Periodicals

I

Introduction

Periodicals, print publications released at regular intervals, more commonly called magazines. They may be referred to as journals, particularly those intended for academic or professional reading. Periodicals differ from the other main form of serial publication, newspapers. Most newspapers are issued daily or weekly on pulp paper and have relatively large, unbound pages; periodicals generally appear on finer paper, with smaller bound pages, and at intervals longer than a day (weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, or even annually). On the whole, periodicals feature material of interest to clearly defined audiences of people with a shared interest. The contents of many periodicals are not tied to current news stories although most do attempt to be topical. There exist, however, magazines that are entirely devoted to news and current affairs (The Economist, Time, Newsweek) or to commentary on these.

II

Development of Periodicals

Among the earliest periodicals were the German Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen (1663-1668, Edifying Monthly Discussions), the French Journal des Sçavans (1665; subsequently titled Journal des Savants), and the English Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1665). These were essentially collections of summaries (later essays) on developments in art, literature, philosophy, and science. By the closing years of the 17th century, periodical publishing was under way, with more general content becoming common. The Athenian Mercury (1691-1697) is one example. Daniel Defoe wrote and edited The Review between 1704 and 1713. It carried essays on political, social, and commercial issues as well as gossip. Other famous essay periodicals of the 18th century were also British publications: The Tatler (1709-1711) and The Spectator (1711-1712, 1714), creations of essayists Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison; and The Rambler (1750-1752), founded by Samuel Johnson; Johnson also wrote the majority of the essays in the series “The Idler”, which was published in the Universal Chronicle (1758-1760).

Periodicals in France and Germany in the later 18th century provided general information; as they developed, they concentrated on literature and the sciences. Among these was the long-lived German Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (1785-1849, General Literary News), devoted to commentary on new literary ideas.

The first periodical to use the word “magazine” was the English publication The Gentleman's Magazine (1731-1907). Devoted to a miscellany of reading entertainment, it contained reports of political debates, essays, stories, and poems and was widely influential, serving, for example, as the model for the first true American periodicals, General Magazine and Historical Chronicle and American Magazine. Both first appeared in Philadelphia, in January 1741, as rival publications; both proved unsuccessful, however. The former was founded by the American statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin and the latter by the American printer Andrew Bradford.

III

19th-Century Periodicals

Monthly or quarterly reviews, usually partisan in politics, and with articles contributed by eminent authors and politicians, were introduced in Great Britain early in the 19th century. Of these, two became outstanding. The Edinburgh Review (1802-1929), founded in support of the Whig party, was one of the most influential critical journals of its day, numbering among its contributors the British writers Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, and William Hazlitt. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (1817), a Tory publication, was early in its career noted for satirical commentaries on Scottish affairs and the serialization of Scottish fiction. One of the most important serious periodicals in the United States in the early 19th century was the North American Review (1815-1940). Editors during its long and illustrious career included such literary figures as James Russell Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton, and Henry Adams; one contributor of reviews was the novelist Henry James. Among the European equivalents of such periodicals were the French Revue des Deux Mondes (1829, Review of Two Worlds) and the German Literarisches Wochenblatt (1820-1898, Literary Weekly).

Popular weeklies and monthlies, some illustrated and selling for only a few pennies each, made their appearance in Britain in the second quarter of the 19th century; among them were The Mirror (1822-1849), a two-penny illustrated magazine, and The Cornhill Magazine (1860-1939). The Cornhill, first edited by the English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, was the first sixpenny monthly to publish fiction regularly in serial form; these serials included novels by the editor and such contemporaries as Elizabeth Gaskell and Anthony Trollope. A series of weekly magazines, selling for a penny, were also launched with considerable success. Charles Knight, a publisher for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, was the first to seek to exploit this wider market with the weekly Penny Magazine (1832-1846) and the Penny Cyclopaedia (1833-1858), but The Family Herald (1843), London Journal (1845), and the Lloyds Miscellany (1845) were the first magazines to achieve a true mass-market circulation—at its peak in 1850, The Family Herald was selling 175,000 copies. Their success helped develop a true magazine publishing industry in London—in 1846 there were 14 of the one-penny magazines, 3 half-penny titles, 12 social journals, and 37 book serials being published in the capital.

Only 16 periodicals were published in America before the American War of Independence. About 100 periodicals, most of them short-lived, were issued in the last quarter of the 18th century. By the mid-19th century, however, 600 periodicals of various types were being printed in the United States. Youth's Companion (1827-1929), and later St Nicholas (1873-1940), were among several children's magazines published. Religious journals appealing to the anti-slavery and temperance movements were numerous. In the United Kingdom religious magazines such as Good Words (1860-1883) and The Quiver (1860-1867) were the first sixpenny magazines, illustrated throughout. Another group was composed of serious monthly and quarterly literary reviews, such as Graham's Magazine (1826-1858) and The Southern Literary Messenger (1834-1864), both of which the writer and critic Edgar Allan Poe was connected to; and The Dial (1840-1844), the journal of the New England transcendentalists, edited by Margaret Fuller and subsequently by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Family magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post (1821-1969; revived as a quarterly in 1971) became hugely popular with the general public.

At the same time magazine production was spreading throughout the British Commonwealth. In Canada the quarterly Quebec Magazine (1791-1793) was published in both French and English, and was followed by other literary and political reviews, including the short-lived British American Register (1803) and The Canadian Magazine (1823-1825). South Africa published its first magazine, The South African Journal, in 1824 in Cape Town. The Cape of Good Hope Literary Gazette (1830-1833) and The Cape of Good Hope Literary Magazine (1847-1848) followed. The English produced magazines in India from the latter part of the 18th century. The Asiatic Miscellany (1785-1789), the Calcutta Monthly Register (1790), and the Calcutta Monthly Journal (1798-1845) were among the first of these. The first Indian-produced magazine was the Hindustan Review, which was launched in 1900.

The first modern illustrated magazines appeared during the middle and latter part of the 19th century. The more successful included the weekly Illustrated London News (1842), important for its coverage, over more than a century, of significant events. L'Illustration in France (1843-1944), Die Woche (1899-1940, The Week) in Germany, and Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (1855-1922) and Harper's Weekly (1857-1916) in the United States followed suit. These last two were especially notable for their pictures of the American Civil War, drawn by staff artists. The painter Winslow Homer, for example, contributed to Harper's Weekly from 1858 to 1876, and Thomas Nast, best known for his political caricatures, worked both for Harper's and for the Illustrated London News. By the end of the 19th century, however, photography and the development of half-tone illustration replaced artists' renderings.

Other important British periodicals of the second half of the 19th century include the Fortnightly Review (1865-1954; issued monthly after 1866) and the weekly humour magazine Punch (1841-1988; revived 1996-2002), one of the most famous of its kind. Its brand of witty comment, in cartoons and articles, on British life had counterparts in later publications in other nations. The genre includes the German Simplicissimus (1896-1944; 1956-1967), although its thrust was more decidedly satirical; among the artists who contributed to it was the German-American painter and illustrator George Grosz. The New Yorker (1925) provides urbane commentaries on modern life, with a unique mix of cartoons, objective reporting, and short fiction by trend-setting writers. During the 19th century, improvements in techniques of illustration and printing resulted in lower production costs and introduced a new era of mass circulation, especially in the United States. Federal laws were passed providing inexpensive postal rates. Increasingly, also, magazine publishers relied on revenue from the advertising their publications carried. The number, variety, and readership of attractively designed periodicals grew enormously. Harpers New Monthly Magazine (1850; later Harper's Magazine) led the revolution, with many woodcut illustrations and serialized fiction by popular English authors. Rival illustrated monthlies soon followed, among them, Scribner's Monthly (begun in 1870), afterwards issued as The Century (1881-1930), and Scribner's Magazine (1887-1939). Of the non-illustrated periodicals, the leading examples, both still being published, were the literary magazine The Atlantic (formerly Atlantic Monthly, 1857), edited by eminent writers and critics, including William Dean Howells; and the political magazine Nation (1865).

At the same time, a number of illustrated periodicals, inexpensively produced and priced, and of great popular appeal throughout the United States, was founded. They included Cosmopolitan (1886), McClure's Magazine (1893-1933), and Munsey's Magazine (1889-1929). McClure's and Munsey's, along with Collier's (1883-1957), were among the most influential of the “muckraking” periodicals, so named because of their manner of exposing government and business corruption in the decade 1902-1912.

In the United Kingdom the trend towards a mass audience started by the penny weeklies was transformed by the success of a magazine founded by George Newnes in 1881. Tit-Bits From All The Most Important Books, Periodicals and Contributors In The World (1881, shortened to Tit-Bits, and restyled as Titbits in 1968). Newnes built on the success of the magazine to develop a publishing empire that came to include Country Life (1897), Wide World Magazine (1898-1965), and The Strand Magazine (1891-1950), which was one of the first monthly magazines of light literature with plenty of illustrations, and which achieved great popularity by featuring the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

In fact three publishing empires were built up by the staff of Tit-Bits. Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe, the biggest newspaper proprietor in the United Kingdom, left Tit-Bits to launch the rival Answer To Correspondents (1888-1893), which was the first UK magazine to be marketed by competitions. Harmsworth went on to produce a number of magazines for the same popular market, including Comic Cuts and Home Chat (1895-1958). A third Tit-Bits employee, Arthur Pearson, launched Pearson's Weekly (1889-1927) and Home Notes (1894-1957) and started a publishing empire that today includes the Financial Times newspaper and The Economist magazine, which had been founded in 1843.

IV

Women's Magazines

From as early as 1693 publishers were producing occasional periodicals for women; The Ladies’ Mercury, for example, was an occasional sister publication to The Athenian Mercury, and The Female Tatler appeared in 1709. The first regular magazine to be aimed wholly at women is generally held to be The Lady's Magazine (1770-1832), which included literary contributions and fashion notes and gave away embroidery patterns and sheet music. This approach was refined in The Lady's Monthly Museum (1798-1832), which included a half-yearly “Cabinet of Fashion” illustrated by colour engravings, the first time this technique had been used in a women's magazine. Other magazines in a similar light-hearted style included La Belle Assemblée (1806-1832) and The Ladies' Pocket Magazine (1824-1840). Attempts at bringing more serious issues, like women's rights, to the attention of readers seldom lasted long. The Female's Friend (1846), among the most successful of these, lasted less than a year. In the United States at the same time Godey's Lady's Book (1830-1898), for example, with its hand-coloured fashion illustrations (now prized by collectors), was vastly influential in setting the style in clothing, manners, and taste.

The launch of The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine in 1852 by Mrs Beeton marked the first broadening of the market. Launched at two pence instead of the usual two shillings, it was the first women's periodical to concentrate on home management and offer practical advice to women rather than just provide entertainment for those who did not go out to work. In 1861 Beeton followed up the success of her first launch with that of the weekly The Queen (1861; amalgamated with Harper's Bazaar in 1970 to form Harper's and Queen; reverted to the title Harper’s Bazaar in 2006). The growth of the penny weeklies was mirrored in the women's market by the development of a new range of mass-market titles. Myra's Journal of Dress and Fashion (1875-1912) and Weldon's Ladies Journal (1875-1954) both supplied dressmaking patterns and met the needs of a mass readership, as did The Lady (1885) and The Gentlewoman (1890-1926). At this time, women's magazines also began to dominate American periodical publishing. Readers could choose from Ladies' Home Companion (1873-1957), McCall's Magazine (1876), Ladies Home Journal (1883), Good Housekeeping (1885), and Vogue (1892).

Growth in the first part of the 20th century was fuelled by both the production of UK editions of US magazines, starting with Vogue in 1916, and followed by Good Housekeeping in 1922 and Harper's Bazaar in 1929, and the launch of a string of home-grown titles, including Woman's Weekly (1911), Woman And Home (1926), Woman's Journal (1927), Woman's Own (1932), and Woman (1937), the first printed by colourgravure (see Printing Techniques, IV. Gravure).

A similar growth in the women's magazine market was happening concurrently in Japan, where Norma Seiji was developing a publishing empire, launching nine magazines, all of which had six-figure circulations. They included Shufu No Tomo (1917-1956, Woman's Friend) and Le-no-Hikari (1925, Light of Home). In India the most popular women's magazine, Eve's Weekly, was launched in 1947, in English, Urdu, and Hindi.

A range of titles targeting younger women began to appear around the world in the next decade. In the United Kingdom, the launch of She in 1955 prefigured a publishing explosion in the 1960s, when Honey (1960-1986), Nova (1965-1975, 2000-2001), Petticoat (1966-1979), and 19 (1968-2004) were among the titles launched.