Cheapness, Predictability, and Cliché: Beaches in Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals

How does the beach topos act in the popular periodical; what happens when a topos becomes used, over-used, and cheapened? This chapter looks at a number of nineteenth-century British mass-market periodicals, including the London Reader and Bow Bells, and argues that the beach worked as a convenient generator for plot. In the liminal space of the beach, possible drama can sprout in the meeting between different classes, and in the interplay between romance and death. The chapter also reflects on the digital archive and the methodology of selection: how do we choose the texts we study, and how might we imagine the links between them?