Albo-mania, Albo-phobia

Abstract 1820s print culture had a love–hate relationship with album poetry. Although the publishing industry capitalized on the democratization of the elite album, most of the critical discourse was satirical. Women’s ‘albo-mania’ provoked ‘albo-phobia’. Male professional writers’ intense anxieties about cultural feminization and de-professionalization focus on album poetry. Anti-album discourse mediated sociocultural anxieties about the decline of poetry and rise in women and amateur writers’ participation in the literary marketplace. By contrasting anti-album discourse in periodicals such as Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine with samples of published album verses by poets including Bernard Barton and Robert Charles Dallas, the chapter examines the genre’s identification with women, children, amateur writers, and newly literate classes deemed ineligible to participate in culture as agents rather than as consumers.