Largest magazine collection..?
The record for the largest magazine collection in the world – according to the Guinness Book of Records – is 50,953 (see https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-collection-of-magazines). That’s really impressive, but the Richard Roberts Archive (RRA) can beat that hands down. Our magazine collection (as of 1 March 2025) extends to 142,155 – and is being added to all the time!
As an advertising archive we collect magazines because of their wonderful advertising content. The collection covers many genres, and while most of our magazines are post-Second World War, our oldest is the Illustrated London News from 1846, seen here in the photo.
But at the RRA we don’t just collect magazines.
We’ve also created a collection of adverts, clipped from brochures, flyers – and yes, from our spare magazines. We’re very proud of this collection, which currently stands at 23,329. Since there is no such record in the Guinness Book of Records, we think our collection is unique and we can claim this record too! The collection is growing all the time, due in no small part to the wonderful work our volunteers do in sorting and filing the adverts for us. We’re always looking for more volunteers to do this kind of work, so please do get in touch if you’re interested. There will always be plenty of work: we reckon we have about a million unfiled adverts awaiting our attention.
Better still, the RRA is a registered charity whose mission is to make these collections freely available for researchers and members of the public to consult. We work with the local community, with a core of a dozen or so regular volunteers. And, based in Stockport, we have research visits from local students such as from Manchester Metropolitan University and Stockport College. However, our collections are open to everyone, and we are proud to have had visitors from the Netherlands, and even as far away as Australia.
We are very happy to receive donations of magazines. For more details, including how to contact us, go to richardrobertsarchive.org.uk.
