An insect’s-eye view

This article is concerned with representations of insects and insect habitats in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Dutch art and print culture. It adopts an eco-critical approach, with an eye toward multispecies studies. The article considers the ecologically conceived image of bees, butterflies, and other insects gathering pollen from a wide range of flowering plant life in Theo van Hoytema’s lithograph announcing the Biological Exhibition: the Life of Plants and Animals held in 1910 at the Royal Zoological Botanical Gardens in The Hague. This closely observed water’s-edge environment is considered in the context of the wider body of works on paper done by Van Huitema especially during the seminal period of the 1890s, and within the growing print culture surrounding the Dutch naturalist and environmental movements in the early years of the twentieth century.

Dockside Reading

In Dockside Reading Isabel Hofmeyr traces the relationships among print culture, colonialism, and the ocean through the institution of the British colonial Custom House. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, dockside customs officials would leaf through publications looking for obscenity, politically objectionable materials, or reprints of British copyrighted works, often dumping these condemned goods into the water. These practices, echoing other colonial imaginaries of the ocean as a space for erasing incriminating evidence of the violence of empire, informed later censorship regimes under apartheid in South Africa. By tracking printed matter from ship to shore, Hofmeyr shows how literary institutions like copyright and censorship were shaped by colonial control of coastal waters. Set in the environmental context of the colonial port city, Dockside Reading explores how imperialism colonizes water. Hofmeyr examines this theme through the concept of hydrocolonialism, which puts together land and sea, empire and environment.

Review of Faith Binckes and Carey Snyder, eds, Women, Periodicals, and Print Culture in Britain, 1890s–1920s: The Modernist Period (2019)

Review of Faith Binckes and Carey Snyder, eds, Women, Periodicals, and Print Culture in Britain, 1890s–1920s: The Modernist Period (2019)

1. The rise of the short story

‘The rise of the short story’ discusses the rise of the short story from the Industrial Age, which occurred largely in the context of British and American print culture. That development traces a long arc from the establishment of the genre as a staple of 19th-century newspapers and magazines to its autonomy as a mode of literature viewed on the same level as the novel. In the 19th century, the short story catered to the taste of growing readerships for entertainment. Moreover, its brevity and easy supply appealed to editors. Ultimately, the form was shaped critically by the literary marketplace.