Magazine publishing
Beginnings in the 17th century
Though there may have been published material similar to a magazine in antiquity, especially perhaps in China, the magazine as it is now known began only after the invention of printing in the West. It had its roots in the spate of pamphlets, broadsides, ballads, chapbooks, and almanacs that printing made possible. Much of the energy that went into these gradually became channeled into publications that appeared regularly and collected a variety of material designed to appeal to particular interests. The magazine thus came to occupy the large middle ground, incapable of sharp definition, between the book and the newspaper.
The earliest magazine appears to have been the German Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen (1663–68; “Edifying Monthly Discussions”), started by Johann Rist, a theologian and poet of Hamburg. Soon after there appeared a group of learned periodicals: the Journal des Sçavans (later Journal des Savants; 1665), started in France by the author Denis de Sallo; the Philosophical Transactions (1665) of the Royal Society in England; and the Giornale de’ letterati (1668), published in Italy and issued by the scholar and ecclesiastic Francesco Nazzari. A similar journal was started in Germany a little later, the Acta eruditorum Lipsiensium (Leipzig; 1682); and mention may also be made of the exile-French Nouvelles de la République des Lettres (1684), published by the philosopher Pierre Bayle mainly in Holland to escape censorship. These sprang from the revival of learning, the need to review its fruits, and the wish to diffuse its spirit as widely as possible.
The learned journals summarized important new books, but there were as yet no literary reviews. Book advertisements, by about 1650 a regular feature of the newssheets, sometimes had brief comments added, and regular catalogs began to appear, such as the English quarterly Mercurius librarius, or A Catalogue of Books (1668–70). But in the 17th century the only periodicals devoted to books were short-lived: the Weekly Memorials for the Ingenious (1682–83), which offered some critical notes on books, and the Universal Historical Bibliothèque (January–March 1686). The latter invited scholarly contributions and could thus be regarded as the true forerunner of the literary review.
The lighter type of magazine, or “periodical of amusement,” may be dated from 1672, which saw the first appearance of Le Mercure Galant (renamed Mercure de France in 1714). It was founded by the writer Jean Donneau de Vizé and contained court news, anecdotes, and short pieces of verse—a recipe that was to prove endlessly popular and become widely imitated. This was followed in 1688 by a German periodical with an unwieldy title but one that well expressed the intention behind many a subsequent magazine: “Entertaining and Serious, Rational and Unsophisticated Ideas on All Kinds of Agreeable and Useful Books and Subjects.” It was issued in Leipzig by the jurist Christian Thomasius, who made a point of encouraging women readers. England was next in the field, with a penny weekly, the Athenian Gazette (better known later as the Athenian Mercury; 1690–97), run by a London publisher, John Dunton, to resolve “all the most Nice and Curious Questions.” Soon after came the Gentleman’s Journal (1692–94), started by the French-born Peter Anthony Motteux, with a monthly blend of news, prose, and poetry. In 1693, after devoting some experimental numbers of the Athenian Mercury to “the Fair Sex,” Dunton brought out the first magazine specifically for women, the Ladies’ Mercury. Finally, another note, taken up time and again later, was struck by The London Spy (1698–1700), issued by a tavern keeper, Ned Ward, and containing a running narrative of the sights and sounds of London.
Developments in the 18th century
Great Britain
With increasing literacy—especially among women—and a quickening interest in new ideas, the magazine filled out and became better established. In Britain, three early “essay periodicals” had enormous influence: Daniel Defoe’s The Review (1704–13; thrice weekly); Sir Richard Steele’s The Tatler (1709–11; thrice weekly), to which Joseph Addison soon contributed; and Addison and Steele’s The Spectator (1711–12, briefly revived in 1714; daily). Though they resembled newspapers in the frequency of their appearance, they were more like magazines in content. The Review introduced the opinion-forming political article on domestic and foreign affairs, while the cultivated essays of The Tatler and The Spectator, designed “to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality,” did much to shape the manners and taste of the age. The latter had countless imitators not only in Britain, where there were in addition the Female Tatler (1709–10) and the Female Spectator (1744–46), but also on the Continent and later in America. The Stamp Tax of 1712 had a damping effect, as intended, but magazines proved endlessly resilient, easy to start and easy to fail, then as now.
So far various themes had been tried out; they were first brought together convincingly by the English printer Edward Cave, who began to publish The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1731. It was originally a monthly collection of essays and articles culled from elsewhere, hence the term magazine—the first use of the word in this context. Cave was joined in 1738 by Dr. Johnson, who was later to publish his own Rambler (1750–52); thereafter The Gentleman’s Magazine contained mostly original matter, including parliamentary reports. Rivals and imitators quickly followed, notably the London Magazine (1732–85) and the Scots Magazine (1739–1817; to 1826 published as the Edinburgh Magazine); and, among the increasing number of women’s periodicals, there were a Ladies’ Magazine (1749–53) and a Lady’s Magazine (1770–1832). Their progenitor, however, outlived them all and perished only in 1907.
The literary and political rivalries of the day produced numerous short-lived periodicals, from which the critical review emerged as an established form. Robert Dodsley, a London publisher, started the Museum (1746–47), devoted mainly to books, and Ralph Griffiths, a Nonconformist bookseller, founded The Monthly Review (1749–1845), which had the novelist and poet Oliver Goldsmith as a contributor. To oppose the latter on behalf of the Tories and the Church of England, The Critical Review (1756–1817) was started by an Edinburgh printer, Archibald Hamilton, with the novelist Tobias Smollett as its first editor. Book reviews tended to be long and fulsome, with copious quotations; a more astringent note came in only with the founding of the Edinburgh Review in 1802 (see below).
Continental Europe
On the Continent development was similar but was hampered by censorship. French magazines containing new ideas had to appear in exile, such as the philosopher Pierre Bayle’s Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, which was published largely in Holland; some 30 titles were published in Holland up to the time of the French Revolution. Within France, there were the short-lived Spectateur Français (1722–23) and Spectateur Suisse (1723); and Le Pour et le Contre (1733–40; “For and Against”), issued by the Abbé Prévost (author of Manon Lescaut). Of more literary interest were the Gazette Littéraire de l’Europe (1764–84) and La Décade Philosophique, Littéraire et Politique (1794–1804).
In Leipzig the poet and philosopher Johann Christoph Gottsched issued a periodical for women, Die vernünftigen Tadlerinnen (1725–26; “The Rational Woman-Critics”), and the first German literary review, Beiträge zur kritischen Historie der deutschen Sprache (1732–44; “Contributions to the History of the German Language”). German literary movements were connected with the production of new magazines to a greater extent than in Britain. Examples of such vehicles include Friedrich von Schiller’s Horen (1795–97) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Propyläen (1798–1800), the influence of which was often greater than their duration. Of more general and lasting influence was the Allgemeine Literatur-zeitung (1785–1849), founded by Friedrich Justin Bertuch, “the father of the German periodical.”
The first Russian periodical, published by the Academy of Sciences, was a learned journal called “Monthly Works” (1755–64). The first privately published Russian magazine, a critical periodical with essays and translations from the British Spectator, was called “Industrious Bee” and began in 1759. Catherine II used her Vsiakaia Vsiachina (1769–70), also modeled on the Spectator, to attack opponents, among them Nikolay Novikov, whose “Drone” (1769–70) and “Windbag” (1770) were suspended and whose “Painter” (1770–72) escaped only by being dedicated to the Empress.
America
In America the first magazines were published in 1741. In that year appeared Andrew Bradford’s American Magazine, the first publication of its kind in the colonies. It was joined, a mere three days later, by Benjamin Franklin’s General Magazine. Both magazines appeared in Philadelphia; neither lasted very long, however—Bradford’s magazine survived only three months and Franklin’s six. Franklin was more widely known for another of his publications, Poor Richard’s Almanack (1732–57), which contained maxims and proverbs. Before the end of the 18th century, some 100 magazines had appeared, offering miscellaneous entertainment, uplift, or information, mostly on a very shaky, local, and brief basis. Among the more important were, in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Magazine (1775–76), edited by Thomas Paine, and the American Museum (1787–92) of the bookseller Mathew Carey; the Massachusetts Magazine (1789–96), published in Boston; and the New-York (City) Magazine (1790–97).
The 19th century and the start of mass circulation
General periodicals
Most of the early periodicals were designed for the few who could afford them and can be fairly called “quality” magazines. In the 1830s, however, less expensive magazines, aimed at a wider public, began to appear. At first these magazines emphasized features that promoted improvement, enlightenment, and family entertainment, but, toward the end of the century, they evolved into popular versions that aimed at providing amusement.
The pioneers of the new type of magazine in Britain were Charles Knight, publisher for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, with his weekly Penny Magazine (1832–46) and Penny Cyclopaedia (1833–58); the Chambers brothers, William and Robert, with Chambers’s (Edinburgh) Journal (1832–1956), which reached a circulation of 90,000 in 1845; and teetotaler John Cassell, with his Working Man’s Friend and Family Instructor (1850–53) and the Quiver (1861). Besides popular magazines, many standard works appeared serially, often with illustrations. Typical of family entertainment were Charles Dickens’ Household Words (1850), followed in 1859 by All the Year Round; several similar periodicals such as Good Words (1860); and, for young people, the Boy’s Own Paper (1879) and the Girl’s Own Paper (1880). Germany had its Pfennigmagazin (1833), edited by Johann Jakob Weber, and a family magazine modeled on that of Dickens. One example was the Gartenlaube (1853–1937; “Arbour”), which enjoyed great popular influence and a circulation of 400,000 in the 1870s. There were no national magazines in the United States before about 1850, but two of its best-known early periodicals were the Saturday Evening Post (1821–1969; revived 1971) and Youth’s Companion (1827–1929). The latter, published in Boston, was typically wholesome in content, intended to “warn against the ways of transgression” and to encourage “virtue and piety.”
By the last quarter of the century, largely as a result of compulsory education, the potential market for magazines had greatly increased, and the public was avid for miscellaneous information and light entertainment. The first man in Britain to discover this was George Newnes, who liked snipping out any paragraph that appealed to him. In 1881 he turned his hobby to advantage by publishing a penny magazine, Tit-Bits from all the Most Interesting Books, Periodicals and Contributors in the World, soon shortened to Tit-Bits (in 1968 restyled Titbits). It was a great success and formed the beginning of a publishing empire that was to include Country Life (founded 1897), Wide World Magazine (1898), and, above all, The Strand Magazine (1891–1950), one of the first monthly magazines of light literature with plenty of illustrations. The Strand became enormously popular and is perhaps most famous for its Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Among the early contributors to Tit-Bits was Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe), who had an appetite for odd bits of information similar to that of Newnes. In 1888, after editing Youth and Bicycling News, Harmsworth launched a rival to Tit-Bits called Answers to Correspondents, or Answers, which he successfully promoted by contests. Within five years he produced a string of inexpensive magazines for the same popular market, including Comic Cuts and Home Chat. A similar empire was built up by Arthur Pearson, another former Tit-Bits employee, with Pearson’s Weekly and Home Notes, among others.
In the United States, magazine publishing boomed as part of the general expansion after the Civil War. It was also helped by favourable postal rates for periodicals (1879). But a gulf remained between expensive magazines aimed at the genteel, such as Harper’s and Scribner’s (see below Literary and scientific magazines), and cheaper weeklies and miscellanies. The first person to produce a popular monthly to fill this gap and thus spark off a revolution in the industry was Samuel Sidney McClure, who began publishing McClure’s Magazine in 1893, which he sold for 15 cents an issue instead of the usual 25 or 35 cents. John Brisben Walker, who was building up Cosmopolitan (founded 1886) after acquiring it in 1889, cut his price to 12 1/2 cents, and in October 1893 Frank A. Munsey reduced the price of Munsey’s Magazine (1889–1929) to 10 cents. All three saw that, by keeping down the price and gearing contents to the interests and problems of the average reader, high circulations were attainable. Munsey estimated that, between 1893 and 1899, “the ten-cent magazine increased the magazine-buying public from 250,000 to 750,000 persons.” This increase in circulation in turn led to high advertising revenue, making it possible to sell a magazine, like a newspaper, for less than its cost of production, a practice that was to become common in the next century. Technical development was also important; mass-production methods and the use of photoengraving processes for illustration enabled attractive magazines to be produced at ever lower unit costs.
The first magazine published in Australia was the Australian Magazine, which began in 1821 and lasted for 13 monthly issues. The South Asian Register began as a quarterly in 1827 but only four issues appeared. The Hobart Town Magazine (1833–34) survived a bit longer and contained stories, poems, and essays by Australian writers. The Sydney Literary News (1837) was the first to contain serial fiction and advertisements. Illustrations were introduced in the 1840s; the Australian Gold Digger’s Monthly Magazine and Colonial Family Visitor (1852–53) was followed by the Melbourne Punch (1855–1925; incorporated in Table Talk, 1885–1937).
In India the first magazines were published by the British. The earliest to appear was the Oriental Magazine; or, Calcutta Amusement (1785–86); it was followed by a number of short-lived missionary publications. The first periodical founded and edited by an Indian was the Hindustan Review, which commenced in 1900.
Missionaries founded the first periodical in China; printed in Malacca, the Chinese Monthly Magazine lasted from 1815 to 1822. It was followed by the East-West Monthly Magazine, printed in Canton from 1833 to 1837 and in Singapore from 1837 until its end in 1847.
Illustrated magazines
The first man in Britain to notice the effect of illustrations on sales and grasp their possibilities was a newsagent in Nottingham, Herbert Ingram, who moved to London in 1842 and began publishing The Illustrated London News, a weekly consisting of 16 pages of letterpress and 32 woodcuts. It was successful from the start, winning the approval of the Archbishop of Canterbury and hence that of the clerical public. Though it suffered at first from the defect that its pictures were by well-known artists but were not taken from life, it later sent artists all over the world. Drawings made on the spot during the South African War, sometimes at considerable risk, were a great popular feature. Among its competitors was the monthly English Illustrated Magazine (1883–1913).
The idea of presenting the news largely in pictures was quickly taken up in France by L’Illustration (1843–1944) and in Germany by the Leipziger illustrierte Zeitung (1843) and Die Woche (1899–1940).
In the United States, the main early illustrated magazines were Leslie’s Weekly (1855–1922) and Harper’s Weekly (1857). Soon after its founding, Leslie’s had a circulation of 100,000, which doubled or trebled whenever there was something sensational to portray. During the Civil War, of which it gave a good pictorial record, it had as many as 12 correspondents at the front.
The invention of photography and the development of the halftone block began to transform this type of magazine from the 1890s, with the artist increasingly being displaced by the camera.
