EDITOR'S JOTTINGS

JOTTER - 1. One who jots.
1827 Blackw. Mag. XXII. 451 All the jottings that ever were jotted down on his jot-book, by the most inveterate jotter.
 (Oxford English Dictionary [OED] definition and example. The reference is to Blackwood's Magazine )

VICTORIAN EDITORIAL COLUMNS IN WOMEN'S MAGAZINES

Editors of nineteenth century periodicals impressed their ideas and personalities upon their journals to varying degrees and in different ways. Women's magazines, in particular, seem to have cultivated an editorial persona who directly addressed readers through the "Answers to Correspondents" pages, or a regular gossipy feature. Matilda Browne's "Spinnings" column in The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, for example, which blended personal revelation with consumer information, created a vivid editorial personality. The cheap magazines of the 1890s provide other models. "Isobel's" "Fireside Talks" in Home Notes carried short opinion pieces on contemporary social and domestic issues, snippets of royal and celebrity trivia, laced with frequent plugs for future issues of the magazine and other Pearson publications, whilst the parallel "Editorial Chit-Chat" in Home Chat laid rather more emphasis on reader's letters than on editorial views. Both, however, sought to give readers the sense that their editor engaged in a dialogue with them, and that their contributions to the magazine were valued. For examples of paragraphs and content see the article on Rational Dress on the Fashion Page ("Fireside Talks") and the extracts from competition entries on the Journalism Page ("Editorial Chit-Chat".) This latter was unusual for an editorial column in that the entire column was devoted to what had obviously proved a popular competition.

Another journalistic genre which contained some material which could equally well have turned up in an Editor's Column was the Society Gossip  column. An example is included in the item on Victorian Fog below.

ABOUT THIS PAGE

I wanted to reflect this journalistic genre on Victorian Page, but not to create the kind of Blog that is more about me than about the topics of this site. I wanted a space for the sort of notes addressed to groups of former or current students, which currently appear either on the Home Page or the Contents Page. Here I can also post up as necessary further information about planned changes and additions to Victorian Page, and occasionally alert visitors to major external projects which may be of use to them.

For Dictionary Addicts - Why "Editor's Jottings" ?

Titles like "Fireside Talks" or Annie Swan's "Over the Teacups" * didn't seem quite appropriate; on the other hand "From the Editor" suggests a rather more weighty article than readers will get. i came up with "Editor's Jottings" which has for me the right tone, suggesting a collection of quick comments rather than a carefully constructed column. As it happens, after checking the OED I am pleased to discover that it is an appropriate choice since the word in its sense of "brief note" is a late-comer, becoming current only in the nineteenth century. The  quotation from  Blackwood's is interesting as "jotter" there refers to the person making the note, but by the 1880s the word had come to have the meaning I recall from my schooldays when a "jotter" was the pad or exercise book with cheap paper on which one could make "rough notes".