The Graphic, 1882 and 1888
Two large volumes of the Graphic newspaper have been donated to us, comprising the first half-years for 1882 and 1888. The Graphic appeared weekly and cost sixpence. A large-size publication, it carried a digest of news relating to politics, foreign news, arts, religion, music, the court and hobbies. It also carried short stories.
Above all, though, it was a pictorial, filled on many pages with engravings used to reproduce imagery of events from all around the world. Now, the reproduction of photography was a thing of the future, and all images in the Graphic were black and white with the occasional coloured insert. But what spectacular images! One image was occasionally given over to an entire double-page spread, as in the picture here of the Oxford versus Cambridge boat race of 1888. Of course, as artistic interpretations, the imagery was often idealised, but we nevertheless get an excellent impression of fashions, technology and so on.
The Graphic was started in 1869 in competition with the Illustrated London News (of which we have a good run from 1846 when it started, up to the 1950s). The Graphic didn’t last beyond 1932.
Clearly a middle-class read – the cover price placed it very clearly in the luxury bracket – it served to educate and inform in a world before cinema newsreels and before imagery in newspapers. It conveyed scenes, then, from the empire and elsewhere, and of scenes at home which would have shocked and informed the genteel reader.
The adverts are surprisingly few. The last few pages of each issue are dedicated to ‘small ads’ and some larger adverts, for products such as cures for the balding. But all manner of products are advertised: corsets, binoculars, umbrellas and much more. All life is surely in here!
