SOURCE: Taylor, D. J. “Dry Salvage.” New Statesman 127, no. 4388 (5 June 1998): 48-9.

In the following review, Taylor commends Paulin's revisionary critical study of “Victorian journalist” William Hazlitt in The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style.

Halfway through New Grub Street, George Gissing's bleak expose of the late-Victorian literary marketplace, there is a deeply symbolic episode in which Yule, the broken-down man of letters, publishes a book entitled English Prose of the 19th Century. The theme of this savagely written and, needless to say, poorly received opus is the injurious effect wreaked on contemporary literature by journalists. One suspects that the author sympathises profoundly with his character; Gissing's collected letters are full of attacks on the yellow press. At the same time, it is difficult not to feel that his—and Yule's—pessimism is hugely misplaced.

“Victorian journalist” is a dangerously catch-all phrase. A profession that could simultaneously accommodate...