Abstract
Chapter four assesses shifts in the marketplace that affected volume-form publications during the fin de siècle, using Punch artist George du Maurier as a case study to highlight the slippage between realism and caricature during the latter half of the century. In "Reading Victorian Valentines: Working-Class Women, Courtship, and the Penny Post in Bow Bells Magazine," Jennifer Phegley delves into Bow Bells's commodification of working-class escapism in the acts of reading thrilling Valentine's Day adventures and seeking upward mobility through the courtship embodied by valentines. By focusing on Bow Bells, Phegley broadly outlines the impact of postal reform on expanding working-class connectivity and, more specifically, probes the mid-century trends that worked to "emphasize the importance of working-class women's reading to their romantic endeavors"—endeavors which were aided by access to a cheap and rapid postal service (271). In "undertak[ing] a relational analysis across geographic, temporal, and generic boundaries," Jones highlights the link between the self-reflexive reading practices of Victorian and neo-Victorian readers and asks modern scholars to think "about neo-Victorianism, then, not just in terms of the repurposing of Victorian content for today's popular and critical readers but as part of an ongoing meditation on readerly subjectivity" (300, 304).