

²³ “OBITUARY.; Issue C. Pray.,” New York Times, 29 Nov. 1869, at http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9807E7DC123AEF34BC4151DFB7678382679FDEm, accessed 8 Aug. 2017.

²⁴ For information on Paul's life see ‘Paul, Howard’, Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. 4 – Facsimile Reprint (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1968), 678–79, at https://archive.org/details/AppletonsCyclopediaOfAmericanBiographyVol.4, accessed 19 Aug. 2016.

²⁵ Pray, Isaac Clarke, “Science and Art,” Great Western Magazine, 1, 2 (May 1842), 188–91Google Scholar, 189.

²⁶ Collins, Michael J., The Drama of the American Short Story, 1800–1865 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016), 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the interplay between print and theatre in antebellum America see also Hughes, Amy, Spectacles of Reform: Theater and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gibbs, Jenna M., Performing the Temple of Liberty: Slavery, Theater, and Popular Culture in London and Philadelphia, 1760–1850 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

²⁷ Wilmer, S. E., Theatre, Society and the Nation: Staging American Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shaffer, Jason, Performing Patriotism: National Identity in the Colonial and Revolutionary American Theatre (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007)Google Scholar. See also Bank, Rosemarie K., Theatre Culture in America, 1825–1860 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

²⁸ Scott C. Martin argues that melodrama “emerged as the dominant dramatic form” because of its opposition between villainy and democratic virtue. Scott C. Martin, “The Politics of Antebellum Melodrama,” The Oxford Handbook of American Drama, 7 Jan. 2014, at https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199731497.013.015. Debates around American identity and theatrical tragedy intersected most spectacularly in the Astor Place Riots of 1849, in which the differing acting styles of American Shakespearean actor Edwin Forrest and his British rival William Charles Macready “acted as surrogates for nationalistic tensions, and … dramatized larger social conflicts,” particularly around class-based forms of masculinity. Kippola, Karl L., Acts of Manhood: The Performance of Masculinity on the American Stage, 1825–1865 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 89, also 89–116. W. T. Lhamon argues that blackface performance allowed working-class and white immigrant populations to establish class solidarity and claim American identity before higher classes began to harness blackface performance to register “racial separation and disdain” after 1845. Lhamon, W. T., Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 44Google Scholar, 75–76.

²⁹ Schechner, Between Theater and Anthropology, 38.

³⁰ Roach, Cities of the Dead, 28–29.

³¹ Ibid., 5, original emphasis.

³² Heather S. Nathans, “Representing Ethnic Identity on the Antebellum Stage, 1825–61,” The Oxford Handbook of American Drama, 7 Jan. 2014, at https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199731497.013.021.

³³ For histories of the stage Yankee, his reception and his transformations see Bank, 38–42; Hodge, Francis, Yankee Theatre: The Image of America on the Stage, 1825–1850 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Maura L. Jortner, “Playing ‘America’ on Nineteenth-Century Stages; Or, Jonathan in England and Jonathan at Home,” PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 2006; Morgan, Winifred, An American Icon: Brother Jonathan and America Identity (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

³⁴ Cockrell, Dale, Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 24Google Scholar.

³⁵ Halttunen, Karen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Mihm, Stephen, A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ Pethers, Matthew, “That Eternal Ghost of Trade: Anglo-American Market Culture and the Antebellum Stage Yankee,” in Maudlin, Daniel and Peel, Robin, eds., The Materials of Exchange between Britain and North East America, 1750–1900 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 83–115Google Scholar, 98.

³⁷ Hill, George Handel, Scenes from the Life of an Actor … By a Celebrated Comedian, ed. Hill, C. (New York: Garrett & Co., 1853), 130Google Scholar.

³⁸ Of the London reviews collected in W. K. Northall's Life and Recollections of Yankee Hill, only the Sunday Times identified the Yankee as a regional type, rather than a national figure. Northall, W. K., The Life and Recollections of Yankee Hill: Together with Anecdotes and Incidents of His Travels (New York: W. F. Burgess, 1850), 56Google Scholar.

³⁹ Ibid., 51.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 52.

⁴¹ Pethers, 101.

⁴² For further information about Berger's activities see John Adcock, “Yesterday's Papers: George Berger and His Sons 1796–1868,” at http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/2014/08/george-berger-and-his-sons-1796-1868.html, accessed 25 May 2016.

⁴³ Anon, “Preface,” American Miscellany, 1 (undated), [i].

⁴⁴ For histories of The Corsair and the Mirror see Mott, A History of American Magazines, 356–58, 320–30.

⁴⁵ For a history of The Ladies’ Companion see ibid., 626–28.

⁴⁶ Lehuu, Carnival on the Page, 25.

⁴⁷ Nicholson, Bob, ‘“You Kick the Bucket; We Do the Rest!” Jokes and the Culture of Reprinting in the Transatlantic Press’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 17, 3 (2012), 273–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 285, 274.

⁴⁸ “Miscellany (from the American Papers),” American Miscellany, 28 Sept. 1839, 32.

⁴⁹ Nathaniel Parker Willis, “Jottings Down in London: Number Three,” The Corsair, 17 Aug. 1839, 361–62, 362.

⁵⁰ Titterwell, Timothy (Kettell, Samuel), Yankee Notions: A Medley (Boston, MA: Otis, Broaders, and Company, 1838), xivGoogle Scholar.

⁵¹ Ibid., vi.

⁵² “Rhetorical projections of nationalist sympathy among different regions preceded sustained material connections by many decades.” Loughran, Trish, The Republic in Print: Print Culture in the Age of U.S. Nation Building, 1770–1870 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 26Google Scholar.

⁵³ John Neal, “Traits of the New-Englanders; Otherwise, The Yankees,” American Miscellany, 15 Feb. 1840, 340–46, 342.

⁵⁴ “To Contributors and Well-Wishers,” American Miscellany, 4 April 1840, 16.

⁵⁵ Mellen, Grenville, ed., A Book of the United States (New York: George Clinton Smith & Co, 1839)Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ [Publisher's note], American Miscellany, 2 (undated) [1].

⁵⁷ Blackwood's Magazine published a letter from Pray, dated “New York, April 20th 1839,” championing Arkansas writer Albert Pike, along with one of Pray's own sonnets: “Hymns to the Gods” and “Sonnet on the Death of a Lady,” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 45, 284 (June 1839), 819–20. Pray's residence in England in March 1843 is confirmed by his appearance as a witness in the trial of Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor for sedition, as the registered proprietor of the Evening Star, the paper that O'Connor edited. For Pray's testimony see The Trial of Feargus O'Connor, esq. (barrister at law) and fifty-eight others at Lancaster on a charge of sedition, conspiracy, tumult and riot (Manchester: A. Heywood, 1843), 318–19.

⁵⁸ Pray, Isaac Clarke, “The Editor's Study: Introduction,” Great Western Magazine, 1, 2 (April 1842), 99–100Google Scholar, 99.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 99.

⁶⁰ Pray, Isaac Clarke, “Will It Be Characteristic?”, Great Western Magazine, 1, 1 (April 1842), 100–1Google Scholar, 100.

⁶¹ Ibid., 100–1.

⁶² “War with America: An Examination of the Instigations and Probable Effects. By a Kentuckian,” Great Western Magazine, 1, 1 (April 1842), 70–97, 97.

⁶³ [Henry W. Bellows], “Moral and Political Freedom,” Great Western Magazine, 1, 4 (July 1842), 289–95; [Abel P. Upshur], “The Nature and Character of the Federal Government of America,” Great Western Magazine, 1, 4 (July 1842), 338–78, 385–438.

⁶⁴ “War with America,” 97.

⁶⁵ Pray, Isaac Clarke, “The North American Indians,” Great Western Magazine, 1, 1 (April 1842), 1–13Google Scholar, 1.

⁶⁶ Pray, “Will It Be Characteristic?”, 100.

⁶⁷ The circumstances leading up to the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of August 1842, and its difficult negotiations, are detailed in Jones, Howard and Rakestraw, Donald A., Prologue to Manifest Destiny: Anglo-American Relations in the 1840s (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1997), 21–149Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ For a history of Arcturus see Mott, A History of American Magazines, 711–12.

⁶⁹ “The Drama at Tinnecum, or Mr Chipp in the ‘Provinces’,” Great Western Magazine, 1, 2 (May 1842), 166–76, 166, 167.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 171.

⁷¹ Ibid., 175.

⁷² Mott, 607–14.

⁷³ Kippola, Acts of Manhood, 11.

⁷⁴ “The United States and England,” Great Western Magazine, 2, 6 (Sept. 1842), 1–122, 5, 78.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 75.

⁷⁶ Paul, Henry Howard, “Introductory,” American Magazine, 1, 1 (Oct. 1851), 51, 52Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ Paul, Henry Howard, “Chit Chat.” American Magazine, 1, 1 (Oct. 1851), 53Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Paul, Henry Howard, “Chit Chat.” American Magazine, 1, 4 (Jan. 1852), 225–26Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ In the version of The Forest Rose published in 1855 (cited by most scholars of the play), Bellamy is a British tourist who declares that he will “not fail to notice you all when I publish my Three Months in America.” Woodworth, Samuel, The Forest Rose; or, American Farmers. A Drama, in Two Acts (Boston, MA: William V. Spencer, 1855), 31Google Scholar. In the version submitted for licensing in London in 1851, Bellamy vows to “go back to New York and put you all in the Herald.” Woodworth, The Forest Rose: A Yankee Comedy in Two Acts, British Library, Lord Chamberlain's Plays Add. MSS 43037, ff. 60–94b, 94.

⁸⁰ William Bayle Bernard, The Yankee Peddler, British Library, Lord Chamberlain's Plays Add. MSS 42944, ff. 514–26b, 526.

⁸¹ “A Chunk of Fun from the New York Dutchman,” American Magazine, 1, 5 (Feb. 1852), 281.

⁸² Patterson, Art for the Middle Classes, 11, 15. For histories of these magazines see Mott, A History of American Magazines, 580–94, 544–55, 769–72.

⁸³ Moreton, Clara, “The Estranged Hearts: An American Prize Tale,” American Magazine, 1, 1 (Oct. 1851), 1–13Google Scholar, 12.

⁸⁴ Norton, Anne, Alternative Americas: A Reading of Antebellum Political Culture (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), 167Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Hentz, Caroline Lee, “The Pedlar: The Sequel to the Mob Cap,” American Magazine, 1, 3 (Dec. 1852), 115–26Google Scholar, 118, 119.

⁸⁶ Ibid., 119.

⁸⁷ Roach, Cities of the Dead, 5.

⁸⁸ Winthrop, Robert C., “Washington and the Union,” American Magazine, 1, 5 (Feb. 1852), 275–76Google Scholar, 275.

⁸⁹ Mussell, James, “Repetition; or, ‘In Our Last’,” Victorian Periodicals Review, 48, 4 (Fall 2015), 343–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 345.

⁹⁰ Schechner, Between Theatre and Anthropology, 38.