Imperial Views, Colonial Subjects:

Victorian Periodicals and the Empire

Images from an Exhibition

Sterling Memorial Library

Yale University

August - October 1999

   

Introduction

    In the half-century of expansion before Queen Victoria acceded to the throne, Britain's overseas territorial possessions had evolved into a global empire. Dependant colonies stretched from North America and the Caribbean to India and Australia. These possessions were sustained and supported by commercial, industrial, and maritime might that surpassed that of other powers. In the nineteenth century Britain developed its "informal empire" -an immense influence far exceeding that represented by territorial dominion. During Victoria's long reign the dependencies and influence accumulated at a rapid pace, and by her death, the British Empire was the greatest the world had ever seen and the envy of other nations. Many Britons felt themselves to be part of a global commonwealth united by British cultural, moral, political, and commercial values.

     Justly described as the age of the periodical press, the nineteenth century saw an extraordinary proliferation of all kinds of periodicals. Scholars now suggest that nineteenth-century periodicals had a larger readership than did nineteenth-century books, and a correspondingly greater influence. An increasingly literate public, a growing middle class, emerging professionalism and specialization in the trades and disciplines, and technological advances in printing and methods of illustration--these developments all contributed to the explosion of British periodical publishing in the 1800s. The magisterial reviews of the early years of the century were joined and then surpassed by monthly and weekly journals published for all manner of reasons: reform, instruction, amusement, enlightenment, advertisement, enrichment. The reading public seemed insatiable: every stratum and sub-stratum of society, every political stripe, and every philosophical bent were represented and served by at least several periodicals. There were magazines for liberals, conservatives, reformers, reactionaries; women, men, girls, boys, families; army officers, naval officers; artists, authors, doctors; the fashion-conscious, the avant-garde, the antiquarian; the upper, the middle, the lower classes; the religious, the scientific, the zealous.

     Britain's overseas empire was of course reflected in contemporary periodicals, if not directly in news reports and commentary, then indirectly in fiction and humor, assumptions and inferences. The pages displayed here are disparate in their dates, audiences, points of view, and concerns. In some the news of the day is paramount, in others debates about the colonies and their governance are addressed head-on, in still others the references to the Empire and her colonies are treated comically or embedded in the background. These volumes from the Yale Library's collections are but a tiny fraction of a large and complex whole, chosen to suggest the chronological range, geographical scope, and topical variety of the periodical press's treatment of the British Empire during the reign of Queen Victoria.

Margaret K. Powell

Susanne F. Roberts

Table of Contents

The Illuminated Magazine

Household Words

Punch, or the London Charivari

The Athenaeum

The Spectator

The Leisure Hour

The Illustrated London News

The Graphic

Bow Bells

The Boy's Journal

The Boy's Own Paper

Beeton's Boys Own Magazine

Boys of the British Empire

Chums

The Illuminated Magazine (1843-1845)

     Edited by Douglas Jerrold, The Illuminated Magazine included among its writers and illustrators Wilkie Collins, Mark Lemon, John Leech, Kenny Meadows, Hablot K. Browne [Phiz], John Gilbert, and H.G. Wells, many of whom also edited or contributed to Punch. The magazine was published monthly from May 1843 through 1845, and was taken over in its last months by W. J. Lintot.

 

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The Illuminated Magazine (1843-1845)

"The March of Civilisation, or News from Australia!" The Illuminated Magazine (vol. II) January 1844

     This essay celebrates the civilizing of Australia, the development of art, commerce, literature, and a legislature; it asks, "may not an Englishman point to it with pride and exultation as a proof of what English energy has accomplished, and what English industry can do?" The writer concludes by suggesting: "Australia may be considered as that part of the British Empire which the prophetic eye regards as the future seat of English power. . . [T]he sun of English power may set in its present northern sphere, to rise again in the East, in another region, not less English because a mighty ocean divides it from the maternal soil."

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Household Words (1850-1859)

     Although he had been involved in other magazine projects (perhaps most notably Bentley's Miscellany), Household Words was the first of Charles Dickens's own popular weeklies. Its stated purposes were to "help in the discussion of the most important social questions of the time" and to "cherish that light of Fancy which is inherent in the human breast." Dickens intended his magazine to espouse an "uncompromising humanitarian radicalism." Household Words was not illustrated; rather it offered every week six or seven solid pieces: travelogues, novels, scientific explanations, poetry, essays. Dickens serialized Hard Times and A Child's History of England in its pages, and covered subjects such as education, public sanitation, law enforcement, unsafe factories, and emigration. Although Dickens recruited many noted writers (e.g., Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry Morley, John Forster, William Henry Wills, Harriet Martineau, and Charles Knight), their contributions generally appeared anonymously, making for a consistent voice, reformist and sympathetic in tone. By all accounts, Dickens as an editor was a stickler for accuracy. In 1859, after a disagreement with the magazine's publishers, Dickens retired Household Words and began to produce All the Year Round.

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Household Words (1850-1859)

"'Cape' Sketches," Household Words: A Weekly Journal (no. 33) November 9, 1850.

     Written by a South African farmer, this essay dispenses information about the natural conditions and economics of farming in the Cape colony. It includes hints to the prospective settler, such as: "There is one comfort wherewith every intending emigrant should provide himself. He may be sure that he will take nothing else with him so valuable to him in every sense. . . . [H]e will find this the most valuable of all his possessions-a Wife!"

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Punch, or the London Charivari

     Over the course of its long life Punch became, as one commentator has remarked, "a National Institution." In its first issue it declared itself to be the voice of the oppressed as well as "a form of refuge for destitute wit" and "the asylum for thousands of orphan jokes . . . [and] perishing puns." The targets of its satire included royalty, venal politicians, the peerage, the episcopate, and pretension and privilege wherever it found them. Among those writing for Punch were William Makepeace Thackeray, Douglas Jerrold, Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, A.A Milne, W.S. Gilbert, and Horace Mayhew. Artists and cartoonists included William Newman, John Leech, Richard Doyle, Hablot K. Browne [Phiz], John Tenniel, Charles Keene, George du Maurier, and Linley Sambourne.

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Punch, or the London Charivari (1841-1992)

"Hibernian Swell and Ensign," Punch, or the London Charivari (vol. 46) March 12, 1864.

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Punch, or the London Charivari (1841-1992)

John Leech. "Servantgalism in Australia-A Fact," Punch, or the London Charivari (vol. 46) May 14,1864.

     In the December 9, 1871, issue of Punch the comment, "The word Colonies does not usually suggest fun," appears at the head of a column proving quite the opposite. In this cartoon, John Leech, Punch's principal artist from 1841 to his sudden death in 1864, pokes typical fun at the airs and manners of servant girls, his joke in this case made more pointed at the expense of Australian colonials.

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Punch, or the London Charivari (1841-1992)

"Transvaalidity (A Word in Season)," Punch, or the London Charivari (vol. 80) January 29,1881.

     In 1877 Britain annexed the Transvaal, an independent republic in southern Africa settled by Afrikaners, or Boers, a mixed group of Europeans from the Netherlands, mostly of Dutch or German background. The Boers rebelled at the end of 1880 and, after defeating the British army at Majuba in February 1881, were given back their independence. In this short commentary, before Majuba, "Mr. Punch" counsels the middle way in "this Boer business," one of the most "difficult and delicate" problems he says he has "ever been called upon to examine and solve." The compromise should be made between those who would send off troops immediately to crush the Boers and those who would allow them their "liberty." Punch points out that the "heroic Dutchmen [the Boers] . . . have in times past, by their brutality to the natives, their total inability to govern themselves, and their general unfitness either to establish or extend civilisation, as understood by its greatest pioneer, the British Colonist, almost jeopardised the hold of the white man on South Africa altogether." Mr. Punch suggests that there "is wrong and right upon both sides," and urges the Cabinet to arrive at a just settlement.

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Punch, or the London Charivari (1841-1992)

"Planters and Their Plants," Punch, or the London Charivari (vol. 106) January 13, 1894.

     This short piece satirizing advertisements for "opportunities" in the colonies points out the very real hardships experienced by those who signed on: "A year spent in this way may lead to a fortune; it may also lead to the local cemetery."

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Punch, or the London Charivari (1841-1992)

George du Maurier. "On the Colonial Tour," Punch, or the London Charivari (vol. 106) March 24, 1894.

George du Maurier joined Punch's leading artists after John Leech's death in 1864. Here his targets are both artist-poseurs and their colonial audiences. Du Maurier, a successful novelist, wrote as well as drew for the magazine.

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Punch, or the London Charivari (1841-1992)

. "The Black Baby," Punch, or the London Charivari (vol. 106) April 21, 1894.

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Punch, or the London Charivari (1841-1992)

. "Unpardonable Flippancy," Punch, or the London Charivari (vol. 106) April 28, 1894.

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The Athenaeum: Journal of English and Foreign Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Music and the Drama (1828-1921)

    From 1830s through the end of the century, The Athenaeum had the largest circulation of any weekly. It dominated the field by offering a broader range of subject matter than did any of its competitors. Offerings included literature, art, and science, poetry, fiction, drama, literary gossip, foreign literature, folklore, music, architecture, sculpture, painting, engraving. In addition the magazine provided lists of scientific publications and works in progress as well as reviews of important books. One of its most important contributions was detailed coverage of meetings of the Royal Society, the Royal College of Physcians and Surgeons, and other learned societies. The Athenaeum's Obituaries were an important source for the Dictionary of National Biography, and its readers commented on proposed subjects for inclusion in the dictionary. The periodical's pages bear witness to the voracious curiosity of Victorians and the encyclopedic publications that satisfied it in part with news of the Empire.

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The Athenaeum: Journal of English and Foreign Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Music and the Drama (1828-1921)

"Marine Survey in India," The Athenaeum (no. 2456) November 21, 1874.

     In its Science section this issue reports on the resumption of survey of coasts and harbors in India, using the charts turned over to the Admiralty by the East India Company. Failure to update and revise these resulted in neglect of "the interests of our great Indian Empire." Without current charts "a country with an extended sea-board is practically deprived of one of the greatest facilities for extending commerce." On the next page, the Science Gossip column records the death of Archibald Campbell, the "ready and safe authority on the geography, natural history, ethnology, languages, productions, commerce and politics of Nepal, Tibet, and central Asia. Influential in the building of the railroad between Calcutta and Darjeeling, he had been responsible for the development of that town into a real colony and the summer capital of Bengal.

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The Spectator (1828-1925)

Begun in 1828 and edited by Robert Stephen Rintoul, this weekly news magazine was a "timeless institution" by the twentieth century. Its principal aim was to convey intelligence by summarizing the news of the week and offering opinion and commentary. The Spectator's solid reputation was based on excellent writing, good judgement, a liberal-sometimes radical-political stance, and political independence. Its support for the "systematic colonization" program of Edward Gibbon Wakefield in the 1830s and 1840s helped persuade the government to revise its colonial policy and begin selling crown lands to finance planned emigration. Settlements in South Australia, New Zealand, and Canada in part resulted from the journal's commitment. Following Wakefield and other liberal imperialists, The Spectator advocated freedom and "responsible government" or self-government, for the colonies.

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The Spectator (1828-1925)

"Resemblances between the Rising in Canada and the Revolution in America," The Spectator (vol. X, no. 496) December 30, 1837.

     Throughout 1837 and 1838, The Spectator reported on "the Canada question" which became a leading issue in British politics when armed rebellion erupted in November 1837. How should the Canadian colonies be governed? Militant colonists wanted radical changes in the 1791 constitution: the substitution of election of government officials for their appointment by the crown and greater control over the financial system. The position of The Spectator is clear in an article from the "News of the Week" of December 30th: "…to yield all that the colonists require-to retain but a nominal empire over them and friendly commercial relations-seems, after all, the most politic and least troublesome as well as the justest course….all must now agree that the system on which England governs her Colonies is wretched." This opinion piece justifies the government's fear that Canada would go the way of the Thirteen Colonies, suggesting that stricter imperial control would certainly cause this to happen. Comparing the size and complexion both ethnic and moral of both populations and the lists of their grievances, it notes more similarities than differences. Military and commercial comparisons are promised for a future column. The writer notes this irony: now that "the Canadian leaders…are Englishmen in political feeling," they are reviled as a mischievous and alien faction.

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The Spectator (1828-1925)

"Colonial 'Parliaments'," The Spectator (vol. XXX, no. 1537) December 12, 1857.

The Spectator approached the issues of the times in various ways; among them were straight news reporting, book reviews on timely subjects, and short discourses on the "Topics of the Day." In this issue, in addition to reviewing at length and with copious quotations the prophetic opinions of Colonel J. S. Hodgson on the Indian Army and its dangerous potential, The Spectator turned to the perennial question of colonial governance. However much editorial policy supported self-government for the colonies, it insisted on the proper naming of representative institutions, for names convey the realities of power and hierarchy. In this piece it takes issue with the fashion among colonial popular legislative bodies of calling themselves "Parliaments." "Acts of the Imperial Legislature take effect by their own force; Colonial acts are subject to disallowance by the Crown. Parliament has inherent privileges; Colonial Legislatures have none."

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The Leisure Hour (1852-1905)

     The Leisure Hour, a weekly "family journal of instruction and recreation," aimed at a universal audience. "We dedicate our pen to the thoughtful of every class. We aspire to catch the attention of peer and peasant, of master and man, . . . [for] are we not one great people, one great commonwealth," claimed the editors. Though published by the Religious Tract Society, it was not strictly a religious publication but a magazine of popular entertainment with a decidedly Christian viewpoint. Its pages concentrated on fiction usually of a superficially improving nature but also regularly covered British history and institutions, Australia, remarkable boys, poetry, "things worth remembering," overseas notes, science and discovery, biography, women's interests, etc. Directed at families, its articles contained only views that all could approve; the editors eschewed controversy and appealed to popular sentiment and shared ideals.

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The Leisure Hour (1852-1905)

"An Anecdote from Australia," The Leisure Hour (vol. I, no. 48) November 25, 1852.

     The anecdote, purportedly written by a settler of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), not only recounts the introduction of bees and thistles to Australia but also embodies-especially for the young-a moral about the difference between a wise action and a foolish one. It ends with an injunction to weigh the results of one's actions and to sow the seeds of the spirit in order to reap life everlasting.

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The Leisure Hour (1852-1905)

     "The Madras Hawker," The Leisure Hour (vol. II) June 16, 1853.

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The Leisure Hour (1852-1905)

     "Group of Thugs (India)," The Leisure Hour April 1, 1870.

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The Illustrated London News (1842- )

      In its first issue (May 14, 1842) the editor of The Illustrated London News announced that the weekly would "keep before the eye of the world a living and moving panorama of all its actions and influences" and "withhold from society no point that its literature can furnish or its art adorn." The magazine counted among its contributors distinguished writers and artists (J.M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, G.K. Chesterton, Thomas Hardy, Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Leech, Hablot K. Browne [Phiz], George Cruickshank) and was the first weekly newspaper to combine pictures with the news. The ILN sent correspondents to major foreign capitals and to war (there were six special war artists reporting on the Crimean War).

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The Illustrated London News (1842- )

"Kororarika Beach, Bay of Islands, New Zealand," The Illustrated London News (vol. VII, no. 169) July 26, 1845.

     In 1839 Britain annexed New Zealand and, in 1841, it became a crown colony separate from New South Wales in Australia. The Bay of Islands, in the extreme north of the North Island, had been settled as a provisioning port for whalers and was the seat of government until 1840 when Auckland was established. The Maori initially welcomed the Europeans, but by the 1840s they grew alarmed at the demand for land and the increase of government, and staged many raids against Kororareka (called Russell by the British) in the Bay of Islands. The subject of this report and illustrations was a Maori attack that destroyed the settlement of Russell. The ILN prints an extract from a letter from Captain Sir E. Home of H.M.S. North Star to Rear Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane: "The ill success of that day is to be attributed to a want of knowledge of the peculiar mode of warfare adopted by these brave and sagacious savages."

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The Illustrated London News (1842- )

"Peace-Maker," The Illustrated London News (vol. VII, no. 169) July 26, 1845.

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The Illustrated London News (1842- )

"Bay of Islands Chief," The Illustrated London News (vol. VII, no. 169) July 26, 1845.

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The Illustrated London News (1842- )

"Baggage Train Paasing the Fortress of Rhotas," from "Sketches in India. Railway from Calcutta to Delhi," The Illustrated London News (vol. XVIII, no. 492, Second Supplement) June 7, 1851.

     In terms largely appealing to European sportsmen and adventurers, the contributor of this article extols the attractions of the lands to be opened up by the proposed railroad, the speed and marvels of which the natives cannot grasp. Commenting on his sketches, he recounts details of his four-month expeditions to little traveled (by Europeans) areas of "this land of old and deeply rooted prejudices." Bear-hunting in the forests, the "absurd" and "ludicrous" postures of the dancing Sonthals, splendid banyan trees, ancient fortresses, and fertile plains-this travelogue combines factual description with exploitative enthusiasm: "A trip to the summit of this temple-covered [Parasnath] mountain offers attractions to the botanist, geologist, or to any other lover of nature, for here may be found ample stores of nature's hoarding, only requiring to be rifled…"

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The Illustrated London News (1842- )

"Narrain Hithu and Hindoo Temple," from "Sketches in Nepaul," The Illustrated London News (vol. XXVII, no. )1855.

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The Illustrated London News (1842- )

"Cocoa-Mill in Grenada," The Illustrated London News (vol. XXVII) 1855.

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The Illustrated London News (1842- )

"Insurrection of Negroes in Jamaica," The Illustrated London News (vol. XLVII, no. 1344) November 25, 1865.

     The drawings on these pages were to be "regarded with painful interest in connection with [the] sad affair" of the Jamaican uprising of October 1865. The economic depression following the abolition of slavery had brought Jamaican planters close to ruin. They blamed "lazy" blacks whom they tried to force off their lands and to return to plantation work. White missionaries supported black workers in their struggle with the planters. After about four hundred blacks assembled in front of the court house in Morant Bay demanding grants of rent-free land, fighting broke out and caused some thirty deaths. The repression was brutally suppressed by the governor. Over four hundred blacks were executed, and Governor Eyre was suspended and tried for atrocities. As a result of this crisis, Jamaica's government was taken over by the Crown. The Illustrated London News tries to remain impartial amidst accounts of atrocities on both sides, contenting itself with publishing a narrative of the events; it is based, however, on Eyre's official report which stressed the brutality of the blacks and the justice of his actions.

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The Illustrated London News (1842- )

"Drinking Fountains at Southampton and Barbadoes," The Illustrated London News (vol. XLVII) 1865.

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The Illustrated London News (1842- )

"Open Air Restaurant at Cairo," The Illustrated London News (vol. LXXXIV) 1884.

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The Illustrated London News (1842- )

Advertisements from The Illustrated London News (vol. LXXXIV, no. ) 1884.

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The Illustrated London News (1842- )

"The Mahdi," "Zebehr Pasha,"  The Illustrated London News (vol. LXXXIV, no. ) 1884.

     Throughout the early months of 1884, The Illustrated London News reported extensively on the war in the Sudan. The ruling khedive of Egypt appealed to the British to help contain the power of local chieftains in its Sudan dependency. In 1874, the khedive appointed British General Charles George Gordon governor general of the Sudan. Gordon, a Christian zealot and already a popular hero for his exploits defending British interests in the Crimea and China, established his ascendancy over this vast area, crushing rebellions and suppressing the slave trade. In 1884 Gordon was returned to the Sudan by the British government to evacuate Egyptian forces from Khartoum, which was threatened by Sudanese rebels led by a Muslim mystic, Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi. Gordon made his way to Khartoum and, arriving on Feb. 18, 1884, he evacuated 2,000 women, children, sick, and wounded before the Mahdi's forces set siege to the town. The British government refused Gordon's requests for aid until too late, and the insurgents slaughtered the Egyptian garrison and Gordon with it. Gordon was immediately hailed in Britain as a Christian martyr and the government reviled as a murderer. The press reflected British subjects' fear of national humiliation and the danger of not standing up to one's enemies.

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The Illustrated London News (1842- )

"Arrival of Spies from Sinkat," The Illustrated London News (vol. LXXXIV) 1884.

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The Graphic (1869-1932)

     The Graphic, begun as a weekly in 1869 in competition with the The Illustrated London News, sought to deal "picturesquely with all important events at Home and Abroad, thus forming an invaluable pictorial record." Founder William Luson Thomas was a liberal reformer and friend of Dickens, and hoped that illustrations would inspire a campaign against the evils of Victorian society, poverty and crime. Illustrators providing engravings, sketches, photos, watercolors included Randolph Caldecott, William Small, A.C. Corbould, A.B. Houghton, and Frank Craig. Writers included Rider Haggard, Bret Harte, S. Baring-Gould, Grant Allen, George Eliot, Tomas Hardy, W. M. Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope.

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The Graphic (1869-1932)

"Princes and Chiefs of Western India," The Graphic (vol. VII, no. 166) February 1, 1873.

     "It is very difficult," comments the note on Our Illustrations, "to get the average run of home-staying Englishmen to take much interest in India, or to realise the vast extent and varied population of the peninsula commonly called by that generic title. Roughly speaking, we may say that India is quite as big as Europe without Russia, and contains quite as great a diversity of nations. If some of our readers would impress these facts on their minds, they would probably be more interested in the portraits of the six-and-thirty potentates here delineated." The Princes portrayed were some of the personages who attended the Grand Durbar (or princely assembly) in Bombay in November 1872. The note goes on to compare the magnitude of this assembly to Imperial Rome with its barbarian tributaries in Europe and its political relationships to those of a feudal aristocracy and province. Brief sketches of the size of population, territories, and troups controlled by a handful of these princes suggests "the magnitude of the interests represented by the originals of our portraits."

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Bow Bells: A Weekly Magazine of General Literature and Art, for Family Reading (1862-1897)

     This penny magazine was published by John Dicks and intended for "family reading." Most of its pages were taken up with serial sentimental (verging on sensational) fiction, illustrated by T.H. Wilson and Edward Evans with high-quality wood engravings. Bow Bells also offered fashion news, needlework patterns, color inserts, and a series of articles on outdoor pursuits for ladies (archery, skating, lawn tennis).

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Bow Bells: A Weekly Magazine of General Literature and Art, for Family Reading (1862-1897)

"The Emigrant Girl: A Tale of Australia," Bow Bells: A Weekly Magazine of General Literature and Art, for Family Reading (vol. XVIII, no. 464, new series) June 18, 1873.

     The anonymous author of "The Emigrant Girl" packs into five short chapters Irish emigration, miscegenation, madness, mistaken intentions-and a happy ending, complete with swoons. The Sydney setting, like the hero's Jamaican plantation upbringing, suggests the extent to which the colonial experience had permeated the popular imagination.

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The Boys' Journal:: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Adventure, and Amusement (1863-1871)

     This monthly included poetry, serial fiction, articles on natural history and sport, and a competition "Exercises for Ingenuity" which included arithmetical puzzles, enigmas, word puzzles, and questions such as "Why is the Editor of the Boys' Journal like an Italian-iron?" (Answer: "Because he is warm-hearted.") Prizes were awarded in half-guineas. In this issue are installments of several serial stories as well as "Fencing for Beginners" and "Silkworms and Their Management."

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The Boys' Journal: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Adventure, and Amusement (1863-1871)

"Tree of the Manitou," illustration for "The Boy Trapper of the Rocky Mountains and His Adventures in the Hudson's Bay Territory," The Boys' Journal: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Adventure, and Amusement (vol. 9) June, 1868.

     This installment of "The Boy Trapper" finds Alice, the cousin of our hero, Ned, held captive and about to be adopted by the Crow people of British Columbia so that the Great Chief can claim her as his wife. The Tree of the Manitou, an old oak, is the focus of the tribe's ceremonies. After rescuing his cousin and bringing her to safety, Ned retrieves a cache of valuable furs, sells them at a great profit, and eventually marries Alice and becomes a fur trader and merchant. Moral: the colonies can make honest, brave (English) boys rich and happy.

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The Boy's Own Paper (1879-1967)

     It is reported that the first issue of this popular weekly was given away at schools to ensure good circulation figures. George Andrew Hutchinson was its creator and daily editor for 33 years; he offered the standard fare of "home employments and amusements," natural history, school and adventure stories, essay competitions, puzzles, and anecdotes. Among the magazine's contributors were numbered G.A. Henty, R.M. Ballantyne, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, and Talbot Baines Reed, author of many public school serials. The Boy's Own Paper took its "healthy" moral tone from its publisher, the Religious Tract Society; revenue from its sales supported orphanages in Britain and missions in India, China, and Africa. Annual bound volumes were published as The Boy's Own Annual.

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The Boy's Own Paper (1879-1967)

Allan M. Taylor. "The Chums: An Australian Sketch," The Boy's Own Paper (vol. XI, no. 419) January 22, 1887.

     This short tale of devoted friendship, melancholy, and suicide derives its plot from Australia's remoteness. Two friends from Oxford meet by chance in an Australian upcountry township: Jack, a successful cattle rancher, has made his fortune in Australia. Frank, a drunk, has fled England for Australia having squandered his fortune and lost his true love. The ensuing melodrama depends on the distance between exotic Australia and "home" for its dénouement, but the story's several messages about the evil of alcohol and the ennobling power of friendship would not be foreign to any English schoolboy.

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The Boy's Own Paper (1879-1967)

Martin, R. D'O. "Indian Boys," The Boy's Own Paper (vol. XV, no. 753) June 17, 1893.

     Contributed by a former teacher in a school in Delhi, this collection of remarks has as its purpose demonstrating that Indian boys are as accomplished at British pursuits as are English boys. These boys learned not only the reigns of English kings but also the "unpronounceable" names and reigns of Indian rulers; they could play cricket with the best ("We thought the cricket field a most important place in our educational scheme"); and they even played chess. Furthermore, they took The Boy's Own Paper: "I have often read it in that far-away room in the city of the Great Mogul." The author himself was born in India, and, after being educated in Ireland ("the land of my fathers") he went back to India to teach. He is at pains to prove the worth of both Irish and Indian boys.

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The Boy's Own Paper (1879-1967)

"Two against Forty," The Boy's Own Paper (vol. XV) 1892.

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The Boy's Own Paper (1879-1967)

"Treed! (by a Crocodile)," The Boy's Own Paper (vol. XV) 1893.

    §Sterling Memorial Library§

Beeton's Boy's Own Magazine: An Illustrated Journal of Fact, Fiction, History and Adventure (1855-1871)

     Samuel Orchard Beeton (who also published the monthly Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine) started up the Boy's Own Magazine in 1855 "to help form the taste and influence the mind of a youth; whose glorious heritage it is to possess the Empire that their fathers have founded and preserved and whose duty it will be to hold that Empire, handing it down greater, more prosperous, to future generations." Purveying morals as well as entertainment, Beeton's magazine included articles on nature, sports, and scientific experiments as well as historical romances, biographies (Poor Boys Who have become Great Men), and exotic adventures. There were correspondence columns, an "Exchange, or Boy's Barter Bazaar," and several puzzle pages (ex.: "If M. Soyer were about to purchase a dog, what species would you recommend to him?"). One critic has listed the rules of conduct conveyed by the Boy's Own Magazine as: "Never sneak, never weep, never lie, and never trust foreigners."

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Beeton's Boy's Own Magazine: An Illustrated Journal of Fact, Fiction, History and Adventure (1855-1871)

"Samuel Mitchell and the Victoria Cross," Beeton's Boy's Own Magazine (vol. 3, pt. 20) 1871.

     This article describes a battle in 1864 between Maori warriors and British soldiers and sailors in Tauranga, New Zealand, part of the Maori's last-ditch, doomed campaign to rid New Zealand of the white man. The author attempts to get at the reasons behind a disgraceful defeat, suggesting that the British "forgot, or they had never learned, that the defenders . . . belonged to a race reckless of life, loving war for its own sake, who were then fighting, as such a race will ever fight, for their homes, their lands, their liberty, their all."

§Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library§

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Beeton's Boy's Own Magazine: An Illustrated Journal of Fact, Fiction, History and Adventure (1855-1871)

Captain A.W. Drayson. "Ingonyama, the Caffre Chief: A Tale of Southern Africa," Boy's Own Magazine (vol.3, pt. 22) 1871.

     Throughout the nineteenth century, South Africa saw a series of clashes as British colonies, African kingdoms, and Boer, or Afrikaner, republics fought for land, sovereignty, and, later, diamonds and gold. "Kaffir" was the term used for the Xhosa people, a group of related tribes whose territory included the Eastern Cape; it came to be used pejoratively for any South African black. "Hottentot" was the Dutch name for the Khoikhoin, the first indigenous group encountered by European explorers of the Cape in the seventeenth century.

     Alfred Wilks Drayson (1827-1901) wrote several adventure novels set in South Africa as well as books on whist, billiards, military education, astronomy, and geology (specifically, the ice age). What better person to write serial stories for boys' magazines?

§Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library§

Boys of the British Empire

     Published and edited by Edwin J. Brett, who had founded the highly successful Boys of England (a weekly), Boys of the British Empire was apparently relatively short-lived. Brett's magazines were not particularly educational, his intention being to attract readers by providing "good stories, good pictures, good paper, and good printing."

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Boys of the British Empire

Cover. Boys of the British Empire (vol. IV, no.80) November 13,1883.

§Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library§

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Boys of the British Empire

"Legends of Many Lands. No. 18. -The Silken Cord; or, The King Hunter of the Deccan: An Indian Legend," Boys of the British Empire (vol. IV, no. 86) December 25, 1883.

     A more or less regular feature of Boys of the British Empire was "Legends of Many Lands." In the example shown here, the legend is recounted with editorial asides: "But, like nearly all Easterns, he was very secretive, and did not make his designs known."

§Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library§

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Chums (1892-1932)

Tom Browne, "Shot Graham Travers Head Foremost over the Edge of the Cliff!" [Cover], Chums (Vol. VI, no. 263) 1897. 

             A very successful boys' magazine, Chums was considered one of the more "wholesome" weeklies. Chums competed for readers with The Boy's Own Paper, providing short stories, serial fiction, humorous anecdotes, cartoons, and articles on sports and athletes. It also sponsored contests, including those designed especially for "Chums living in the Colonies and other places abroad;" for these colonial boys "the Competition has purposely been made extremely simple." In one case each entrant was to send, on a postcard, "an original Sentence (not copied)-on any subject-all the words of which begin with the same letter." The winners received "CHUMS solid silver pencil-cases."

§Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library§

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Chums (1892-1932)

Tom Browne, "One Wild Blast Rang out upon the Desert Air," from "At Biscuit Tin Fort," Chums (Vol. VI, no. 267) 1897. 

§Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library§

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Chums (1892-1932)

P.H., "Joe Could Not Remove His Eyes from the Animal before Him" [Cover], Chums (Vol. VI, no. 310) 1898. 

         

§Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library§

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Chums (1892-1932)

A.S. Wilkinson. "An Indian Uprising" [cartoon], Chums (vol. VI, no.270) 1897.

§Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library§

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Chums (1892-1932)

"Sheep Shearers at Work," from "Scenes under Many Skies, Pictured by the Pen and the Camera: Flocks and Fleeces in N.S.W.," Chums (vol. VII, no. 335) 1899.

     Giving a brief history of sheep farming in Australia, this improving article details the ways in which the colonists ("enterprising Britons") tamed the land and overcame obstacles such as drought and "hostile blackfellows." Note that by this time photography was being used to illustrate boys' magazines.

§Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library§

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Chums (1892-1932)

"Watering Sheep in the Interior, from "Scenes under Many Skies, Pictured by the Pen and the Camera: Flocks and Fleeces in N.S.W.," Chums (vol. VII, no. 335) 1899.

§Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library§

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Chums (1892-1932)

"A Blackfoot Brave," from "Scenes under Many Skies, Pictured by the Pen and the Camera: Redskin Rovers in the Northwest," Chums (vol. VII, no.332) 1899.

§Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library§

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Chums (1892-1932)

"A Cree Indian in Readiness to Travel," from "Scenes under Many Skies, Pictured by the Pen and the Camera: Redskin Rovers in the Northwest," Chums (vol. VII, no.332) 1899.

§Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library§
This exhibit was prepared by Margaret K. Powell (Librarian for Literature in English and Commonwealth Studies) and Susanne F. Roberts (Librarian for European History), with help from Shalane Hansen, Sarah Oelker, and Anahid Powell. Send comments or questions to margaret.powell@yale.edu.