[headline]The emergence of a mass reading public during the early decades of the nineteenth century sparked a period of creative innovation in the popular press While today we might associate 'new media' with digital technologies, such innovations have a long history that precedes - and in many ways anticipates - the present moment. This collection reveals how the period between 1820 and 1845 was crucial in the development of the modern press, including experimentation with new publication formats, the reinvention and remediation of older forms, and the definition of new kinds of contributors and audiences for print. It brings to light the contributions of many important but long-forgotten writers, illustrators and editors who created and harnessed the idea of a mass reading public and shows how steam printing, popular education campaigns and new technologies of illustration led to new trends in book and periodical production. [bio]Alexis Easley is Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of First-Person Anonymous: Women Writers and Victorian Print Media, 1830-70 (2004) and Literary Celebrity, Gender, and Victorian Authorship, 1850-1914 (2011). She has also co-edited four books, most recently Women, Periodicals, and Print Culture in Britain, 1830s-1900s, with Clare Gill and Beth Rodgers (2019).