Szinnyei, a gondos, Jókai, a pontatlan
Szinnyei, the Accurate One, Jókai, the Inaccurate One

Races of Thoughts from Esterhazy via the Satirical Press to Miss Mary

Summary/Abstract: We don’t laugh much at the satirical press of the 19th century anymore. It reminds us that the people of the time, while going about their daily business, were preoccupied with problems quite different from those that historiography has canonised. The digitised press material helps us to understand the reception horizon of the time. By reconstructing the context of an article that appeared in Az Üstökös in the 1880s, the article offers a new perspective on two sets of problems. The first is the mass press itself, which appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century. The value of this source has become obvious, but the reference to József Szinnyei in the satirical press underlines that the collection of dailies and their placement in public collections was by no means self-evident in an era that regarded the mass press as the enemy of valuable literature. The other set of problem is the judgement of Jókai. He published his novels mainly in newspaper supplements, which were often criticised by members of the literary high society. The article of Az Üstökös draws attention to the fact that Jókai was also a frequent target of his own media, the daily press, which was on the lookout for sensationalism. The inaccuracies in the account of his visit to Mihály Zichy were pointed out, while they, and Zichy himself, were inaccurate for various reasons. In the search for the reasons for Jókai’s inaccuracies, it becomes clear that he could not become a journalist even when writing for newspapers: his pen was guided by the plausible even when he was supposed to report the real.

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