With this issue the Journal of British Studies (JBS) merges with its sister journal, Albion. This move is prompted by the retirement of Michael Moore, Albion's longtime editor. The expanded JBS will continue to publish articles, review essays, special issues on defined topics, and occasional roundtable discussions. It will also include, starting with the April issue, a comprehensive section of short book reviews. The JBS remains a historical journal committed to interdisciplinary scholarship in the field of British studies under the auspices of the North American Conference on British Studies. The first two issues of the new journal will come out under our editorship, after which JBS will move to the University of Minnesota under the editorship of Anna Clark. The review section of the journal will be run by Claire Schen and Patrick McDevitt of the State University of New York at Buffalo.
A few words on the history of Albion and its editor, Michael Moore, are here in order. Albion began in 1969 as an annual publication of the proceedings of the Pacific Northwest section of the Conference on British Studies (at that time it cost $1.00). By the next year it was published twice a year. With its third volume (spring 1971), it carried the proceedings of “the Conference on British Studies at its Regional and National meetings” and became a quarterly journal. Although the journal was predominately one of British history, it reflected the conference's own mandate to embrace “all aspects of British studies, historical and literary.” The journal's first editor was Joel M. Rodney, and it moved with him from Washington State University to Elmira College.
With its fifth volume, published in 1973, the journal announced that it had changed, and indeed it had. Rodney, now at Weidner College, was joined by Barry M. Gough as coeditor. The journal had also found a new, and as it turned out, a permanent home at Appalachian State University. It also had a new format, offering a special issue on “Violence and Social Control” that featured a lead article by George Rudé. It was also at this point that Michael J. Moore, a young historian of Victorian Britain, became managing editor, and Sheldon Hanft assumed the job of business manager. Both taught in the Department of History at Appalachian State. With volume 10, in spring 1978, Michael officially became Albion's editor. The following year, Albion added a modest review section, and R. J. Q. Adams became book review editor. By 1983 the journal had taken on its present balance, carrying several scholarly articles along with a comprehensive section of short book reviews. Quince Adams became an associate editor, a position he held for the duration of the journal's history. With reviews, the journal expanded from around 340 pages annually to around 420 pages; by the mid-1980s, it ran to over 700 pages.
Under Michael's editorship, the journal had not only grown in size but had evolved into a major journal in terms of its intellectual sophistication and range. A brief look at the contributions of the 1980s confirms its diverse interests. In a decade dominated by Thatcher, Albion ran articles on technical education and economic performance, industrialism and hedonism in the work of Orwell, and the steamboat paintings of J. M. W. Turner. It also featured a series of articles on the rise of affective individualism and companionate marriage, a major theme in family history; the Muggletonians, whom Christopher Hill and Edward Thompson had rescued from obscurity; consumer protest in the 1860s; late nineteenth-century anarchism; and the Workers’ Education Association. As J. G. A. Pocock and others urged British historians to venture “offshore,” so Albion offered essays on female emigration, on liberal women's organizations against the Boer War, and a historiographical review of British India from Clive to the Mutiny. For the next two decades, Albion confirmed its status as a leading publication for all those interested in British studies. A short tribute can only suggest the journal and its editor's achievement, the truest measure of which is to be found in Albion's pages. For a quarter of a century, Michael Moore has been known to so many of us as an editor distinguished by his energy, patience, and encouragement. A labor of love for certain, and one for which we can only begin to express our gratitude for a job well done.
