Selling Romantic Victorianism

“Literary Advertising and the Shaping of British Romanticism helpfully chronicles the rise of advertising in periodicals, highlighting its methods and subjects, from shoe-blacking to tooth powders. In addition, it relates advertising to Romantic literary ideals, which Mason claims “produced an endless series of imagined desires, none of which once attained offers more than fleeting pleasure” (16). This Romantic hedonistic mood, he argues, “trapped consumers in a cycle of constantly imagining that their next purchase would finally be the one that delivered the long-anticipated gratification” (16). He cites lamentations from readers, critics, and poets alike over the ubiquity of advertisements—with London plastered over in bills and all reviews a sham.”