John Plunkett is currently a Junior Research Fellow at the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture, Exeter University. His main research interests are in nineteenth-century print and visual media, especially photography, popular fiction and the periodical press. He is currently working on a book, Optical Recreations, which examines the different types of nineteenth-century domestic and public screen entertainment. In 2002, he held a visiting fellowship at Yale Centre for British Art for work on this project.

"The book's range, thoroughness and grasp of exemplary detail which are its real strengths. It is superbly illustrated, and Plunkett's scholarship is, as its best, an illustrative rather than an analytic tool. The documentary side of the book is immensely impressive: Plunkett has done work for which other Victorian scholars will be permanently grateful. We are made vividly aware of the complex, dynamic relation between social and technological change, and Plunkett's concentration on the monarchy gives the account a clarity and focus which more broadly based studies of Victorian progress often lack."--Daniel Karlin, Times Literary Supplement

"The material in this book, much of it analysed for the first time, is clearly fascinating.... Queen Victoria: First Media Monarch is enlightening both in its analysis of the nineteenth-century press and its anticipation of the media-saturated world we live in today."--English Literature in Transition 1880-1920

"Adds considerably to our understanding of the power of the media--particularly the illustrated media--in creating the monarchy.... This lively account is restricted to the first half of Victoria's reign,...partly because, 'following Victoria's creation as Empress of India in 1876, there was an imperial reinvention of the monarch that deserves a study in its own right.' On the strength of this volume, packed with compelling detail as well as demonstrating the growing power of the royal culture industry, one hopes that Plunkett will write it himself."--Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

"A fascinating book."--The Guardian

"Plunkett's book provides a fascinating, detailed look at the transformation the Victorian news media underwent between Victoria's coronation and her death."--Victorian Studies