Biographical Material
- Jerdan’s Parents and His Childhood
- Jerdan becomes a Journalist
- Editor of The Sun
- European Travels and Acquaintance with Canning
- Editor of the Literary Gazette
- Jerdan and Letitia E. Landon
- Jerdan Begins a Third Family
- Jerdan acts as a literary agent for several authors
- Jerdan becomes member of the Society of Antiquaries (February 1825)
- Member of Horticultural Society
- Member of Melodists Club
- Member of the Society of Noviomagus
- Member of the Garrick Club
- Expelled from the Royal Geographical Society
- Becomes Vestryman, Brompton’s Church of Holy Trinity
- Interest in Insanity and its Treatments
- Nathaniel Hawthorne’s view of him as a shabby, disreputable old man
Relationships with Authors and Reviews of their Work
- Friend to aspiring authors
- Barry Proctor
- Alaric Watts
- Friendship with Hans Christian Andersen
- Inability to Appreciate Tennyson’s Poetry
- Publishes Watts’s charge that Byron’s poems show woidespread plagiarism
- Jerdan and William Maginn
- Relationship with Blackwood
- Jerdan’s nemesis Charles Westmacott
- Jerdan and Hames Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd
- The Examiner’s satiric epigrams and attacks on the Literary Gazette
- Works to help impoverished authors with Literary Fund
- Contributes to Tribute to Goethe
- Summary of His Contribution to the Literary Gazette
Financial Context
- Criticism of Dioramas
- The Literary Gazette’s finances and payments to authors and Jerdan
- Circulation figures for the Literary Gazette
- The Financial Panic of 1826
- The Heyday of the Poetic Annuals
- Competition from The Athenæum
- Jerdan useless at keeping track of money
- Jerdan Sells 1/3 of the Literary gazette to Longmans for £1000
- Competition with the Athenæum
- Jerdan acquires total ownership of the Literary Gazette in July 1841
Writings
- Contributions to Fisher’s National Portrait Gallery of Illustrious and Eminent Personages of the Nineteenth Century
- Six Weeks in Paris, or a Cure for the Gallomania
- Personal Narrative of a Journey Over-Land from The Bank to Barnes. . .
- “The Publishing Trade” (series of articles)
- “Hippothanasia; or, the Last of Tails”
- “John Pouledoune” — an attack on the state of modern society
- “The Snuff Box – A Tale of Wales”
- “Thomas Noddy Esq.”
- “A Windsor Ball of the Latest Fashion”
- “Nonsense! A Miscellany about Love”
- “Dead Man’s Race – a Christmas Story”
- “The Legacies of Intellect – a Philosophical Vagary”
- “The Bridegroom’s Star”
- “Baron Von Dullbrainz”
- “The Sleeping Beauty in our Time”
- “The Happy Family – A Tale of the Town”
- “The Reasoning Schoolmaster – a real character”
- Main Line S E Rail Manual
- “The Gift of Tongues” (Household Words)
- “Old Scraps of Science” (Household Words)
- “Old Hawtrey” (All the Year Round)
- “Chip” (All the Year Round)
- “A Chapter on Dogs” (Chambers’s Journal)
- “A Walk from London to Edinburgh about Sixty Years Ago” (Leisure Hour)
Selected Reviews
Bibliography
Duncan, Robert. “William Jerdan and the Literary Gazette.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 1955.
Jerdan, William. Autobiography. London: Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co., 1852-53.
Jerdan, William. Men I have Known. Lonodn: Routledge & Co, 1866.
Jerdan, William. “Memoir of L.E.L.” in Romance and Reality. London: Bentley, 1848.
Pyle, Gerald. “The Literary Gazette under William Jerdan.” Ph. D. dissertation, Duke University, 1976.
Last modified 14 July 2020