At the historical moment when Western Armenian became a standardized literary language, it confronted the most influential political agent in its development: systematic Ottoman censorship. This paper considers the impact of late 19th and early 20th century Ottoman censorship a) on Armenian literary production, specifically in the periodical press, and b) on Armenian institutional and class relations. The development of Western Armenian as a literary language coincided with the era of Sultan Abdul Hamid II’s reign (1876 – 1908). While studies on Ottoman censorship are unfortunately scant and incomplete, enough research does exist to observe its impact on Western Armenian literature and Ottoman-Armenian socio-political relations. As author, poet and literary critic Krikor Beledian has observed, Hamidian censorship was foremost among the forces that determined the predominance of the realist short story among the Ottoman-Armenian, and especially the Istanbulite, literati. This discussion will develop Beledian’s observation by briefly surveying a few prominent short stories by the “Prince of Short Stories,” Krikor Zohrab. The survey will suggest that the generic propensity for the realist short story precipitated an unprecedented allegorical trend that began to inscribe the Armenian woman as an allegorical figure of Ottoman-Armenian subjecthood. In addition, the paper will demonstrate the instrumentality of these censorship laws in rendering the Armenian periodical press into political currency. This aspect of print production colored much of inter-class and institutional relations. It also proved to be ideologically valuable in vying for influence to delineate the terms of Armenian identity and political orientation. These observations will be based on historical accounts, memoirs, and archival sources from revolutionary propaganda organs. Finally, and on the basis of these same sources, the discussion will reveal the rise of a newly influential social class, namely the censors. In the case of Armenian periodicals, most if not all of these censors were ethnic Armenians. Perceptions and representations of them throughout these texts, especially propaganda organs and post-Hamidian memoirs, reveal that Armenianness was determined as much, if not more, by ideological and class allegiance as by ethnic affiliation. Hence, it was possible for writer Hagop Oshagan to refer to this group as “Armenian-Turk,” a category that, more broadly, referred to informants. A brief interpretation of Daniel Varoujan’s poem, “Matnijë” [“The Informant”] will ground and support this interpretation. Thus, the paper will reveal how Ottoman-Armenian printing functioned as a political apparatus in devising constantly shifting national and ethnic boundaries.