Once a Week (magazine)

This article is about the British magazine. For the American magazine, see Collier's.

Once A Week
Pg.1, Vol.1, No.1
July 2, 1859

Once A Week was a British weekly illustrated literary magazine published by Bradbury & Evans from 1859 to 1880. ^[1] According to John Sutherland, "historically the magazine's main achievement was to provide an outlet for [an] innovative group of illustrators [in] the 1860s." ^[2]

History and profile

The magazine was founded because of a dispute between Bradbury and Evans and Charles Dickens. ^[2] Bradbury and Evans had been Dickens' publisher since 1844, including publishing his magazine Household Words . In 1859, Bradbury and Evans refused to carry an advertisement by Dickens explaining why he had broken with Mrs. Dickens. ^[2] In consequence, Dickens stopped work on Household Words and founded a new magazine, All The Year Round (first published 30 April 1859) which he decided would be editorially independent of any publisher. ^[2] Bradbury and Evans responded by founding Once A Week, with veteran editor and abolitionist hero Samuel Lucas at the head. ^[2]

The magazine differed from Household Words in that it was more expensive and it was illustrated. ^[2] Notable illustrators included John Leech, Hablot K. Browne, Frederick Sandys, Holman Hunt, John Tenniel and George du Maurier. ^{[2] [3]} Notable writers included Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, Harriet Martineau (who wrote here under the pseudonym "From the Mountain"), and Tom Taylor. ^[2] Many of the illustrators and writers also worked for Punch, another Bradbury and Evans literary magazine. ^[2] Helen Hoppner Coode, Punch's first woman cartoonist, also contributed illustrations to Once a Week, ^[4] this included drawings for the poem "Fairy May" written by C. W. Goodhart which was printed in the magazine in 1859. ^[5]

The magazine's central feature was serial fiction; among other works, it published Charles Reade's A Good Fight, George Meredith's Evan Harrington and Charles Felix's The Notting Hill Mystery , an early detective novel. ^{[2] [6]} Woman writers whose work was featured in the magazine included Isabella Blagden, and M.E. Braddon. ^{[2] [3]}

After Lucas died in 1865, his assistant Edward Walford succeeded him as editor. ^[7] However, the magazine went into decline. Although it had strong sales it was probably under-priced. ^[2] The magazine was purchased by James Rice, who owned it until 1873 when it was bought by George Manville Fenn; by then it was "a shadow of its former self". Publication ceased in 1880. ^[2]

References

1. Cooke, Simon (2010). Illustrated Periodicals of the 1860s. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press. p. 32. ISBN   978-1-58456-275-7. ..a number of outstanding publications, the most notable being the mighty triumvirate that de Maré describes as the 'Big Three': Once a Week, published by Bradbury and Evans; The Cornhill Magazine , the brainchild of George Smith of Smith Elder; and Alexander Strahan's sixpenny Good Words , a magazine set up in direct challenge to The Cornhill. These periodicals established the tone and form, and others quickly followed suit.
2. Sutherland, John (1989). "Once a Week". The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. pp. 479–480.
3. "Once a Week: Collection Introduction". Rossetti Archive.
4. Houfe, Simon (1996). The Dictionary of 19th Century British Book Illustrators. Woodbridge: The Antique Collectors’ Club. p. 97.
5. Hughes, Linda K. (2010). "Inventing Poetry and Pictorialism in Once a Week : A Magazine of Visual Effects". Victorian Poetry. 48 (1): 41–72. ISSN   0042-5206. JSTOR   40601047.
6. Symons, Julian (1972). Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel. London: Faber and Faber. p. 51. ISBN   978-0-571-09465-3. There is no doubt that the first detective novel, preceding Collins and Gaboriau, was The Notting Hill Mystery.
7. Buchanan, Craig (2023). "Excursions of Pleasure: The Travel Writing of the Sobieski Stuarts". Scottish Literary Review. 15 (2): 1–20.

External links

• Works by or about Once a Week at the Internet Archive