“The Politics of Small Victorian Art Periodicals.”
Thomas J. Tobin
The William Morris Society
INTRODUCTION
	Many Victorian-era art periodicals that failed to establish themselves nevertheless helped to shape some of the major social and political changes of the day. Such English periodicals as the Century Guild Hobby Horse, the Dark Blue, the Dome, the Germ, and the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (and, in America, the New Path, the Knight Errant, and the Philistine) included social change as a part of their artistic aims. While the political ideologies of larger, better established art periodicals like the Art Journal and the Athenaeum have received significant scholarly attention, short-run art periodicals are often simply lumped into the “liberal model,” despite often having unclear or apolitical aims, and despite being reviewed favorably across the political spectrum.
	Of course, smaller art periodicals often did espouse socio-political causes along with their calls for artistic change. One surprise is that many small periodicals associated with artistic movements--organs that one would suppose to be consistently of a liberal bent--often present positions and garner favorable attention across the political spectrum, even in cases when the editors have expressly set a liberal or progressive agenda. The evolution of the political ideas of socialist common cause between artists and the working classes can be tracked through three short-lived Victorian art periodicals, each of which inspired and informed the next: the Germ (1850), the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (1856), and the New Path (1863–5).

THE GERM
	The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was not the first artistic coterie to set their caps during the nineteenth century against the traditions, style, and teachings of the Royal Academy in favor of a commune mode of sharing artistic talents; however, their “little magazine” the Germ, which lasted for four numbers in 1850, had an impact far beyond the traditional art circles of the day, possibly because of the mixed political tone of the material it published. The contributors to the Germ advocated progressive change through a paradoxical retrogression to the supposedly simpler and purer forms of art and social organization found in southern Europe before the artistic and humanistic flowering of the high Renaissance--hence the term “Pre-Raphaelite.”
	The Pre-Raphaelites at first decided against being overtly political in their magazine: “Among other subjects, we spoke of not admitting anything at all referring to politics or religion into our magazine, and decided on cutting out the sonnet For the Things of These Days we have hitherto intended to insert in the first number” (W. Rossetti 228), referring to William Rossetti’s sonnet later titled “Democracy Downtrodden.” This ban against politics and religion seems not to have been strictly enforced: the second number opened with an etching and poem sequence by James Collinson on “The Child Jesus” (Germ 1.2, 49–57), and John Orchard’s “Dialogue on Art” advocates the idea that artists are duty-bound to create moral and didactic works that will uplift the spirits of the masses (W. Rossetti 267). It is clear that, although the aim of the Germ was to present a value-neutral paean to “truth in art,” its politics shaded toward the liberal, but in a covert manner: much of the Germ was filled with poetry and short essays on apolitical topics.
	Familiar to scholars is the concept of the “rescued” text: a piece that was widely read in its day, has fallen out of the canon, and is now being resuscitated for its value as a window to the culture of the era. We might consider the Germ to be something of an “anti-rescued” text, in that we know about it and can read it today, but almost no one could in 1850. Fewer than 200 copies were sold of the first number, and not more than 100 copies of the three subsequent numbers were sold. The magazine was known chiefly at second hand, further blurring the critical reaction to its politics.
	Although the aim of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was for the Germ to remain politically neutral, they sent copies to influential conservatives such as Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell (W. Rossetti 245), and they advertised the Germ in the Athenaeum (W. Rossetti 245), a conservative organ that would later become one of the loudest and strongest voices against Pre-Raphaelitism. The Germ was also sent to the editors of John Bull and the Weekly Dispatch, both of which noticed the publication favorably, despite their conservative tone.
	In fact, the Germ was reviewed in so many different places, and for so long after it ceased publication, that in time it became a collectible commodity, and prices rose precipitously. Indeed, William Henley, writing in 1901, notes with relief that “Mr. Eliot Stock has reprinted the four numbers of The Germ; and, as The Germ itself is only for semi-millionaires, he has conferred a signal favour on all them that are interested in letters and art” (Henley 257).
	Thus, we have a magazine that, while not widely read, became a chameleon, taking on the political tone and aspect of its reviewers. The Literary Gazette, for example, condemns the Germ’s review of Arthur Clough’s Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich as “out of ken of reason and the rational world” (47) and praises the theory in an article on “The Subject in Art,” while at the other end of the political spectrum, James Rock writes in the Hastings and St. Leonard’s News that Clough’s volume is worthy of favorable attention, but that “The Subject in Art” is “closely thought, but not very clearly written . . . which suggests . . . the expressive monosyllable Bah!” (4).
	This range and durability of critical opinion is the more remarkable because of the magazine’s short run. The Germ was never on a healthy financial footing: originally, each of the Pre-Raphaelites agreed to contribute toward the cost, but William Rossetti, after seeing the poor sales of the first number, predicted that the magazine would fold after only one issue. However, the publishers intervened after the second number, suggesting the title change to Art and Poetry and agreeing to foot the bill for two more numbers. When the sales proved woeful still, and the contributors proved to be largely too busy with other projects to be able to keep their promises of articles and etchings, the magazine quietly folded.

THE OXFORD & CAMBRIDGE MAGAZINE
	If the Germ obtained political influence sotto voce, the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine spoke more loudly and plainly, running twelve issues from January to December 1856. The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine admired the artistic progressivism of the Pre-Raphaelites and extended it out into the sphere of social criticism. Edward Burne-Jones lauded the Pre-Raphaelites in his “Essay on the Newcomes” (Jan. 1856), and Vernon Lushington wrote a lengthy appreciation in “Two Pictures” (Aug. 1856) of Dante’s Dream by Dante Rossetti and The Last of England by Ford Madox Brown, emphasizing the manner in which Brown depicts the injustice of shipping convicts and the poor to Australia. Speaking of the male figure in Brown’s painting, Lushington laments that “he, like many a young Englishman, has had his speculations about Religion and Politics” (485), and has cast up on the “wrong” side of them both.
	The student editors of the magazine, led by William Morris and William Fulford, included not only essays on Shakespeare and Plato, but articles on “The Prospects of Peace” (Mar. 1856, 185-189) in the Crimea; “Unhealthy Employments” (May 1856, 265-280) in cramped, airless factories; and “Woman, her Duties, Education, and Position” (Aug. 1856, 462-477). Each of these articles presents a proto-socialist call to action on behalf of the under-represented and oppressed. One might expect such a magazine to be ill reviewed in the conservative critical press, but, as Jerome Mcgann notes, the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine was “noticed favorably by The Guardian and John Bull” (McGann).
	Indeed, the tone of the magazine became gradually more concerned with the rights and duties of the “mechanical classes,” as Cormell Price writes in “The Work of Young Men in the Present Age”: 
Let those who doubt the earnestness of our young men, mark well the stamp which the inward mind impresses on the face of those who, . . . pale with too much work, and with lives led in close alleys and dark, damp cellars, yet pore in our Mechanics’ Institutes over deep and weighty books; and on those . . . country peasants . . . that through snow and wet they will wade, in the stormiest winter night, over many a weary mile of country lane and by-path, not as of old, to the village ale-house, but to the village reading-room. (560)
Following John Ruskin’s growing interest in the conditions of the working classes, the articles in the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine grew increasingly radical, until, in December 1856, the proprietors ran out of funds for publishing and the magazine ceased.

THE NEW PATH
	The effects of the Germ and the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine did not die out with them, however. In America, especially, the political effects of the truth-to-nature schools inspired several painters to form the Society for the Advancement of Truth in Art. Through the examples of the Germ and the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, these artists chose to share their ideas and their inspiration through a “little magazine” entitled the New Path. Although the title is not directly taken from Pre-Raphaelitism, the debt is plain, as this excerpt from the Critic’s review of the Germ demonstrates:
Art and Poetry precisely describes its character. It is wholly devoted to them, and it aims at originality in both. It is seeking out for itself new paths, in a spirit of earnestness, and with an undoubted ability, which must lead to a new era. (278)
The New Path took an even more antagonistic view to the traditional conservatism of the art world than did either of its predecessors. “We exist,” the magazine declares, “for the purpose of stirring up strife; of breeding discontent; of pulling down unsound reputations; of making the public dissatisfied with the work of most of the artists” (“A Letter” 114). Further, the New Path was designed to “develop latent artistic ability, especially among the class of mechanics, and to educate the public to a better understanding of the representative arts” (“A Letter” 118). 
	Linda Ferber marks the New Path, like the Germ and the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine before it, as having a far larger impact on the art and political scene of its day than its circulation might suggest:
Small in size, provocative in tone, without advertisements and offering no remuneration to contributors or “amusements” to readers, the New Path seems to have been limited enough in circulation to be considered already a rare item in 1884, and it is hardly surprising that it did not prosper financially. Nevertheless, contemporary response [demonstrates] that the New Path enjoyed a measure of respect in some quarters and much notoriety in others, suggesting an influence and impact far beyond what might be expected from confessedly amateur management, irregular publication, and a short lifespan. (24)
The reaction to the magazine fell more according to what one might predict, as well, with the Independent, a progressive review, lauding the new magazine for its “great discussions” that would “prove salutary to the best growth of American art” (qtd. in Ferber 23). The Round Table, an established cultural review, took exception to the New Path’s championing of Pre-Raphaelite ideals, saying, in essence, that the discussion had been opened by the Exhibition of British Art in New York and Philadelphia some seven years earlier in 1857: “With the purposes of the society and journal we have no quarrel, but we must express our surprise that both have ignored the fact of the existence here of that which they intend to inoculate the body of American art” (“Recent Art Criticism” 42). Contrarily, the more conservative New-York Tribune called the New Path’s contributors “rough riders” whose “ungracious conceit” marked them as needing, as David Dickason points out, “less dogmatism and greater tolerance” (78).
	However, the response of the New Path editors was to reprint the Tribune review on the inside front cover of the magazine, and to invite critics to send in their judgments to be published in the pages of the New Path itself--a move that confuses further the solid political “lines” of the magazine. Only one such critical article, on “Science in its Relations to Art,” made it into the pages of the magazine before it was finally forced to cease because of the exigencies of the American Civil War. However, it is revealing to see that the editors introduced the article with a note: 
The following article, as will be seen, runs counter to the general drift of the “New Path.” We welcome it, however, because, never having meant this journal to be exclusive or bigoted, we have always wished that some opponent of our very frankly expressed opinions, would take up our gauntlet. At last, this has been done, and we trust that the writer to whom we open our columns, will meet with some one who can confute his logic and upset his conclusions.
So much for being inclusive and open-minded. In terms of demonstrating the political location of the magazine, however, this introductory note helps us to see that the New Path was designedly a liberal, progressive organ, espoused such opinions, and was received as such in the critical press.

CONCLUSION
	These three short-lived “little magazines”--the Germ, the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, and the New Path--all deal with similar artistic and social issues, such as the intent of art to express nature, the duty of artists to aid in the fine-arts education of the lower classes, and the social injustice inherent in the class systems of England and the United States. Each of the magazines builds on the last in terms of the specificity of its political aims, the size of the audience to which it appeared, and the impact which it had on its chosen metier. 
	The critical press of the day found it difficult to “pin down” the Germ, less so to see the politics of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, and had no trouble identifying the aims of the New Path. It is also difficult to imagine the existence of either of the two later magazines without its predecessor; as each successive magazine built on the lessons, styles, and ideologies of its precursors, the politics of progressive art became clearer and clearer.

Works Cited
Art and Poetry: Being Thoughts Toward Nature Conducted Principally by Artists. 3 (Mar. 1850): 97–144.
Art and Poetry: Being Thoughts Toward Nature Conducted Principally by Artists. 4 (May 1850): 145–192.
[Burne-Jones, Edward]. “Essay on the Newcomes.” Oxford and Cambridge Magazine 1 (Jan. 1856): 50-61.
Dickason, David Howard. The Daring Young Men: The Story of the American Pre-Raphaelites. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1953.
“Editor’s Table. Art Items: The New Path.” Continental Monthly: Devoted to Literature and National Policy 5.2 (Feb. 1864): 245-247.
Ferber, Linda S. and William H. Gerdts. The New Path: Ruskin and the American Pre-Raphaelites. Brooklyn: Schocken Books, 1985.
The Germ: Thoughts Toward Nature in Literature, Poetry and Art 1 (Jan. 1850): 1–48.
The Germ: Thoughts Toward Nature in Literature, Poetry and Art 2 (Feb. 1850): 49–96.
Henley, William Ernest. “The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren.” Pall Mall Magazine 25 (1901): 257–263.
Hosmon, Robert Stahr. “The Germ (1850) and The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (1856).” Victorian Periodicals Newsletter [1.]4 (Apr. 1969): 36–47.
Hosmon, Robert Stahr. The Germ: A Pre-Raphaelite Little Magazine. Coral Gables: U of Miami P, 1970. 
“A Letter to a Subscriber.” New Path 1.9 (Jan. 1864): 113-120.
[Lushington, Vernon]. “Two Pictures.” Oxford and Cambridge Magazine 1 (Aug. 1856): 479-488.
McGann, Jerome. “The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine.” The Rossetti Archive. Available http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/ap4.o93.raw.html).
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The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine [1.]1–12 (Jan.–Dec. 1856): 1-776.
[Price, Cormell]. “The Work of Young Men in the Present Age.” Oxford and Cambridge Magazine 1.9 (Sep. 1856): 558–564.
“Recent Art Criticism: The ‘New Path.’” Round Table 1 (2 Jan. 1864): 42.
Rev. of Art and Poetry. Critic 9 (1 Jun. 1850): 278.
Rev. of the Germ. Literary Gazette and Journal of the Belles Lettres 19 Jan. 1850: 47.
Roberts, Helene E. “British Art Periodicals of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” Victorian Periodicals Newsletter [1.]9 (Jul. 1970): 2–10 [incl. suppl. “Check-List of British Art Periodicals of the 18th and 19th Centuries” 1–183].
[Rock, James]. Literary Notice [Germ review]. Hastings and St. Leonard’s News 15 Feb. 1850: 4.
Rossetti, William Michael, ed. Praeraphaelite Diaries and Letters. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1900.