was sold by the heirs of Mr Beresford Hope to Mr Lewis Edmunds,
from whose hands it soon passed to Mr Frank Harris. In 1899 the
paper was sold to Lord Hardwicke and came under the editorship of
Mr Harold Hodge, who remained in this position when, after Lord
Hardwicke’s death in 1905, it passed into the hands of Mr Gervase
Becket.
The Saturday Review and Spectator, as the exponents of brilliant Toryism and serious Liberalism, had the field practically to themselves for some years; but when in 1886 the Spectator followed the Liberal Unionists in opposing Home Rule for Ireland, and ceased to support Mr Gladstone, the result was the addition to London journalism of the Radical Speaker (1898); and in 1898 the threepenny Outlook (altered in price in 1905 to sixpence) was started, to present more particularly the growing interests of the Colonies and the Empire, a side further developed in 1905 and 1906 under the editorship of Mr J. L. Garvin (b. 1868) in its advocacy of Mr Chamberlain’s policy of a preferential tariff, when the Spectator became aggressively Free Trade. In December 1906 the Outlook was sold by its proprietor, Mr C. S. Goldman, to Lord Iveagh, and Mr Garvin resigned the editorship. In 1907 the Speaker was incorporated with the Nation, a new Radical weekly, edited by H. W. Massingham. Several ambitious new weeklies meanwhile started, and some passed away before the end of the century, such as the Realm, the British Review and the Review of the Week. The most brilliant of all these, which also lasted the longest, was the Scots (soon renamed the National) Observer (1888–1897), edited at first by W. E. Henley (q.v.), and subsequently by J. E. Vincent (d. 1909). Mr Henley, assisted by Mr Charles Whibley, collected a band of clever young writers, who formed almost a “school” of literary journalism, and many of whom won their spurs in literature by their contributions to this paper. The Pilot (1900) under Mr D. C. Lathbury was another brilliant attempt, but it failed to pay its way and hardly lasted for three years.
Among purely literary weeklies the Athenaeum found a rival in the Academy, founded in October 1869 by Dr Appleton and edited by him. Later, under the editorship of J. S. Cotton, it was famous for its signed reviews and scholarly character; but the small circle to whom pure literature appealed made financial success difficult. In 1896 the Academy was bought by Mr Morgan Richards, and for some years was edited by Mr Lewis Hind, amalgamating Literature (a weekly which had been started by The Times) in 1901; and subsequently under changed proprietors it was successively edited by Mr Teignmouth Shore and Mr Anderson Graham. In April 1907 it was bought from Sir G. Newnes by Sir Edward Tennant, and subsequently passed under the control of Lord Alfred Douglas, who in 1910 parted with it to a new proprietary.
The publication of Sunday editions of the daily papers has not found the same favour in England as in the United States. In 1899 a Sunday Daily Mail and a Sunday Daily Telegraph appeared simultaneously; but public opinion was so violent against seven-day journalism that both were withdrawn. The oldest of the Sunday papers, the Observer (1791), Sunday papers. was conducted by one editor, Mr Doxat, for more than fifty years. It was one of the first papers to contain illustrations. In later years Mr Edward Dicey was a notable editor. In 1905 the Observer passed into the hands of Lord Northcliffe, his first editor being Mr Austin Harrison, a son of Frederic Harrison. In 1907 Mr J. L. Garvin became editor, and under him the old influence of the Observer revived.
Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper started as an unstamped illustrated journal at a penny in September 1842. In 1843 it was enlarged in size, and the price raised to threepence. Curious ingenuity was shown in advertising it by all sorts of expedients. Amongst others, all the pennies its proprietor could lay his hands on were embossed, by a cleverly constructed machine, with the title and price of the new journal. The Times drew attention to this defacement of the coin of the realm, and so gave it a better advertisement still. From a weekly sale of 33,000 in 1848 it rose to 170,000 in 1861. In anticipation of the abolition of the paper duty, the price was then reduced to a penny, and its circulation continued to increase. In later years it had an able editor in Mr T. Catling. Reynolds’s Weekly Newspaper, an extreme Radical paper with a large circulation, dates from May 1850. Other Sunday papers came later into existence—the People (1881), the Sunday (afterwards Weekly) Sun (1891), the Sunday Special (1897)—with which in 1904 was amalgamated the Sunday Times (1822). The Referee (1877), a paper with a strong sporting and theatrical interest, is famous for the humorous contributions by “Dagonet” (G. R. Sims) and the pungency of its miscellaneous articles.
Of the London illustrated weekly papers the oldest, the Illustrated London News, was founded in 1842; the Graphic in 1869; while the Pictorial World, which lasted for some years, began in 1874. In 1891 Black and White was started; and in 1892 the Sketch, edited by Mr Clement Shorter (also then editor of the Illustrated London News), introduced a lighter vein. Illustrated weekly papers. Mr Shorter gave up the editorship of these two weeklies in 1901, and became editor of a new illustrated weekly, the Sphere, with the proprietorship of which came also to be associated the Tatler. Another new illustrated weekly of a high class, Country Life Illustrated, began in 1897.
The “Society” weeklies, Truth (1877), Vanity Fair (1868)—with a separate cartoon as a special feature, famous for the artistic work of Pellegrini, Leslie Ward and others—and the World (1874), brought a new “note” into regular journalism, Mr Edmund Yates’s success with the World largely contributing to the increase of the personal style which he did so much to introduce; and Truth made its proprietor, the politician Mr Henry Labouchere, one of the most prominent men of the day, not so much for its aggressive Radicalism as for its vigorous exposures of all sorts of public charlatanry.
Among other weeklies, important ones are such ecclesiastical papers as the Guardian (1846), the Record (1828), the Church Times (1863), the Tablet (1840), Christian World (1857), Methodist Times (1885); the medical papers, the Lancet (1823) and British Medical Journal; the financial papers, the Economist (1843) and Statist (1878); and the great sporting and country-house paper, the Field (1853).
Among humorous papers Punch (1840) stands first (see Caricature,) of which (1895) Mr M. H. Spielmann published a History; Fun (1860–1901), Mr Harry Furniss’s Lika Joko (1894, only for a few months), Judy (1867), Moonshine (1879) and Pick-me-up (1888), have also catered for popular papers gaiety.Humorous papers.
The introduction of women into English journalism in any large degree was one of the new departures of the last quarter of the 19th century. It was indeed no new thing for women to write for the Press. Harriet Martineau was, in her day, one of the principal members of the Daily News staff, and Miss Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1905) the advocate of anti-vivisectionism, Women journalists. was an active journalist. Miss Flora Shaw (Lady Lugard), as writer of colonial topics for The Times, or Mrs Crawford, as Paris correspondent of the Daily News, are other notable instances of the prominence of women’s work in the same spheres with the ablest men. But such cases as these were exceptional, in which something in the nature of a personal mission and a peculiar aptitude gave the impulse. Journalism as a profession for women came, however, to be widely resorted to, partly through its obvious recommendation in a day when women’s education required an alternative outlet, for those who had to earn their living, to that of the teaching profession; partly, and pari passu, through the immense increase in women readers and the immensely increased publicity given in newspapers to matters of primarily feminine interest. In 1880 the only “ladies’ paper” of any importance was the Queen, a weekly which dates from 1861. But subsequently a considerable number of new weeklies entered the field: notably the Lady’s Pictorial (1880); the Lady (1885); Woman (1889); the Gentlewoman (1890), which owed its success to the vigorous management of Mr J. S. Wood; Madame (1895); and the Ladies’ Field (1898). New monthlies also appeared, in the Englishwoman, the Ladies’ Realm and the Woman at Home. The sphere of action of the lady journalist was soon by no means confined to the “ladies’ papers,” or to the writing of columns on dress or cookery for such general journals as found it useful to cultivate feminine readers; women invaded every other field of journalism, especially the large new field of “interviewing” and fashionable gossip. The increase in women-writers generally, novelists, dramatists, poets, reacted on their connexion with journalism; the increased “respectability” of journalism made it easier for them to work side by side with men; and gradually nobody thought the introduction of women into this sphere anything out of the common; a lady journalist, in fact, was much less remarkable than a lady doctor.
British Provincial Press.
England and Wales.—Though the real development of English provincial journalism, as a power co-ordinate with that of London, only dates from the abolition of the stamp duty in 1855, many country newspapers before that time had been marked by literary ability and originality of character. The history of the provincial press of England begins in 1690 with the weekly Worcester Postman (now Berrow’s Worcester Journal). The Stamford Mercury (1695; earliest known 1712; long known as Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury); Norwich Postman[1] (1706); Nottingham Courant (1710), afterwards renamed Journal; Newcastle Courant (1711); Liverpool Courant (1712; short lived); Hereford Journal (1713); Salisbury Postman (1715); Bristol Felix Farley’s Journal (1715; merged into the Bristol Times in 1735[2]); the Canterbury Kentish Post (1717; afterwards Kentish Gazette); Leeds Mercury (1717); Exeter Mercury, Protestant Mercury, and Postmaster or Loyal Mercury (all 1718[3]);
York Mercury (1718), and Manchester Weekly Journal (1719), came- ↑ The Norwich Postman, a small quarto of meagre contents, was published at a penny, but its proprietor notified that “a halfpenny is not refused”! Within a few years Norwich also had its Courant (1712) and Weekly Mercury or Protestant’s Packet (1720).
- ↑ Amalgamated with the Bristol Mirror (1773) in 1865 to form the Daily Bristol Times and Mirror.
- ↑ Exeter was then fiercely political. These three newspapers commented so freely on proceedings in parliament that their editors were summoned to appear at bar (Journal of the House of Commons, xix. 30, 43, 1718). The incident is curious as showing that each represented a rival MS. news-letter writer in London.
