Despite the development of motion pictures early in 20th century, of radio broadcasting in the 1920s, and of television in the 1940s, newspapers remain a major source of information on matters ranging from details of important news events to human-interest stories. British people are reported to be the worlds most dedicated home-video users. But this does not mean that they have given up reading. The British buy more newspapers than any other people except the Swedes and Japanese. Nearly 80% of all households buy a copy of one of the main national papers every day.
History.
The first continuously published English newspaper was the Weekly News (1622-41). The earliest newspapers in England printed mostly foreign news, but in 1628 the first papers giving domestic news were begun by clerks who reported the debates of the English Parliament. These papers were called diurnals.
The earliest periodical was Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1665). Periodicals were essentially collections of summaries (later essays) on developments in art, literature, philosophy, and science. The most famous of the essay periodicals of the 18th century were, perhaps, The Tatler (1709-11) and The Spectator (1711-12, 1714), the creations of the renowned essayists Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison; and The Rambler (1750-52) and The Idler (1758-60), founded by Samuel Johnson. The first periodicals of the modern general type, devoted to a miscellany of reading entertainment was The Gentleman’s Magazine (1731-1907)- the first instance of the use of the word magazine to denote a vehicle of entertaining reading. It contained reports of political debates, essays, stories, and poems and was widely influential.
But the English newspaper did not become a mass medium until reduction on the tax on newsprint in 1836 lowered its cost within reach of the average man. By 1854 the annual circulation had risen from 39 million to122 million; and when, in 1861, this “tax on knowledge” was repealed, additional impetus was given to circulation.
Monthly or quarterly reviews, usually partisan in politics, and with articles contributed by eminent authors and politicians, were introduced in Great Britain early in the 19th century. Of these, two become outstanding. The Edinburgh review (1802-1929), founded in support of the Whig party, was one of the most influential critical journals of its day, numbering among its contributors the English writers Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, and William Hazlitt. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1817), a Tory publication, was early in its career noted for satirical commentaries on Scottish affairs and serialisation of Scottish fiction.…
