The Sketch

The Sketch was a British illustrated newspaper that ran for 2,989 issues between February 1, 1893 and June 17, 1959. It was published by the Illustrated London News Company and was primarily a society magazine with regular features on royalty and the aristocracy, theatre, cinema and art studies. It had a high photographic content with many studies of society ladies and their children as well as regular layouts of point to point racing meetings and similar events.

Clement Shorter (1857-1926) and William Ingram started "The Sketch" in 1893. [ Shorter's ODNB entry has 1892] Shorter was the first editor, from 1893 to 1900, succeeded by John Latey (until 1902) and then Keble Howard. [Philip Waller, "Writers, Readers, and Reputations: Literary Life in Britain 1870-1918", p. 351-2] Bruce Ingram was editor from 1905 to 1946.

The magazine is chiefly remembered for first publishing the illustrations of Bonzo the dog by George E. Studdy (from 1921). It also published series of short stories within its pages, one per issue, with authors such as Walter de la Mare and Algernon Blackwood. Under the editorship of Bruce Ingram, it was also the first magazine to publish short stories by Agatha Christie, starting with "The Affair at the Victory Ball" in issue 1571, dated March 7, 1923. Altogether, Christie wrote 49 stories for "The Sketch" between 1923 and 1924 (just under a third of her total output of short stories) which were later collected into some or all of the contents of the volumes "Poirot Investigates" (1924), "The Big Four" (1927), "Partners in Crime" (1929), "Poirot's Early Cases" (1974) and "While the Light Lasts and Other Stories "(1997). Christie dedicated the 1953 novel "A Pocket Full of Rye" to Ingram.

"The Sketch" printed photographs by Howard Coster (1865-1959), and illustrations by H. M. Bateman, Max Beerbohm, Percy Venner Bradshaw (1877-1965), Thomas Arthur Browne (1870-1910), Hilda Cowham (1873-1964), Annie Fish (1890-1964), John Hargrave, John Hassall (1868-1948), Phil May, Bernard Partridge, Melton Prior (1845-1910), W. Heath Robinson, Sidney Sime and Bert Thomas (1883-1966).

Writers included Carleton Allen, Lucie Armstrong (1851-1907), Nora Hopper, William Robertson Nicoll, and John Courtenay Trewin. [ODNB; Waller, op. cit.]

The British Library holds a complete run of "The Sketch". [http://www.bl.uk/collections/victoria.html]

References