Talk:British boys' magazines

Purpose of article

I am afraid that this is article is not helpful and should be deleted. The subject is very broad and vague, the amount of information hoplessly small in relation to the subject and it is full of error.

For instance

• What is the period covered? It seems to be virtually the whole of the twentieth century.
• What type of publications does it cover? Story papers (eg The Magnet) bear no relation to comics e.g Beano
• Literally hundreds of papers are not mentioned
• Frank Richards did not run the Magnet and Gem. It was the pen name of Charles Hamilton who wrote for both.
• The Magnet was not a blood. It did not deal in violence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pricejb (talk • contribs) 15:34, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I think British Boy's Magazines should be a category, not an atricle

--John Price (talk) 15:32, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Criticism the above analysis

The argument used is rather narrow. The boys magazine were an important part of life in Britain during the 20th century. Unfortunately there is not too much information easily obtainable on any one of the publications, so that the changing to a category would make each entry very short. Although there is no reason why an entry in an encyclopedia could not be a single line, the comparison of the various publication is relevant. Having an entry started, immediately attracts others with knowledge to enlarge and modify. This must be encouraged rather than deletion which cuts out the information, even if it is sparse, from being available. In answer to the above instances:-

• The details show that the period is the 20th century.
• The title gives the type of publication, Boy's Magazines.
• True, but if you know of others, please add them
• True, but as a contributer and author the name Frank Richards is generally associated with the Magnet and the Gem.
• The article state that they were known as "Bloods" but did not contain violence.

As a schoolboy in the 1930s & 40s I went through the various titles and even the "comics" were call magazines in the news agents.

DonJay (talk) 01:07, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Let me point out one or two matters

• The articles begins around 1950 - hardly an appropriate starting point for the Twentieth century. Hence my confusion

• The first three sentences are about Bloods (ie Adventure, Rover, Wizard, Hotspur and Skipper) which, as you say, came out in the middle of the Twentieth Century. Then the article states that Orwell wrote about such publications in 1940 - obviously impossible. Orwell was writing about story papers, not bloods.

• The categories of comics and story papers may have been confused in your childhood but that is hardly a definitive experience. Comics are simply not magazines within normal English usage.

• The name Frank Richards was not connected with the Gem at any point of its existence. And Charles Hamilton was a freelance writer - he never ran a paper in his life.

Anyway, what I suggest is this - there is already an article dealing with this issue which is at a rather more advanced stage - why not merge the article with Story paper ?

--John Price (talk) 23:05, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

John Price is right!

Incedentally Frank Richards and Charles Hamilton were the same person! Frank Richards was one of his many pen-names. He also wrote MOST but not all of the Magnet and Gem, but a great deal of others as well.

The term "Pulp Magazine" is generally thought to refer to US publications of the early 20th century. The FAR better term (before the pointless merge) is Story Paper. The story paper article should be re-instated. There is already a hefty article about British Comics that is 1000 times better than this one can ever hope to be. Lets concentrate on the text-heavy papers of the late 19th to mid 20th centuries. (And leave the 19th century Penny Dreadfuls such as Varney The Vampire and The Newgate Calendar to yet another article).

To say that Story Papers cost "more" than comics blurs the issue. "Comic papers" aimed at chidren tended to be a halfpenny, whilst story papers tended to be a penny. But there were exceptions, such as the Halfpenny Marvel, Union Jack and Boys Friend story papers. By the late 1900's most of the comical papers and story papers all cost a penny, or one pence halfpenny. Incedentally these "comical papers" were rather text-heavy until the mid 1900's, and some such as Illustrated Chips also included adventure stories. An early issue of the Union Jack also contained a comic strip. To say that they were solidly-defined, seperate publications aimed at seperate age groups is simply untrue.

The Penny Dreadfuls were much earlier publications than the story papers. Though the later story papers were sometimes referred to as dreadfuls. "Bloods" was just another name for the penny dreadfuls, i beleive. All these terms seem to have been interchangable anyway, there was NO hard and fast rules. I would very much hesitate to call the DC Thomson papers such as Adventure and Rover "Bloods". The earliest of these started in 1921, when the "era" of the Dreadfuls and Bloods was considered largely over, if one defines them as the gothic horror stories with gruesome depictions of hangings and vampires. The primary age of the Story Paper began with the Halfpenny Marvel in 1893, and ended in the 1950's when the picture-story comics took over. BUT that does not mean the picture-story comics started in the 50's, nor does it mean the text papers ended then. The change was a lot more gradual and some publications (such as The Victor) contained both picture strips and text stories.

For anybody who wants this article to contain facts and not vaugely-remembered bits and pieces, i would recommend looking at the relevant articles on the following websites:

http://www.collectingbooksandmagazines.com/indexaz.html

http://www.sextonblake.co.uk/

And the books

Boys Will Be Boys - E.S. Brooks

Penny Dreadfuls and Comics - Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood

The Complete Catalogue of British Comics - Denis Gifford

British Comics: A Century of Ripping Yarns and Wizard Wheezes - Paul Gravett

And of course, actual issues of the papers and comics themselves.

82.153.230.139 (talk) 16:22, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Bwahaha, i forgot how badly this article had been RUINED by the moron. Yeah, that's it, go and edit a perfectly good page on Story Papers and replace it with "British Boys Magazines". Yeah because Story Papers were only made in Britain and only for boys, weren't they? Idiot. Oh yeah and the fact the newsagents around your way 70-80 years ago called the text-only papers 'comics' must REALLY count in the grand scheme of things, eh? Oh yeah and i think you'll find it's "Criticism OF the above anaylsis", guess the cane didn't always work eh? 86.129.60.79 (talk) 17:48, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Dear 86.129.60.79

1. I am afraid that, in truth, there never has been a “perfectly good page on Story Papers”. This is the last version of the page in question before I made a contribution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Story_paper&diff=208665587&oldid=208564493

As can be seen, it dealt solely with British publications and consisted of no more than two very large pictures relating to the Boy’s Own, a mention of Orwell’s famous essay on the subject and a few items of miscellaneous information. In no sense could it be described as a comprehensive coverage of the subject. It is therefore unfair to suggest that the existing article has replaced superior material. As far as I can see, any items of value from the earlier article have been preserved in the British Boy’s Magazine Article or in the article 'Boys' Weeklies' dealing with Orwell’s essay.

Nevertheless, I fully agree that the present article is unsatisfactory - there is a clear need for someone who knows the subject to work on improving the coverage of the subject on Wikipedia generally. Last year I spent a lot of time on the material relating to Charles Hamilton but that is the limit of my knowledge.

2. On another matter, may I suggest that if you want to make a constructive contribution to Wikipedia, you should think about registering as a user, writing in coherent English and avoiding gratuitously offensive references to other contributors.

--John Price (talk) 07:28, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Proposed renaming

I'd like to propose that this article be renamed to British childrens' magazines, as there were story papers for girls as well as boys, like The Schoolgirl for instance. Many girls also read The Magnet, which is why The Schoolgirl was launched, so the audience for these publications was not universally male. Malleus Fatuorum 12:39, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

There were also Sunday School magazines targeted to boys and girls, but these were published on both sides of the Atlantic, as were the boys and girls magazines. Came across these researching the printing used in the magazines (Chromoxylography) and tried to link to this a few weeks ago but couldn't because it was too limited. My question is why only British childrens' magazines? Would Childrens' magazines be too broad? Truthkeeper88 (talk) 15:38, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

As far as I am aware magazines were clearly targeted at either boys or girls and specific to one country. For this reason, I would have thought separate articles were appropriate. Merged articles are more fitting where there is no clear delineation between subjects.--John Price (talk) 09:15, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

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Every Boy's Magazine and more from Routledge

perhaps to be revised soon

In the back pages of Routledge's Every Girl's Annual 1879 --expected to be a compilation of Every Girl's Magazine for 1878, perhaps a bound volume of the monthly issues-- the publisher's catalogue includes Routledge's Magazines for the Household (3) (viewed at HathiTrust).

• Every Boy's Magazine, ed. Edmund Routledge, "Eighteenth Year of Publication" (= 1879)
• Every Girl's Magazine, ed. Alicia A. Leith, "The New Magazine for Girls" (new in 1878 or 1879?)
• Little Wideawake, ed. Mrs. Sale Barker, "New and Enlarged Series" (begins 1879?)

This 1879 Annual probably appeared late in 1878, and its catalogue promotes current and forthcoming publications. 1879 is the 18th year for Every Boy's (from 1862). That suggests Every Girl's is new in 1879, which does not match expectation that this --the first Routledge's Every Girl's Annual, HathiTrust implies-- contains the contents of Every Girl's for 1878.

HathiTrust Digital Library collections do not include Every Boy's Magazine or Every Girl's Magazine --not explicitly, only insofar as the Annuals are bound volumes of the monthly Magazines, and its Annual holdings are spotty.

• Every Boy's Annual : 1864(*), 66-70, 75, 79, 81 at HathiTrust another
• Every Girl's Annual : 1879, 81, 86 at HathiTrust

(*) The 1864 Annual, evidently the first, was published late in 1863 and its contents are those of the monthly magazine during 1863, second year of the magazine and #12 to #23. --P64 (talk) 21:14, 8 March 2019 (UTC)