British Boy's Magazines

British Boy's Magazines

In the middle of the 20th century there appeared in Britain a number of weekly magazines or papers aimed at boys between the ages of 8 and 16. Their price was 2d (two pence) and they were consequently known as the "Tup'penny bloods". They were printed on newsprint, with a coloured front cover. Inside there were short stories, with illustrations and often in a serial form. Some factual article were included. By today's standards, they were not particularly violent or lured, but even so, they were often frowned upon by educators. In 1940, George Orwell wrote an essay entitled "BOYS’ WEEKLIES", in which he was highly critical of them. He condemned them both from their literary content and their subject matter. Frank Richards, the originator of "Billy Bunter", replied to the essay. This did not, however, prevent thousands of boys descending on their local newagent each week to purchase one or more of the "bloods". Many boys obtained a taste for reading from an exposure to them.

They were in direct competition with the comics like "The Dandy" and "The Beano" which were in the strip cartoon form. The stories in them were mostly about school life, sport or war, often with a young hero, that the reader could easily associate with. Many stories had over-drawn characters, and used many descriptions that were 19th century parodies of nationality, profession or type. There were two main groups of publication the earlier was run by Frank Richards, while the second run by D C Thomson was known as the "Big Five".

One boy's magazine that does not conform to the above formats was "Modern Wonder". It had a comparatively short life, starting in 1937 and closing down in 1941. It differed from the other magazines by mainly having articles of a technical nature, instead of all fiction. There were some short stories and a serial included, but it was largely well illustrated articles about modern inventions. The format of the magazine was also different from other boys magazines, being initially 16 inches (40.6 cm) by 10.5 inches (26.7 cm) which is close to the size of newspapers. The covers and the centre pages were printed in colour, the latter often having sectionized drawings of modern items (such as buildings, machinery, or armaments). Similar drawing were placed on the front cover, and the rear cover sometimes carried strip cartoons of a SciFi nature.

By the middle of the 1960s, the taste of the youth of Britain was changing. As a magazine stopped publication it was combined with one of the remaining. By 1970 most of the publication with text had been replaced by new weeklies of the strip cartoon type. This type of magazine had previously been only available as imports from North America. There had also been a similar introduction of strip novels for adults.

Magazines

* Boy's Own Paper - from 1879 to 1967

* Richards' The Gem - from 1907 to 1940 (St Jims School stories)
* Richards' The Magnet - from 1908 to 1940 (Greyfriars School stories)

* Thomson's The Dandy - from 1937 (still publishing) - a strip comic
* Thomson's The Beano - from 1938 (still publishing) - a strip comic

* Thomson's Adventure - from 1921 to 1961
* Thomson's Rover - from 1922 to 1961
* Thomson's Skipper - from 1930 to 1941
* Thomson's Hotspur - from 1933 to 1959 ( Red Circle School stories)
* Thomson's Wizard - from 1922 to 1963

* The Champion was published during the period 1939-45 (no other information available)

* Modern Wonder (later Modern World) - from 1937 to 1941

* Tiger - from 1954 to 1985 - a strip comic
* Eagle - from 1950 to 1994 (with a gap in publication) - a strip comic

Cover illustrations sources

* "Wartime Scrapbook on the Home Front 1939 to 1945" by Robert Opie - published by piglobal ISBN 0 954795 44 X
* "The 30's Scrapbook" by Robert Opie - published by piglobal ISBN 1 872727 33 6

External References

* The Big Five - [http://www.britishcomics.20m.com/home.htm]
* Fiction for the Working Lad (essay) - [http://www.palgrave.com/pdfs/0333641728.pdf]
* Orwell's Essay - [http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/boys/english/e_boys]
* Modern Wonder covers [http://www.philsp.com/data/image094.html]


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