Glances Back Through Seventy Years
Autobiographical and Other Reminiscences

This two-volume autobiography, published in 1893, describes the eventful and sometimes scandalous career of journalist and publisher Henry Vizetelly.

Henry Vizetelly (Author)

9781108009294, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 4 March 2010

460 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.6 cm, 0.58 kg

This autobiography recalls the eventful career of the nineteenth-century publisher and journalist, Henry Vizetelly (1820–1894). Born in London, Vizetelly was apprenticed to a wood engraver as a young child. He entered the printing business and helped found two successful but short-lived newspapers, the Pictorial Times and the Illustrated Times. From 1865 Vizetelly worked in Paris and later Berlin as a foreign correspondent for the Illustrated London News, and also wrote and published several books. On his return to England, he became a publisher of foreign novels and gained notoriety for his translations of Emile Zola which challenged strict Victorian laws on obscenity and led to his prosecution and imprisonment. His book is a fascinating blend of public and personal history, providing an insight into the turbulent literary world of nineteenth-century Europe. Volume 1 covers his life up to the infamous Palmer Trial in 1856.

1. When George IV was king
2. School days
3. The reform frenzy and the rick-burnings
4. The flood of penny literature
5. Songs and slang phrases
6. Early pencil and graver work
7. Some struggling artists
8. 'Heads of the people' and 'Illustrious Shakspere'
9. Ribald newspapers and their editors
10. A Derbyshire excursion
11. Alfred Bunn and Alfred Crowquill
12. The origin of the 'Illustrated London News'
13. 'The Pictorial Times'
14. The Chevalier Wikoff and his capture of an heiress
15. My recollections of W. M. Thackeray
16. Disraeli's friendly overtures to 'Punch'
17. 'Pasquin' and the 'puppet show'
18. A fictitious goldfinder's diary
19. A theft from Napoleon's privy purse
20. Macaulay's speeches
21. The Palmer trial.

Subject Areas: Publishing industry & book trade [KNTP]