Penny Illustrated Paper

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)

    The adjustment of qualities is so perfect between men and women, and each is so necessary to the other, that the idea of inferiority is absurd.
    “Jennie June” Croly 1829–1901, U.S. founder of the woman’s club movement, journalist, author, editor. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 204 (August 1866)

    Once, when lying in bed with no paper at hand, he began to sketch the idea for a new machine on the back of his wife’s nightgown. He asked her if she knew the figure he was drawing. “Yes,” she answered, “the figure of a fool.”
    —For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)