History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | James Greenwood

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Poisonous Reading – James Greenwood attacks the Victorian ‘penny dreadful’

By on May 25, 2021 in Learning in Focus

In this piece, written for the Fear and Fun module, taught by Dr Rob James and Dr Karl Bell, second year UoP student Amber Braddick discusses journalist James Greenwood’s exaggerated denouncement of the Victorian ‘penny dreadful’.  Despite such middle-class anxietes over the corrupting influence of cheap print on working class youth, many of their stories strike a highly moralistic tone. James Greenwood’s, A Short Way to Newgate (1874) demonstrates the anxieties felt by the middle classes towards the extremely popular penny dreadfuls during the late 19th Century. The author, Greenwood, is not only writing in an attempt to show other middle and upper class members of society how dangerous this […]

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Exterior of Whitechapel Workhouse. Image courtesy of Gale Primary Sources

James Greenwood – Social Reformer or Opportunist?

By on March 8, 2018 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

Rory Herbert, final year History student and President of the History Society at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog on the 19th century social investigator James Greenwood. Rory is Gale Ambassador at the university and contributes to The Gale Review Blog. The role of the Gale Ambassador is to increase awareness of the Gale primary source collections available to students at their university. The University of Portsmouth Library hosts a large collection of Gale primary sources which History students can use when undertaking archival research for their dissertations and other research projects. James Greenwood was an author of relative obscurity who came to fame abruptly following the publication […]

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