The 1830s saw the appearance of a new genre of magazine, later to be labelled “The Penny Dreadful.” These magazines were printed on cheap paper, consisted of about eight to sixteen pages, and contained fictional stories usually full of blood and gore. These stories were serialised to encourage the continued purchase of the magazine with a new story starting before the end of the previous one.  The target audience for these magazines were young working men.

Many factors contributed to the rise of these magazines. Firstly, industrialisation led to more income and free time that could be given over to reading. Secondly, there was an increase in literacy among the population and finally, with the rise of the railways, a reliable distribution network was in place to deliver the magazines throughout the country.

The response.

Religious societies of the day often felt that there needed to be a balance to the penny dreadful and as such many titles appeared on the market in the 1850s. Examples of these are The Quiver from 1861, Sunday at Home from 1854, and The Leisure Hour from 1852. These magazines usually contained educational articles, pieces on religion plus serialised fictional stories (of a more moral nature). They were priced at one penny in direct competition with the penny dreadful and were also similar in both size and number of pages.

The Stories.

Stories usually featured middle-class families in nostalgic, romantic settings or adventure stories of intrepid fortitude and daring. Two typical examples of this are taken from ‘The Leisure Hour’ 1860. Firstly there is the romantic family story ‘THE FERROL FAMILY’, and secondly the adventure tale ‘THE CAPTAIN’S TALE’. These magazines featured fabulous engravings throughout and so each story always featured engravings, always one on the first page. Each engraving helps tell the story, illustrate the characters within and draw the attention of any potential buyer.

The Ferrol Family from The Leisure Hour 1860:

The Captain’s Story from The Leisure Hour 1860:

Educational content.

Glancing through our bound volume of Leisure Hour for 1860 I can see articles on the following educational subjects:

·       Biographies of famous people.

·       Female employment – discussed over a series of issues.

·       Life insurance, a treatise on why it is needed.

·       Places – featuring information about a place and its history. Gibraltar and India are popular.

·       Art and poetry.

Religion.

Rather than preaching to the audience the religious messages in ‘The Leisure Hour’ tend to be contained within the stories and articles and are very subtle. What most impressed me about this magazine, was their forward-thinking attitude in the magazine articles. This was illustrated in the series of articles on females working where it was felt important that women were able to gain paid employment and a piece that deplored the way that the Australian Aborigines’ were being treated by the British.

I found an amazing article describing how bad tobacco was both from a health perspective and its impact on the environment in enclosed rooms.

This periodical collection has been a joy to catalogue, even though I was waylaid several times by the fascinating content and high-quality illustrations.

Have you read any of these publications? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Richard Roberts