Launching Yellow Nineties 2.0

Yellow Nineties 2.0 is an open-access resource for the study of eight late-Victorian little magazines produced between 1889 and 1905, a relatively brief period in which the emerging publishing genre was characterized by its aspiration to be a “Total Work of Art.” In its contents, mode of production, and materiality, this unique periodical form deliberately situated itself on the margins of fin-de-siècle industrial capitalism and mass media, creating an international forum for avant-garde art and literature by producing small-scale serials designed to be beautiful objects. Directed by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Yellow Nineties 2.0 offers marked-up digital editions of the eight titles on its magazine rack (over 7000 pages of textual content and about 500 images), situated within a media archive of promotional materials and reviews. Y90s digital editions are contextualized by an extensive editorial apparatus of born-digital scholarship (~200,000 words), which includes 48 introductory essays to periodical volumes, over 100 biographies of selected contributors, and digital research tools for the study of graphic design (the Database of Ornament) and historical persons (the Y90s Personography). Yellow Nineties 2.0 is hosted at Toronto Metropolitan University.