Cette thèse a pour objectif premier de dresser un inventaire des albums et des feuilletons de bande dessinée publiés à Paris et à Genève, à partir des « histoires en estampes » de Rodolphe Töpffer jusqu’aux séquences de Christophe publiées dans Le Petit Français illustré. L’établissement du catalogue amène à élargir le cadre initial de la recherche pour aborder diverses formes de récits en images que voit se développer le XIXe siècle. À partir de là, il s’agit d’envisager la bande dessinée à travers ses principaux supports éditoriaux (l’album et la presse illustrée, mais aussi l’imagerie populaire représentée par la collection de la maison d’édition fondée par Albert Quantin), et de comprendre en quoi le dispositif de diffusion influe sur le medium en devenir. Une mise en relation de ces différentes formes s’attache ensuite à définir les langages de la bande dessinée : les usages faits de l’image et du texte, les thématiques privilégiées et notamment la teneur parodique des œuvres. La bande dessinée est ainsi placée dans l’évolution des poétiques et de l’expression visuelle, dans l’histoire de l’imprimé et des média. / This thesis has for first goal to make an inventory of the albums and serials of comic strip published in Paris and in Geneva from Rodolphe Töpffer’s “stories in prints” up to Christophe's sequences printed in The Small illustrated Frenchman. Once the catalogue established it becomes possible to widen the initial framework of the research and approach the different forms of narratives in images that develop during the XIXth century. From there, the comic strip can be studied through its main editorial supports (the album and the illustrated press, but also the popular imaging represented by the collection of the publishing house established by Albert Quantin), and one can understand in which way the modes of dissemination influence the progress of the medium. It gets thus easier to define the languages of the comic strip: the manners images and texts intertwin, the main themes and in particular the continuous parodic mood of the works. The comic strip eventually finds its place in the evolution of the literary and visual expressions as well as in the history of printing and of the media.

This thesis analyses the content, tone, form and authorship of the national newspaper gossip column 1918-1939, as a new means through which the qualities of the popular press in this period can be more closely defined. Often dismissed as an example of the sensational, Americanization of early twentieth-century popular culture, the celebrity gossip column has been loosely grouped with the friendly, informal language and bolder formatting of the ‘New Journalism’ of the late nineteenth century and the development of the dramatic ‘human-interest’ stories of ‘everyday life’ in the interwar period (LeMahieu, 1988; Wiener, 1988). Through a comparative study of six newspapers including the Daily Express, Daily Mail and News of the World, I analyse the changing representation of the celebrity subject, and, originally, the shifting character and persona of the gossip columnist. Whereas some historians have analysed the content of newspapers without considering the questions of the newspaper’s production, I analyse newspaper employment records, gossip columnists’ memoirs and their unpublished letters and diaries to define the specific economic, social and cultural circumstances which, I argue, influenced their public portrayal. Also, in examining the unpublished correspondence between editors, proprietors and columnists and the burgeoning print culture of journalistic training manuals and professional memoirs, I provide a history of the press’s professionalization in this period. The national popular press has often been used as a historical source to define national character and national identity in the interwar period (Bland, 2008; Kohn, 1992). By scrutinizing the content and production of the gossip column and particularly the class, behaviour, interactions and subject matter of the columnist, I argue that the gossip column presented a version of ‘Britishness’ that was not so inward-looking and domesticated as so many accounts of interwar Britain suggest.