The excavation report as a literary genre: traditional practice in Britain

Although ways of thinking about the past have changed, in Britain the reporting of excavations has followed a series of shared conventions for nearly 100 years. This article considers two of them. It investigates the relationship between accounts of stratigraphic evidence and the publication of the associated artefacts and ecofacts and suggests that it results from the combination of two separate intellectual traditions in the late nineteenth century. It also identifies certain widely shared proportions between the separate components of excavation monographs published over a long period of time. Their existence has never been acknowledged. The excavation report has become a well-established literary genre and authors who are familiar with such texts unconsciously reproduce the same structures in their writing.

William Clark Russell and Chambers's Journal: elopement and the Victorian nautical novel

This essay examines aspects of the serialisation of the novels of William Clark Russell, the greatest late Victorian nautical novelist. Focusing on the treatment of his work by the Edinburgh firm of Messrs Chambers, the article provides an illuminating perspective on market censorship in this period. Drawing on the archives of Chatto & Windus and the literary agent A.P. Watt, it traces the network of relations between author, agent, magazine editor and book publisher, showing how the various components of the serial market operated in the late 1880s and early 1890s.

A.P. Watt and the marketing of 'Ian Maclaren'

This article examines the role of the literary agent A.P. Watt in the successful marketing and global dissemination of the work of the popular Scottish writer 'Ian Maclaren' (Rev. John Watson). Based on extensive archival research, it analyses the magazines and periodicals which published his work in Britain and America and demonstrates the continued impact of his writing in the Scottish media in the twentieth century.