The editorial 'We'

Frederik Van Dam points out (re my five books in The Browser for an aspiring newspaper editor) that Trollope himself became the the editor of Saint Paul's Magazine and a principal founder of the Fortnightly Review and thus, during the 1860's and 1870's developed a better understanding of the sweat and tears involved in the job, not merely the unaccountable power to hurl leader-writer's thunderbolts that he criticised in The Warden.

Trollope remained, however, troubled by the anonymity of the leader writer. There is a famous cartoon by Harry Furniss (I cannot find it online so here is another one by him) in which, to cite a new book by Matthew Rubery, 'signed contributions in the French press fostered rapier-like thrusts, feints, and parries as opposed to the pugilistic model of brute force delivered under the cloak of anonymity practiced by the English.'

 Victims of these blows, as he puts it, had little recourse beyond condemning the unnamed antagonist, as Trollope’s novels from The Warden to The Prime Minister illustrate in dramatic fashion.

'Any journalist in a Victorian novel is likely to be an editor since this was the only named figure on the publication’s staff.  The rest of the staff remained veiled from the eyes of the public no matter how controversial their contributions to the periodical in question.

 In the short stories from Saint Paul’s Magazine collected in Trollope’s An Editor’s Tales (1870), for example, the narrator exploits the editorial privilege of speaking in the first-person plural “we” to comic effect since he is a lone individual directly addressing the audience of a work of fiction.  But these humorous anecdotes belie the seriousness with which Trollope treated “The great WE” when dealing with political as opposed to literary evaluation.  His essay “On Anonymous Literature” clearly expresses his distaste for the anonymous publication of literature:  “The man who puts forward his printed words, whether for instruction or delectation, and publishes, that is makes public, his own thoughts and creations, should never be ashamed to say from whom they come.”

 Surprisingly, then, Trollope defended the use of anonymity for political editorials in the newspaper despite strong disapproval of the policy for other forms of writing.  According to Trollope’s defense of this exception in the Fortnightly Review, the newspaper’s value to ordinary readers was enhanced by collective rather than individual instruction from a diverse group of experienced professionals: “The newspaper is not a lamp lighted by a single hand, but a sun placed in the heaven by an invisible creator.”  The identity of this “invisible creator” would nevertheless come under intense scrutiny in Trollope’s fictional representations of journalism despite any professed tolerance of editorial anonymity.'

Rubery's book, The Novelty of Newspapers: Victorian Fiction after the Invention of the News looks fascinating. And, if an editor's time allows, I am going to read some more of it.

Comments

[Ramesh Raghuvanshi]

From birth of newspaper, every editor called himself WE.That is symbolic or he called collectively all staff of newspaper?In India even very small village newspaper editor[who run the newspaper in single handed] called himself WE.I think this practice arise to show editor prestige on society,Iam above the society I have power to criticize to misdeed of society no one is above me.

[Candadai Tirumalai]

I cannot imagine Trollope taking kindly to the instant venom and vitriol the permitted anonymity or disguise of the blogosphere sometimes releases.
Those nineteenth-century periodicals in which contributors were given ample room to develop their ideas are quite remarkable.