Unearthing primary sources from a large transatlantic archive, this first book-length study of asylum periodicals in the nineteenth century traces the origins and early spread of periodical publishing in mental institutions in Britain, the United States, and the rest of the world. It connects the rise of asylum periodicals with developments in publishing, literary culture, and the treatment of madness, illuminating the social and print networks that supported their spread. Examining the complicated relationships involved in asylum publishing, Mila Daskalova highlights the role of print in self-expression, community building and identity formation. It shows that patients employed these publications to navigate their institutional reality and to interact with each other and the world. Rather than powerless recipients of care or abuse, periodical contributors participated actively in their treatment and cultural and social life within and beyond the institutions. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
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The first book-length exploration of the history of asylum periodicals and the multifaceted people who cooperated to produce them.
Introduction: asylum periodicals and the discomfort of ambiguity; Part
I. Beginnings: a timeline of nineteenth-century asylum periodicals identified
to date;
1. Manuscript to print: the introduction of printing presses and
periodicals in British and American asylums;
2. A local, national, and
international phenomenon: the role of medical and publishing networks in
asylum periodicals' spread and circulation;
3. Patient-led initiatives: the
first asylum periodicals; Part II. Conflict and Collaboration:
4. Negotiating
narratives: the collaborative dynamics of asylum periodical editing;
5.
Insanity out: periodical publishing as a means for sustaining patients' sense
of self;
6. Matters: building real and imagined communities through
periodical publishing in asylums;
7. 'A literature of their own': inclusion,
exclusion and lunatic literary identity; Conclusion: asylum periodicals for
the past, present and future; Bibliography.
Mila Daskalova is a British Academy and LKAS Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow. Her Ph.D. thesis (University of Strathclyde, 2022) won the Sally Mitchell Dissertation Prize (2023). She has contributed to the Curran Index of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals and the 'Piston, Pen & Press' database.
