Frequency | Weekly |
---|---|
Publisher | Religious Tract Society |
First issue | January 1, 1852 |
Country | United Kingdom |
Based in | London |
Language | English |
OCLC | 362165421 |
The Leisure Hour was a British general-interest periodical of the Victorian era published weekly from 1852 to 1905. [1] [2] It was the most successful of several popular magazines published by the Religious Tract Society, which produced Christian literature for a wide audience. [1] Each issue mixed multiple genres of fiction and factual stories, historical and topical. [1]
The magazine's title referred to campaigns that had decreased work hours, giving workers extra leisure time. [3] Until 1876, it carried the subtitle A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation; [4] after that, the subtitle changed to An illustrated magazine for home reading. [5]
Each issue cost one penny and contained 16 pages. [6] The layout typically included approximately six long articles, formatted in two columns per page, and five or six illustrations. The articles were a mix of biographies, poetry, essays, and fiction. Each issue usually started with a piece of serialised fiction. [6]
The creation of the magazine was partly a response to non-religious popular magazines that the Religious Tract Society saw as delivering a "pernicious" morality to the working classes. [1] The ethos of the magazine was guided by Sabbatarianism: the campaign to keep Sunday as a day of rest. [4] It aimed to treat its diverse subjects "in the light of Christian truth". [4] Despite this, The Leisure Hour carried far fewer statements of Christian doctrine than the Society's other publications, [6] and had a greater emphasis on fiction than popular magazines of the time. [7]
Two days before the magazine's launch in 1852, a warehouse fire destroyed the first batch of The Leisure Hour, so replacement copies had to be printed. [3]
The magazine was edited by William Haig Miller until 1858, [5] James Macaulay from 1858 to 1895, [8] and William Stevens from 1895 to 1900. [5] Harold Copping was one of its illustrators. [9] Authors were initially only credited by initials rather than by name, giving the writing a collective rather than individual authority, though naming of authors became more common from the 1870s. [1] In its jubilee issue, published in 1902, the magazine identified 111 authors who had contributed. [1]
James Payn was an English novelist and editor. Among the periodicals he edited were Chambers's Journal in Edinburgh and the Cornhill Magazine in London.
Penny dreadfuls were cheap popular serial literature produced during the 19th century in the United Kingdom. The pejorative term is roughly interchangeable with penny horrible, penny awful, and penny blood. The term typically referred to a story published in weekly parts of 8 to 16 pages, each costing one penny. The subject matter of these stories was typically sensational, focusing on the exploits of detectives, criminals, or supernatural entities. First published in the 1830s, penny dreadfuls featured characters such as Sweeney Todd, Dick Turpin, Varney the Vampire, and Spring-heeled Jack.
Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant was a Scottish novelist and historical writer, who usually wrote as Mrs. Oliphant. Her fictional works cover "domestic realism, the historical novel and tales of the supernatural".
The Religious Tract Society was a British evangelical Christian organization founded in 1799 and known for publishing a variety of popular religious and quasi-religious texts in the 19th century. The society engaged in charity as well as commercial enterprise, publishing books and periodicals for profit.
The Cornhill Magazine (1860–1975) was a monthly Victorian magazine and literary journal named after the street address of the founding publisher Smith, Elder & Co. at 65 Cornhill in London. In the 1860s, under the editorship of William Makepeace Thackeray, the paper's large circulation peaked around 110,000. Due to emerging competitors, circulation fell to 20,000 by 1870. The following year, Leslie Stephen took over as editor. When Stephen left in 1882, circulation had further fallen to 12,000. The Cornhill was purchased by John Murray in 1912, and continued to publish issues until 1975.
The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean is an 1857 novel written by Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne. One of the first works of juvenile fiction to feature exclusively juvenile heroes, the story relates the adventures of three boys marooned on a South Pacific island, the only survivors of a shipwreck.
George William MacArthur Reynolds was a British fiction writer and journalist.
Frances Browne was an Irish poet and novelist, best remembered for her collection of short stories for children, Granny's Wonderful Chair.
Gordon Frederick Browne was an English artist and a prolific illustrator of children's books in the late 19th century and early 20th century. He was a meticulous craftsman and went to a great deal of effort to ensure that his illustrations were accurate. He illustrated six or seven books a year in addition to a huge volume of magazine illustration.
In literature, a serial is a printing or publishing format by which a single larger work, often a work of narrative fiction, is published in smaller, sequential instalments. The instalments are also known as numbers, parts, fascicules or fascicles, and may be released either as separate publications or within sequential issues of a periodical publication, such as a magazine or newspaper.
Christian Isobel Johnstone (1781–1857) was a prolific journalist and author in Scotland in the nineteenth century. She was a significant early feminist and an advocate of other liberal causes in her era. She wrote anonymously, and under the pseudonym Margaret Dods. She is highlighted as one of the first paid female editors of a journal.
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal was a weekly 16-page magazine started by William Chambers in 1832. The first edition was dated 4 February 1832, and priced at one penny. Topics included history, religion, language, and science. William was soon joined as joint editor by his brother Robert, who wrote many of the articles for the early issues, and within a few years the journal had a circulation of 84,000. From 1847 to 1849, it was edited by William Henry Wills. In 1854 the title was changed to Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, and changed again to Chambers's Journal at the end of 1897.
Harold Copping was a British artist best known as an illustrator of biblical scenes. His 1910 book The Copping Bible illustrated by himself became a best-seller.
Joseph Sortain (1809–1860) was a British nonconformist minister, an evangelical Independent, philosophy tutor at Cheshunt College, and biographer of Francis Bacon. A reputed preacher of his time, he was called "the Dickens of the pulpit" by John Ross Dix.
James Macaulay was a Scottish medical man, journalist and author, best known as an anti-vivisectionist and periodical editor.
Richard St John Tyrwhitt (1827–1895) was an English cleric and academic, known as a writer on art.
John Archibald Webb (1866–1947) was a British painter and illustrator who illustrated over 150 books.
William Rainey was a British artist and illustrator. He was a prolific illustrator of both books and magazines and illustrated about 200 books during his career. He also kept painting and exhibited his work frequently. Rainey also wrote and illustrated six books himself, one was a colourful book for young children, the other five were juvenile fiction.
Sunday reading was a genre of periodical popular in Victorian Britain which offered light Christian reading thought to be suitable for families to read at home on Sundays. Typical examples such as Sunday at Home, The Quiver, and Leisure Hour featured a mixture of fiction, non-fiction, and verse, all dealing in some way with Christian themes.
Sunday at Home was a weekly magazine published in London by the Religious Tract Society beginning in 1854. It was one of the most successful examples of the "Sunday reading" genre of periodicals: inexpensive magazines intended to provide wholesome religious entertainment for families to read on Sundays, especially as a substitute for "pernicious" secular penny weeklies such as The London Journal or The Family Herald.