Maria Krivosheina1; 1 Higher School of Economics, Russian Federation
Discussion
The launch of a controversial British monthly, Review of Reviews, in 1890 was a start of a long-lasting collaboration between two journalists, W. T. Stead and E. J. Dillon, when the latter agreed to take on a risky task and translate Leo Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata for the first issue. Both figures played a noticeable role in dissemination of Russian culture in Britain in subsequent years. However, their collaboration was largely based on multilayered, at times Jekyll-and-Hydesque polemics. Apart from being a prominent columnist of the Review of Reviews, Dillon wrote for the progressive, influential magazine Fortnightly Review under the nom de plume “Lanin”. Fortnightly was Review’s direct rival, and Lanin’s poignantly polemical contributions were directed at Stead and his periodical alike. This paper, focused on the magazine’s discussion of sexuality as both a universal and national matter, will demonstrate how one unsuccessful publication reveals Stead’s clash between Victorian and anti-Victorian morals and Dillon’s Othering tendencies, thus placing Russian literature in the context of the many late Victorian anxieties. The case under study will also illustrate certain characteristic mechanisms of the British periodical market in the 1890s.
