Using our teaching experiences as case studies, we demonstrate how the development of collaborative digital projects for students blends academic and public dialogue in way that mirrors Victorian periodical print culture. We discuss how our use of digital tools in Victorian literature courses produced profound and engaged student learning. These projects allowed students to participate in Victorian scholarship and understand their work as part of a broader academic conversation through the culture of sharing embedded in Web 2.0. Working with digital tools also helped them develop a more complex understanding of the contexts of Victorian literature.
Focusing on the first three volumes of Good Words (1860–62), this essay examines how the periodical created its brand through the literary content and layout of these early volumes. Under its first editor, Norman Macleod, it redefined the nature of Sabbath reading through its editorial content, poetry, and layout. Looking at each of these elements in turn, this essay argues that the presentation of reading as a devotional act in Good Words effectively reformulated the popular genres of love poetry and nature poetry as devotional texts.
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