eisure time, greatly increased the market for books and magazines, especially for those dealing with etiquette, fashion and household management.
The new preoccupation with proper behavior also ensured that the nineteenth century became the golden age of the euphemism, as Shakespeare was "bowdlerized" for a "family" audience, and sexual matters and body parts were wreathed in various disguises. In the 1830's, newspapers became affordable and read by the masses as well as the elite. Newspapers were intended to serve a narrow purpose: "A newspaper . . . should not be an instrument of instruction or of political indoctrination; rather, it should be a window the people could use to look out onto the new industrial world- in all its splendor and misery- and form their own opinions." (Ibid. 111).
The newspaper unified the Victorian Age just as television unifies ours today. Newspapers gave people their sense of the world, a world far more interrelated and complex than any known before. They also meticulously described the riches, variety, growth and proliferating technology which allowed many to think that the easy and uncomplicated lifestyles of the past may have been "the good old days." There were also those who thought not only of the technological miracles, but also of the squalor, disease and poverty, and did not remember it as being so appealing.
Historians have for many years agreed about the significance of three developments in the late nineteenth century America: the maturation of the national marketplace, including the establishment of national advertising; the emergence of a new stratum of professionals and managers, rooted in a web of complex, new organizations (corporations, government, universities, professional associations, media and foundations); and the rise of a new set of beliefs propounded by a host of writers, publishers, ministers, social scientists, doctors, and, of course, advertisers. If those who had lef...