The Penny Illustrated Paper was a cheap (1d.) illustrated weekly newspaper, which ran from 1861 to 1913.
Illustrated weekly newspapers had been pioneered by the Illustrated London News (published from 1842, costing fivepence): its imitators included the Pictorial Times (1843-8), and - after the 1855 repeal of the Stamp Act - the Illustrated Times. With the abolition of paper duty in 1861 it was possible to envisage an even cheaper mass-circulation illustrated weekly. The first issue, 12 October 1861, announced itself confidently under the masthead "PENNY ILLUSTRATED PAPER: With All the News of the Week": "A new era opens upon the people. In producing a paper for the million, let us plainly say, we want be esteemed the friend of the people... A new era is opened to us by the Repeal of the Paper Duties"
The paper was apparently initially the charge of Ebenezer Farrington, but the wife and sons of the recently deceased Herbert Ingram, proprietors of the Illustrated London News - also seem to have been behind the venture.
Famous quotes containing the words penny, illustrated and/or paper:
“There is no passion more dominant and instinctive in the human spirit than the need of the country to which one belongs.... The time comes when nothing in the world is so important as a breath of one’s own particular climate. If it were one’s last penny it would be used for that return passage.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Women ... are completely alone, though they were born and bred upon this soil, as if they belonged to another class in creation.”
—“Jennie June” Croly 1829–1901, U.S. founder of the woman’s club movement, journalist, author, editor. F, Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly Mirror of Fashions, pp. 363-4 (December 1870)
“The world is a funny paper read backwards. And that way it isn’t so funny.”
—Tennessee Williams (1914–1983)