The Up-to-Date Periodical: Subjectivity, Technology and Time in the Late Victorian Press

This article uses Georg Simmel's writing on subjectivity and the metropolis to examine a magazine of the 1890s. Simmel's account is of an internally experienced present in the rapidly changing metropolis. The article analyzes an innovative periodical of the 1890s, the Sketch, and its editor. It is located in the ‘up-to-date’. Its focus is on leisure, the individual and a glamorized femininity. The presentation of this material in new journalistic forms, the photograph, the interview and the sketch are discussed. A flux of modernity is experienced in the magazine as a pleasurable and exciting individual experience.