The Emergence of the Press Baron as ‘literary Villain’ in English Letters 1909–1939

Although the figure of the journalist is a familiar character of Victorian and Edwardian literature, in 1909 a new figure connected with the press emerges in English letters and becomes a preoccupation for writers for the next thirty years: the popular press baron. While Edwardian ‘newspaper fictions' portrayed him as an entrepreneurial genius, more literary writers became increasingly concerned with popular newspaper proprietors' ability to distort the literary marketplace and devalue language. By the mid to late 1930s the fictional press baron becomes increasingly threatening not just to leftwing politics and writers' ability to get published but to faith in the value of the written word itself. In this study I will attempt to account for this character's emergence in fiction, and writers' attitudes towards him.¹