The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 340, Supplementary Number (1828)

This is a dispatch from the early Victorian reading public's imagination. The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction was one of the most popular weekly periodicals of its day, a 16-page packet of stories, poems, essays, and engravings designed to both entertain and edify the emerging middle class of 1820s Britain. This supplementary issue offers a cross-section of what filled the idle hours of the Regency-to-Victorian transition: a tale of a flamboyant magician confounding officials in an Italian city, verses on nature and sentiment, and prose pieces that range from the whimsical to the quietly philosophical. Reading it is less like finishing a novel and more like rummaging through a Victorian drawing room, where the magazines on the table told their readers who they were and what they ought to find amusing. For anyone curious about the literary culture that preceded the great Victorian novels, this is a small, strange, utterly charming artifact.