List of Newspapers in The United Kingdom By Circulation

List Of Newspapers In The United Kingdom By Circulation

This is a list of the newspapers in the United Kingdom by average circulation.

In the early nineteenth century, newspapers circulations were small. The leading newspaper at the start of the century was the Morning Post, which sold around 4,000 copies per day, twice the sales of its nearest rival. As production methods improved, print runs increased, and newspapers were sold at lower prices. By 1828, the Morning Herald was selling the most copies, but it was soon overtaken by The Times.

Public houses would typically take in one or two papers for their customers to read, and through this method, by the 1850s the newspaper of the licensed trade, the Morning Advertiser, had the second highest circulation. Sales of The Times were around 40,000, and it had around 80% of the entire daily newspaper market, but Sunday papers were more popular, some boasting sales of more than 100,000. Later in the century, the Daily News came to prominence, selling 150,000 copies a day in the 1870s, while by 1890, the Daily Telegraph had a circulation of 300,000. Sunday newspaper sales also grew rapidly, with Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper being the first to sell one million copies an issue.

The press was changed by the introduction of halfpenny papers. The first national halfpenny paper was the Daily Mail, followed by the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror, which became the first weekday paper to sell one million copies in around 1911. Circulation continued to increase, reaching a peak in the mid-1950s; sales of the News of the World reached a peak of more than 8,000,000 in 1950. Since the 1950s, there has been a gradual decline in newspaper sales.