Victorian Specials Database

This database has been compiled as part of the AHRC-funded project, ‘Journalism on the Move: the special correspondent and Victorian print culture’, by a research assistant to the project, Dr Angela Dunstan, and Principal Investigator, Professor Catherine Waters. The main sources of information for data were the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and SCOOP and we thank Eaman Dyas for making available some of the research material used in the development of this database. The ‘Victorian Specials’ database covers the first generation of special correspondents working in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century and also includes some special artists who provided occasional correspondence. Listing summary information regarding the careers of identified specials, including events reported, newspapers and periodicals they worked for and when, the database was developed to provide the basis for new entries in the eBook version of the Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism, edited by Laurel Brake, and to form a resource for Professor Waters’s larger project. The aim was not to provide an exhaustive catalogue of Victorian special correspondents, nor to adjudicate ambiguous cases where writers pursued multiple careers (as both journalists and novelists, for example) or wrote in other genres. Instead, we sought to gather a sufficiently comprehensive overview of the Victorian special to be able to identify recurring or characteristic features on the role and the writing associated with it. As such, we hope it may prove useful to other researchers.