Mythologizing late Victorian tea advertising: the case of the Illustrated London News (1890–1900)

ABSTRACT

Late-Victorian popular culture discourses around tea advertisements by companies like Lipton's Mazawattee, and United Kingdom Tea Company constitute an essential archive of Victorianism's ideological moorings. Following a revolution in Victorian tea retail, in the 1890s, tea advertisements became complex aesthetic performances of mythologizing and reconditioning the semiotics of Englishness rather than simply marketing tea for consumption. The visual impact of this mythologization was most conspicuous in The Illustrated London News. This paper examines how an elusive force, recognizable as gastromythology, cultured a set of royal, chivalric, aristocratic, domestic, gendered, and racial values familiar to English consumer psychology, in tea advertisements, published in The Illustrated London News between 1890 and 1900, that, albeit not authored by its staff, resonated with the tone and ideology of the self-commoditized weekly's journalistic commodities. This placed imperial advertisers at the helm of selecting preexisting subliminal tendencies and mythologems to replough them for visual consumption and paradigmatization by a mass-audience, in ways anticipating modern-day digital algorithms. The sociocultural impact of these advertisements is entangled with the semiotics of postcolonial Coca-Colonizations of consumer psychology, following a scheme of proselytization and parasitism with respect to national ideologies, while also introducing pharmakons and power-capillaries to that scheme.

KEYWORDS:

• Tea
• gastromythology
• Illustrated London News
• Victorian
• advertisement
• Mazawatte
• Lipton’s
• UKTC

Acknowledgment

The author is grateful to Vicki Howard, Jon Stobart, the anonymous reviewers of the History of Retailing and Consumption, and Sadat Ahmed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Appreciably, important scholarship in the history of tea and British culture, as well as the study of Victorian pictorial advertising, has appeared for nearly three decades now. The works of Erika Rappaport, Julie E. Fromer, Susan Daly, Piya Chatterjee, Andrew B. Liu, among others cited in this paper, may seem to precede – thus having paved the way for – key arguments in this paper. Likewise, Thomas Richards, Anne McClintock, Lori Anne Loeb, among others consulted herein, have extensively surveyed Victorian commodity advertising (other than tea), which also serve as the epistemic glues for this paper to contextualize Britain's tea history within a larger spectrum of Victorian retailing and consumption. Far from undermining the chronological primacy of these scholars or simply reproducing their principal ideas, this paper's distinction implicitly recalls the historic narratological paradigm that we today find ourselves in. This paper answers the urgent need to consolidate aforementioned researches and enunciate their paradigmatic culmination in what is recognized herein as the sociopolitical category of analysis, that of ‘gastromythology.’ Inter alia, it crystallizes a new cross-disciplinary lens to observe the genealogy of food narratives revolving around processes of consumption and retail, which are in turn linked with larger processes of mythologizing national identities – an integral scholarly and political concern at a time when we are witnessing a global swing towards authoritarian narratives of national histories and nation-building.

2 Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, 62.

3 Burnett, Plenty and Want, 126.

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6 Rappaport, “Packaging China,” 125.

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8 Mui and Mui, Shops and Shopkeeping in Eighteenth-century England, 64; Stobart, Sugar and Spice, 266.

9 Stobart, “Selling (through) politeness.” 2008; Stobart, Sugar and Spice, 269–70; Stobart, Hann, & Morgan, Spaces of Consumption, 183.

10 Stobart, Sugar and Spice, 268–69.

11 Mauger, “To Rub the Nose in the Tea,” 18.

12 Mauger, “To Rub the Nose in the Tea,” 33.

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14 Fidler, Mediamorphosis, 22; 28.

15 “The Past Rose Season,” 256.

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17 Hamilton, Parodies of the Works of English and American Authors, 220.

18 Sala “Dumbledowndeary Come to Life Again,” 235.

19 Sala, The Life and Adventures, 362.

20 “Mr. Sala,” 223.

21 Rappaport, A Thirst for Empire, 121.

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23 Sinnema, “Reading Nation and Class,” 136.

24 Burgess, “Preface” to The Book of Tea, 19; Cohen, “The true story behind England's tea obsession,” 2017.

25 Chatterjee, “Luca Brasi Sleeps with the Fishes,” 2021; Chatterjee, “The Gastromythology of English Tea Culture,” 2022; Chatterjee, “The ‘decline’ of London's Curry Houses,” 2023.

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27 Sutton, “Food and the Senses,” 2010; Sutton, Secrets from the Greek Kitchen, 2014.

28 Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, 50.

29 Fromer, A Necessary Luxury, 537.

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31 Donaldson, “Railroads of the Raj,” 2018; Chatterjee, The Great Indian Railways, 2018.

32 Mui and Mui, Shops and Shopkeeping in Eighteenth-century England, 13; Beddoes, “The National Drink,” 103; Gupta, “The History of the International Tea Market,” 2008.

33 Briggs, Friends of the People, 121–22; Gupta, “The History of the International Tea Market,” 2008; Hersh and Voth, “Sweet Diversity,’ 2009.

34 Roberts, “Life on a Guinea a Week,” 1888; Patterson, “The Cost of Living in 1888,” 2003.

35 Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, 62.

36 Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England, 7; Church, “Advertising Consumer Goods in Nineteenth-century Britain,” 630–31.

37 Lockwood, “The ‘New Working Class,’” 3.

38 Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure, 140; 156.

39 Stead, The Art of Advertising, 54.

40 Howard, “History of department stores,” 2021.

41 Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, 62.

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43 Sinnema, “Constructing a Readership,” 1994; Sinnema, “Representing the Railway,” 1998; Sinnema, Dynamics of the Pictured Page, 2019; Dobraszczyk, “Sewers, Wood Engraving and the Sublime,” 2005; Weller, “Preserving knowledge through popular Victorian periodicals,” 2008; Collier, “Literary Prestige is the Eminence of Nobodies,” 2011; Collier, “Imperial/Modernist Forms in the Illustrated London News,” 2012; Gretton, “Richard Caton Woodville,” 2015; Gretton, “Waterloo in Richard Caton Woodville's ‘Battles of the British Army,’” 2015; Joshi, “Audience participation,” 2016; Stobart, “Advertising and the character of English provincial department stores,” 2021.

44 Stern, “Literary Criticism and Consumer Research,” 1989; Thompson, “Marketplace mythology,” 2004; Holt, How brands become icons, 2004; “How Societies Desire Brands,” 2005; Holt, “Jack Daniel's America,” 2006; Brownlie, Hewer, & Horne, “Culinary tourism,” 2005; Kniazeva and Belk, “Packaging as vehicle for mythologizing the brand,” 2007; Maclaran, Hogg, & Bradshaw, “Cultural influences on representations,” 2009; Hedley, “Advertisements, Hyper-Reading, and Fin de Siècle Consumer Culture,” 2018; Hackley and Hackley, “Advertising at the Threshold,” 2019; Hackley and Hackley, Rethinking Advertising as Paratextual Communication, 2022.

45 Stobart & Howard, “Introduction: Global Perspectives on Retailing,” 2018.

46 Hultzsch, “To the Great Public,” 2017; Hultzsch, “The Crowd and the Building,” 2018.

47 Simmons, “Fringes of Civilization,” 4.

48 Korda, Printing and Painting the News in Victorian London, 31–36.

49 Hultzsch, “To the Great Public,” 2.

50 Sinnema, “Constructing a Readership,” 143; 159.

51 “The Early History”; Orme, “A History of The Illustrated London News,” 1986.

52 Quoted in Bennett, “Introduction: The Illustrated London News,” vii.

53 “The Early History,”

54 Leary, “A Brief History of the Illustrated London News,” 2011.

55 Ibid.

56 “To Correspondents,” 22.

57 Sinnema, “Representing the Railway,” 25; 31.

58 Law, “The Illustrated London News (1842–1901) and The Graphic (1869–1901).”

59 Orme, “A History of The Illustrated London News.”

60 King, “Advertising in the Illustrated London News.”

61 Odih, Advertising in modern and postmodern times, 38.

62 Quoted in Hindley and Hindley, Advertising in Victorian England, 11.

63 Sinnema, Dynamics of the Pictured Page, 9.

64 Melillo, “Empire in a Cup,” 68.

65 Collier, “Imperial/Modernist Forms,” 503.

66 Sinnema, Dynamics of the Pictured Page, 10.

67 Sinnema, Dynamics of the Pictured Page, 180; 188.

68 Richards, The commodity culture of Victorian England, 5.

69 McKendry, “The ‘Illustrated London News’ and the invention of tradition,” 3.

70 Ritchie, “The Social Influence of Tea,” 65–68.

71 Lankester, On Food, 304.

72 The Spectator, January 1866, 11.

73 Day, Tea: Its Mystery and History, 60.

74 Stables, Tea, 77.

75 Collier, “Imperial/Modernist Forms,” 196.

76 Melillo, “Empire in a Cup,” 68–72.

77 Collier, “Imperial/Modernist Forms,” 2012; Ramamurthy, Imperial Persuaders, 98.

78 Melillo, “Empire in a Cup,” 74; Ramamurthy, Imperial Persuaders, 107-109.

79 Collier, “Imperial/Modernist Forms,” 507.

80 Ramamurthy, Imperial Persuaders, 121.

81 Collier, “Imperial/Modernist Forms,” 508.

82 McClintock, Imperial Leather, 31–34.

83 McClintock, Imperial Leather, 207–31.

84 Ramamurthy, Imperial Persuaders, 99.

85 O’Donohoe, “Raiding the Postmodern Pantry,” 1997; Hackley and Hackley, “Advertising at the Threshold,” 2019; Hackley and Hackley, Rethinking Advertising as Paratextual Communication, 2022.

86 Richards, “The Image of Victoria,” 21.

87 Fromer, A Necessary Luxury, 221.

88 Loeb, Consuming Angels, 80.

89 Ramamurthy, Imperial Persuaders, 8; 45.

90 Lockwood, “The ‘new working class,’” 253; 255.

91 Talmage, Around the Tea-table, 13.

92 Daly, The Empire Inside, 86.

93 Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret, 316.

94 Loda, “Mary Morrison,” 56.

95 Clay, The Family Herald, 67.

96 Sherwood, Manners and Social Usages, 248.

97 Sinnema, Dynamics of the Pictured Page, 121.

98 Beecher, All Around the House, 418.

99 Rowbotham, Good Girls Make Good Wives, 11.

100 Rosenburg, The Rise of Mass Advertising, 3; 19.

101 Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, 107; Hall, The Correct Thing in Good Society, 124-126; “Alexandra, Princess of Wales,” 559.

102 Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield, 92–93.

103 Churchill, The Ghost, 6.

104 Twombly, “The Revenant Charles Churchill,” 83.

105 Dawn, The Tea Book, 45.

106 Pope, The Rape of the Lock, 130.

107 Grocott, An Index to Familiar Quotations, 121; “Tea-table Talk,” 274; Giles, A Glossary of Reference, 145; “Quotations on Fate,” 232.

108 Levine, “The Humanising Influences of Five O’Clock Tea,” 306.

109 Shuttleworth, “Female Circulation,” 1990.

110 Beckert, Empire of Cotton, 46.

111 Armstrong, “England and German Christmas Festlichkeit,” 2008.

112 Piesse, “Dreaming across Oceans,” 38.

113 Shannon, “Refashioning Men,” 625.

114 Holt, How brands become icons, 3.

115 Chiles, “Intertwined ambiguities,” 2013.

116 “Tea-table Talk,” 283.

117 Dickens, “Tea Tattle,” 415–16.

118 Newey, “Dramatic and Musical Chit Chat,” 167.

119 Hackley and Hackley, Rethinking Advertising as Paratextual Communication, 85.

120 Church, “Advertising consumer goods in nineteenth-century Britain: reinterpretations,” 644.

121 Colley, Britons, 6–7.

122 Wicke, Advertising Fictions, 16.

123 Lauterbach, “Victorian Advertising and Magazine Stripping,” 434.

124 Sinnema, “Representing the Railway,” 162–63

125 Fyfe, “Illustrating the accident,” 2013.

126 Chatterjee, A Time for Tea, 2001; Bayly, “Looking Behind Domestic Tranquillity,” 2018; Harris, “Two Leaves and a Bud,” 2021.

127 Harding, “Competition is useless,” 2016.

128 Marx, Karl Marx: A Reader, 63; See Žižek in Fiennes, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, 2012.

129 Holt, How brands become icons, 2004; Holt & Cameron, “Cultural Strategy,” 2010.

Additional information

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Arup K. Chatterjee

Arup K. Chatterjee I am a Professor at OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India, and the founding chief editor of Coldnoon: International Journal of Travel Writing & Traveling Cultures, which I ran from 2011 to 2018. I have authored The Purveyors of Destiny: A Cultural Biography of the Indian Railways (2017), The Great Indian Railways (2018), Indians in London: From the Birth of the East India Company to Independent India (2021), and The Great Indian Railway Saga (2023), besides being the author of over seventy articles and academic papers in national and international publications. My forthcoming book is on the history of Adam's Bridge (Routledge 2024). In 2012, I translated the Urdu poems of Firaq Gorakhpuri, published in the biography written by Ajai Man Singh, The Poet of Pain and Ecstasy (Roli 2015). My research interests include nineteenth-century colonial history, anthropology, culture, and literary studies.