"The power of the popular press presents all modern societies with immense difficulties. It is, however, a problem with a history: the hold of the press over public opinion was debated with urgency throughout the nineteenth century. This book looks at the ways in which individuals, pressure groups, political organisations and the state sought to understand the mass communications media of the nineteenth century, and to use them to influence public opinion and effect moral and social reform." "The tensions between Victorian moral imperatives and the operation of the free commercial market raised issues of great public concern, such as whether the mass media should be under private or public control. These tensions have dominated the way in which Britain and other western societies have thought about the newer broadcasting media, but their origins are older and more complex than many studies of twentieth-century media acknowledge. This book is both a necessary historical perspective on debates in media theory, as well as a major addition to the social and cultural history of the nineteenth century."--BOOK JACKET.