 The first issue of Tit-Bits, dated Oct. 22, 1881 | |
| Frequency | Weekly |
|---|---|
| Founder | George Newnes |
| Founded | 1881 |
| First issue | 22 October 1881 |
| Final issue | 18 July 1984 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Based in | London |
| Language | English |
Tit-Bits from all the interesting Books and Newspapers of the World, more commonly known as Tit-Bits, was a British weekly magazine founded by George Newnes, a founding figure in popular journalism, on 22 October 1881. [1]
In 1886, the magazine's headquarters moved from Manchester to London [2] where it paved the way for popular journalism – most significantly, the Daily Mail was founded by Alfred Harmsworth, a contributor to Tit-Bits, and the Daily Express was launched by Arthur Pearson, who worked at Tit-Bits for five years after winning a competition to get a job on the magazine. [3] Their first offices were at 12 Burleigh Street, off the Strand.
From the outset, the magazine was a mass-circulation commercial publication on cheap newsprint which soon reached sales of between 400,000 and 600,000. By the turn of the century, it became the first periodical in Britain to sell over one million copies per issue. [4] Like a mini-encyclopedia it presented a diverse range of tit-bits of information in an easy-to-read format, with the emphasis on human interest stories concentrating on drama and sensation. [5] It also featured short stories and full-length fiction, including works by authors such as Rider Haggard and Isaac Asimov, plus three very early stories by Christopher Priest.
Virginia Woolf submitted her first article to the paper in 1890, at the age of eight, but it was turned down. [6] The first humorous article by P. G. Wodehouse, "Men Who Missed Their Own Weddings", appeared in Tit-Bits in November 1900. [7] During the First World War Ivor Novello won a Titbits competition to write a song soldiers could sing at the front: he penned Keep the Home Fires Burning . [8]
Pin-ups appeared on the magazine's covers from 1939, and by 1955, circulation peaked at 1,150,000. At the beginning of 1973, Tit-Bits lost the hyphen from its masthead. In 1979 Reveille (a weekly tabloid with a virtually identical demographic) was merged into Titbits, and the magazine was briefly rebranded as Titbits incorporating Reveille. This, however, was dropped in July 1981. Following a wage dispute at owner IPC Magazines, publication ceased on 9 June 1984 and its closure was announced at the end of June. At the time, Titbits was selling only 200,000 copies per issue. [4] A final issue was published on 18 July 1984 [8] under its last editor Paul Hopkins. It was taken over by Associated Newspapers' Weekend. At the time, the Financial Times described Titbits as "the 103-year-old progenitor of Britain's popular press". [8] Weekend itself closed in 1989.
The success of Tit-Bits inspired a number of other inexpensive weeklies aping its format, some short-lived and others, such as Answers becoming major successes in their own right. Within the first six months of its existence, Tit-Bits had inspired twelve imitators, growing to 26 within a year of its debut. [9] Examples of papers said to be imitators include:
In All Things Considered by G. K. Chesterton, the author contrasts Tit-Bits with the Times, saying: "Let any honest reader... ask himself whether he would really rather be asked in the next two hours to write the front page of The Times, which is full of long leading articles, or the front page of Tit-Bits, which is full of short jokes." Reference to the magazine is also made in James Joyce's Ulysses , [11] George Orwell's Animal Farm , C. P. Snow's The Affair , [12] James Hilton's Lost Horizon , Virginia Woolf's Moments of Being , H. G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon and Kipps , A. J. Cronin's The Stars Look Down and P. G. Wodehouse's Not George Washington . It has been also mentioned in Stanley Houghton's play The Dear Departed . Wells also mentioned it in his book Experiment in Autobiography. The magazine is parodied as "Chit Chat" in George Gissing's New Grub Street . In the closing scene of the film Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), the protagonist Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) is approached by a journalist (Arthur Lowe) from Tit-Bits.
The magazine name survived as a glossy adult monthly, Titbits International.
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Charles Kay Ogden was an English linguist, philosopher, and writer. Described as a polymath but also an eccentric and outsider, he took part in many ventures related to literature, politics, the arts, and philosophy, having a broad effect particularly as an editor, translator, and activist on behalf of a reformed version of the English language. He is typically defined as a linguistic psychologist, and is now mostly remembered as the inventor and propagator of Basic English.
The Strand Magazine was a monthly British magazine founded by George Newnes, composed of short fiction and general interest articles. It was published in the United Kingdom from January 1891 to March 1950, running to 711 issues, though the first issue was on sale well before Christmas 1890. Its immediate popularity is evidenced by an initial sale of nearly 300,000. Sales increased in the early months, before settling down to a circulation of almost 500,000 copies a month, which lasted well into the 1930s.
Sir George Newnes, 1st Baronet was a British publisher and editor and a founding figure in popular journalism. Newnes also served as a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for two decades. His company, George Newnes Ltd, was known for such periodicals as Tit-Bits and The Strand Magazine; it continued publishing ground-breaking consumer magazines such as Nova long after his death.
My Man Jeeves is a collection of short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom in May 1919 by George Newnes. Of the eight stories in the collection, half feature the popular characters Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, while the others concern Reggie Pepper, an early prototype for Bertie Wooster.
Sir Cyril Arthur Pearson, 1st Baronet,, was a British newspaper magnate and publisher, best known for founding the Daily Express.
The Elementary Education Act 1870, commonly known as Forster's Education Act, set the framework for schooling of all children between the ages of 5 and 12 in England and Wales. It established local education authorities with defined powers, authorized public money to improve existing schools, and tried to frame conditions attached to this aid so as to earn the goodwill of managers. It has long been seen as a milestone in educational development, but recent commentators have stressed that it brought neither free nor compulsory education, and its importance has thus tended to be diminished rather than increased.
The Captain was a magazine featuring stories and articles for "boys and old boys", published monthly in the United Kingdom from 1899 to 1924. Its headquarters were in London. It is perhaps best known for printing many of P. G. Wodehouse's early school stories.
Reveille was a popular British weekly tabloid newspaper founded by Reg Hipwell during the Second World War and the post-war years.
Fun was a Victorian weekly humorous magazine, first published on 21 September 1861 in competition with Punch.
Ronald Turner was a British illustrator and comic book artist.
Events from the year 1881 in the United Kingdom.
The Sporting Times was a weekly British newspaper devoted chiefly to sport, and in particular to horse racing. It was informally known as The Pink 'Un, as it was printed on salmon-coloured paper.
Cassell's Magazine is a British magazine that was published monthly from 1897 to 1912. It was the successor to Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper, (1853–1867) becoming Cassell's Family Magazine in 1874, Cassell's Magazine in 1897, and, after 1912, Cassell's Magazine of Fiction.
The Grand Magazine was the first British pulp magazine. It was published monthly between February 1905 and April 1940. Published by George Newnes Ltd, it initially emulated Newnes's highly successful Strand Magazine, featuring a mix of fiction and non-fiction. In 1908, it was renamed The Grand Magazine of Fiction.
Pearson's Weekly was a British weekly periodical founded in London in 1890 by Arthur Pearson, who had previously worked on Tit-Bits for George Newnes.
George Newnes Ltd is a British publisher. The company was founded in 1891 by George Newnes (1851–1910), considered a founding father of popular journalism. Newnes published such magazines and periodicals as Tit-Bits, The Wide World Magazine, The Captain, The Strand Magazine, The Grand Magazine, John O'London's Weekly, Sunny Stories for Little Folk, Woman's Own, and the "Practical" line of magazines overseen by editor Frederick J. Camm. Long after the founder's death, Newnes was known for publishing ground-breaking consumer magazines such as Nova.
Lorraine Janzen Kooistra is a Canadian professor of English and a member of the Yeates School of Graduate Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is the founding co-director of TMU's Centre for Digital Humanities. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2018.
Robert Stanley Warren Bell, was an English novelist, journalist and the first editor of The Captain, a magazine featuring stories for 'boys and old boys', of which P. G. Wodehouse was an early contributor.
Answers was a British weekly paper founded in 1888 by Lord Northcliffe. Originally titled Answers to Correspondents, before being shortened soon after, it initially consisted largely of answers to reader-submitted questions, along with articles on miscellaneous topics, jokes, and serialized literature. Its content was similar to and inspired by Tit-Bits, a popular British weekly founded in 1881 which appealed to a wide audience of newly literate Britons.
