Kings of the Air: British Edisonades in The Halfpenny Marvel, 1894-1897

Author: Samantha Katz

Field of Study: English: Creative Writing

Program Affiliation: Source Project Research Program

Faculty Mentors: Will Glovinsky

Easel: 14

Timeslot: Morning

Abstract: Airship journeys to the North Pole; airship battles; airships doubling as submarines: juvenile magazines in late Victorian Britain were packed with stories of near-future flight technology. Yet these airships have flown by nearly unobserved. Scholarship on scientific writings in “story papers” typically only addresses nonfiction articles, while criticism of scientific romances has generally focused on American “Edisonades” of heroic inventors or the canonical works of Wells and Verne. This study examines a selection of airship stories from The Halfpenny Marvel (1893-1922) to reinstate this overlooked subgenre within the literary history of Victorian Britain. Given the cultural exchanges between Britain, America, and France, the Edisonade’s flight across the Atlantic is no surprise. Edisonades in America are a literary mark of a cultural embrace of technology. As such, this study will focus on the cultural implications of the British Edisonade for Britain.