The Victorian rise of mass print media competed against persisting cults of orality: lectures, political speeches, and other oral formats were omnipresent. Still, cultures of lecturing and public speaking have remained surprisingly invisible in Victorian literary and cultural studies. These two anthology volumes explore this important cultural practice, tracing representations and fictionalisations of ephemeral oral performances through print and, sometimes, manuscript. From manuals of rhetoric via journalism and autobiography to fiction, the sources have been selected, introduced and...

The Victorian rise of mass print media competed against persisting cults of orality: lectures, political speeches, and other oral formats were omnipresent. Still, cultures of lecturing and public speaking have remained surprisingly invisible in Victorian literary and cultural studies. These two anthology volumes explore this important cultural practice, tracing representations and fictionalisations of ephemeral oral performances through print and, sometimes, manuscript. From manuals of rhetoric via journalism and autobiography to fiction, the sources have been selected, introduced and...