W. T. Stead: Nonconformist and Newspaper Prophet (Spiritual Lives) PDF
Preview W. T. Stead: Nonconformist and Newspaper Prophet (Spiritual Lives)
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,29/7/2019,SPi Spiritual Lives GeneralEditor TimothyLarsen OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,29/7/2019,SPi SPIRITUAL LIVES GeneralEditor TimothyLarsen The Spiritual Lives series features biographies of prominent men and women whose eminence is not primarily based on a specifically religious contribution. Each volume provides a general account of thefigure’slifeandthought,whilegivingspecialattentiontohisorher religiouscontexts,convictions,doubts,objections,ideas,andactions. Manyleadingpoliticians,writers,musicians,philosophers,andscien- tists have engaged deeply with religion in significant and resonant waysthathaveoftenbeenoverlookedorunderexplored.Someofthe volumes will even focus on men and women who were lifelong unbelievers, attending to how they navigated and resisted religious questions, assumptions, and settings. The books in this series will therefore recast important figures in fresh and thought-provoking ways. Titlesintheseriesinclude: WoodrowWilson RulingElder,SpiritualPresident BarryHankins ChristinaRossetti Poetry,Ecology,Faith EmmaMason JohnStuartMill ASecularLife TimothyLarsen LeonardWoolf BloomsburySocialist FredLeventhalandPeterStansky OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,29/7/2019,SPi W. T. Stead Nonconformist and Newspaper Prophet STEWART J. BROWN 1 OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,29/7/2019,SPi 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries #StewartJ.Brown2019 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin2019 Impression:1 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyOxfordUniversityPress 198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016,UnitedStatesofAmerica BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2019940329 ISBN 978–0–19–883253–9 PrintedandboundinGreatBritainby ClaysLtd,ElcografS.p.A. OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,29/7/2019,SPi To Owen Dudley Edwards ‘Charity never faileth’ OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,29/7/2019,SPi OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,29/7/2019,SPi Preface AtthecrowdedMemorialServiceforW.T.Steadon25April1912in London’s Westminster Chapel, his close friend of over twenty-five years, the venerable Baptist Christian Socialist Dr John Clifford–– with long, patriarchal white beard––delivered the main address. Stead, he said, was the most prominent British editor of the 1880s and1890s,andhehadtransformedjournalism.Asajournalist,Stead was ‘brilliant, rapid, unconventional, accomplished...his resources apparentlyexhaustless,andhisenergywithoutbounds’.Anditwasa journalisminfusedwithahigherpurpose.‘Hewasajournalist,buta journalistas PaulwasanApostleandKnoxaReformer,and woeto him if he did not preach and make potent the good news God gave him.’ What was most important to Stead was God’s divine plan for humankind;whatdefinedhimwas hisbeliefthatGoddirectlycalled him to serve that plan. ‘To me,’ Clifford declared, ‘he was as a prophet who had come straight out of the Old Testament into our modern storm-swept life.’ Stead had sought to proclaim God’s will through journalism to an increasingly secular and materialist world; for him, the newspaper was ‘a sword to cut down the foes of right- eousness,aplatformfromwhichtoheartenandinspirethearmiesof theLord,apulpitfromwhichtopreachhiscrusades,adeskatwhich he could expound his policy for making a new heaven and a new earth. He was a man with a mission, and journalism was the organ throughwhichhewroughtatit.’Aboveallelse,Stead‘wasaprophet withaprophet’sinsight’anda‘prophet’sfearlessness’. WilliamThomasStead,newspapereditor,author,socialreformer, women’srightsadvocate,peacecampaigner,andspiritualist,wasone of the best-known public figures in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. The son of a Congregational minister, Stead emerged to national prominence in the 1870s, when, as the young editor of the Darlington Northern Echo, he became a leading voice of the ‘Noncon- formistConscience’,supportingtheeffortsofProtestantDissentersto reshapeBritishpoliticsandsocietyaroundChristianmoralstandards. In 1881, he became assistant editor of London’s evening Pall Mall OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,29/7/2019,SPi viii Preface Gazette,andthen,from1883,thenewspaper’seditor.AtthePallMall, hepioneeredwhatbecameknowninBritainasthe‘NewJournalism’, withemphasisoninvestigativejournalism,sensationalistnewsstories, interviewsofprominentfigures,special‘extra’issues,moralcrusades, bold headlines, and abundant illustrations.In 1885, hegained inter- nationalprominence,andaprisonsentence,forhishighlycontrover- sial ‘Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’ newspaper campaign directed against the sex trafficking of girls and young women in London.In1890Stead leftthePallMallandbecamefounder-editor ofthe successfulLondon-based monthly, The Review of Reviews, which provided readerswith adigestofarticlesfromtheworld’spress,and promotedbothglobalperspectivesandtheunityofEnglish-speaking peoples.In1893,hefoundedandeditedBorderland,aquarterlyjournal topromotethestudyofpsychicphenomena;hisvolumeofLettersfrom Julia,firstpublishedinBorderlandanddescribedasmessagesfromthe afterlife, went through numerous editions and was translated into a number of languages. Stead became a major voice of the ‘social gospel’ in Britain and the United States following the publication in 1894 of his best-selling If Christ Came to Chicago! with its call for the redemptionofthemoderncity.Hewas,moreover,aleadingpropon- entandpublicist ofthe Hague peace conferencesof1899and 1907, andthearbitrationofinternationaldisputes.Laudedbymanyforhis journalistic crusades and Christian social ethics, he was despised by othersforhissensationalismandself-promotion. Stead’s remarkable, often highly contentious public career has generated a rich biographical literature. Two highly sympathetic memoirs of Stead appeared shortly after his death: My Father (1913) by his daughter, Estelle, and Stead: The Man (1914) by his assistant, Edith Harper––both authors placing emphasis on Stead’s spiritual- ism.Thestandardtwo-volumebiographyofStead,FredericWhyte’s The Life of W. T. Stead, was published in 1925. A journalist who had worked under Stead, Whyte wrote a biography which was rich in insights on both Stead’s journalistic career and the broader cultural context, although Whyte had little interest in Stead’sNonconformist roots, religious conceptions, or spiritualist writings. J. W. Robertson Scott, another journalist who had worked under Stead, provided a lengthybiographicalstudyofSteadinhisLifeandDeathofaNewspaper (a study of the Pall Mall Gazette), published in 1952. His account OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,29/7/2019,SPi Preface ix drew heavily from Stead’s private journals and offered balanced assessments of Stead’s achievements and character. In 1972 the historian Raymond L. Schults produced a thoroughly researched monograph on Stead’s years at the Pall Mall Gazette, exploring his contributions to the ‘New Journalism’ and the development of the modern newspaper. In The Invention of Telepathy of 2002, the cultural historian, Roger Luckhurst, included a valuable chapter on Stead’s interestsintelepathiccommunicationsandengagementwithpsychical researchers.Theliteraryscholar,GraceEckley,publishedanimpres- sively researched, highly laudatory biography of Stead in 2007. The centenaryofStead’sdeathin2012broughtarevivalofinterest,witha lively, engagingbiography of Stead, Muckraker: The Scandalous Lifeand TimesofW.T.Stead,bythejournalist,W.SydneyRobinson;asthetitle suggests, Robinson emphasized Stead’s sensationalist journalistic campaignsandallegedsexualliaisons.2012alsosawaninternational conferenceattheBritishLibraryinLondon,whichledtoavolumeof essays,W.T.Stead:NewspaperRevolutionary,editedbyLaurelBrake,Ed King, Roger Luckhurst, and James Mussell. The essays mainly exploredStead’sjournalism,withsomecontributionsonhisspiritual- ism.ThemostimportantmodernscholarofSteadwasthehistorian, JosephBaylen,whoexploredStead’svariedcareerinaseriesofwell- researched,insightful,andauthoritativearticles.Ihadtheopportunity tomeetProfessorBaylenwhenhewasnearingretirementatGeorgia StateUniversityandIwasteachingattheUniversityofGeorgia,and Irememberwellhisgraciousmannerandwarmencouragementtoa youngerscholar.Hedidnot,unfortunately, managetocompletethe definitivebiographyofSteadforwhichwehadhoped. ThisbookisareligiousbiographyofStead.Whatinterestsmeasan historianofmodernChristianityishowforStead,andformanyofhis readers, the late nineteenth-century newspaper took on certain roles previously filled by the church, proclaiming a high social ethics, exposing and denouncing sin, seeking to discern the direction of the history and destiny of humankind, and forming participatory net- works of readers for moral action. My biography gives particular attention to Stead’s conception of journalism, at a time of growing massliteracy,asameanstocommunicateasocialgospel,andhisview of the editor’s desk as a modern pulpit, from which the editor/ preachercould reach acongregation oftens ofthousands. The book
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