When the provincial press was the national press (c.1836-1900) more

WHEN THE PROVINCIAL PRESS WAS THE NATIONAL PRESS (c.1836-c.1900)1 Andrew Hobbs Introduction This article suggests that using twenty-first-century ideas about the provincial and the national press are not appropriate when looking at its nineteenthcentury counterpart. ‘National’ newspapers were less national than has generally been assumed, while provincial papers were less provincial, and more national, than assumed. This has been acknowledged in some recent scholarship, but not analysed in detail, and the implications have not been drawn out: if we treat the nineteenth-century provincial press as a national network and a national system, it becomes much more significant, and more deserving of further study, with many implications for the history of nineteenth-century print culture in particular, and social and cultural history in general. I am using the term ‘provincial press’ loosely to encompass many different types of non-metropolitan newspapers, including local weeklies such as the post-1860s Preston Chronicle, typically serving a market town or borough; the county weekly, such as the Northampton Mercury, based in the county town and circulating across the entire shire. Of higher status were the city morning papers, such as the Manchester Guardian, Birmingham Post and Liverpool Mercury, creations of the post-Stamp Duty era, with a largely middle-class readership. Another new genre, now extinct, was the weekend regional miscellany paper, usually an offshoot of a provincial morning paper, such as the Sheffield Weekly Telegraph, launched by the publishers of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph.2 Developing in the 1860s, they typically reprinted the more sensational court cases from their daily stablemates, supplemented by light-hearted features and serial fiction. The last major genre of provincial paper to develop in the nineteenth century was the halfpenny evening newspaper, from the late 1860s. The argument outlined here does not apply to the London local press, which was exceptional during this period for its ‘localness’ (see Mary Lester’s article, pp. 44-62). At the start of the period, provincial papers sold roughly half as many copies again as the London papers, according to the 1837-38 Newspaper Stamp Duty returns, despite being published weekly rather than daily. Even after the end of the period, in 1920, the circulation of the provincial morning and 16 evening papers alone, ignoring weekly papers, was one-third greater than the London dailies. The provincial press was the majority newspaper press, for more than a century.3 In 1836, Newspaper Stamp Duty was reduced from 4d to 1d, and paper duty from 3d to 1½d per lb, substantially improving the viability of newspapers, provincial and metropolitan, and stimulating the establishment of many new titles. The Provincial Newspaper Society was also established in 1836, to lobby central government and act in unison against advertising agents.4 The end-point of this essay, 1900, is more symbolic, as this was the year when the Daily Mail began printing a northern edition (substantially the same as its London edition) in Manchester. This greatly improved its speed of distribution and arguably made it the first truly national daily newspaper. However, the case made in this article for the national nature of the local press could be extended from the late eighteenth century to the 1920s.5 From 1860 onwards, Mitchell’s Newspaper Press Directory (NPD) regularly published a map marking the place of publication of all newspapers in Great Britain and Ireland. The 1926 version (Figure 1) shows a map peppered with small green dots indicating towns supporting one newspaper, red dots showing towns with two or more papers, and large black dots for towns with daily papers. Earlier maps from the nineteenth century have a similar appearance, and show that the newspaper press was a national phenomenon. This is an obvious statement, but its implications have not been developed. Instead, local newspapers have commonly been studied in isolation, victims of ‘the tyranny of the discrete’, in John Marshall’s memorable phrase, their rhetoric of ‘localness’ taken at face value. They have been neglected in favour of the London press, distorting our view of nineteenth-century print culture and broader cultural history. Neither have their phenomenal sales been satisfactorily explained; thousands of titles sold millions of copies, but their success was not a given. Why was the local press so popular?6 ‘National’ newspapers Before looking at the local and regional press as a national phenomenon, it is necessary to challenge the anachronistic use of the word ‘national’ as applied to nineteenth-century newspapers. Anachronistic terms (such as ‘regional’) have their place in historical analysis, of course, but many of the post-Victorian connotations of the phrase ‘national newspaper’ are misleading when applied to the nineteenth century.7 The term as we 17 Figure 1 The Newspaper Map of Great Britain & Ireland, 1926 Source: Newspaper Press Directory 1926, published by C Mitchell & Co Ltd (reproduced by permission of Wilmington Business Information Ltd). 18 understand it today (implying a large national circulation, containing news from across the nation plus Parliamentary and foreign news) was barely used. A search of the 48 London and provincial titles in the 19th Century British Library Newspapers digitised collection returned 299 uses of the phrase ‘national newspaper’ (see Table 1), but in only ten cases was it used in the modern sense, and even this figure exaggerates its frequency – the four instances from the 1830s were self-descriptions in advertisements for two new journals, the United Kingdom and the Britannia, both using nationalistic rhetoric.8 The term ‘national newspaper’ appeared mainly in the names of newspaper companies (167 hits) such as the National Newspaper League Company, publisher of The Dial, and there was also an Irish nationalist newspaper entitled The National (20 hits). Table 1 Use of phrase ‘national newspaper’ in 48 nineteenth-century newspapers 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s 1880s Modern sense 4 1 Modern sense (Times) 1 2 Of the nation 1 1 Irish nationalist 2 2 7 24 Welsh nationalist 5 6 Foreign papers 4 5 5 2 Source: 19th Century British Library Newspapers digitised collection. 1890s 2 28 6 2 Even usage close to our twenty-first-century one had other associations. In 1840 the Chartist newspaper the Northern Star discussed plans for a rival paper (bold type represents italics in the original): None would hail with more perfect satisfaction than ourselves the establishment of a truly national newspaper; the property of the people; conducted by the people, for the profit of the people … [The Northern Star is] in every sense of the word, a National Press. Its columns have never been confined to any one district or locality; they have been ever open to the statement of the wrongs and grievances – the views and feelings of the people in all parts of the empire; and, while under our controul [sic], it shall never lose one particle of this national character.9 Note the wide meaning of ‘national,’ including nationalised, or owned by the people. Fifty years later the Bristol Mercury used the word to suggest 19 representativeness in a leading article criticising the Daily Telegraph: The “Telegraph” is not a national newspaper any more than its contemporaries, and considerably less than some of them … The “Telegraph” is too much addicted to publishing London and Paris scandal to be really representative …10 The third instance is a description of The Scotsman by the Scottish correspondent of the Belfast News-Letter, first as ‘this Edinburgh newspaper’ and then ‘in a sense the national newspaper of Scotland’, again implying the paper’s ability to represent the nation.11 This representative meaning also underlay the references to foreign newspapers in Table 1. There are three descriptions of the Times as a national newspaper in the 1870s and ‘80s: in 1877 it is described as one of a number of ‘national newspapers’ by a French writer; in 1881 it is alluded to as ‘the leading national newspaper’ and in 1886 it is called ‘our “national” newspaper’, in the sense of a national institution, in a review of Palmer’s Index to The Times.12 When referring to Irish and Welsh papers, ‘national’ had a similar meaning to the modern-day ‘nationalist’. So the twenty-first-century meaning of ‘national’ newspaper was very occasionally applied in the nineteenth century, to the Northern Star and the Times, and could with some justification have described other radical papers from earlier in the century, such as Cobbett’s Political Register. It could also be applied to Sunday papers such as Reynold’s News, Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper and the News of the World, to the Daily Mail from 1900 onwards (although I have found no descriptions of this sort), and, perhaps more justifiably, to periodicals such as the Illustrated London News. The trade press did not use the term, with the Newspaper Press Directory continuing to distinguish between ‘London’ and ‘provincial’ newspapers well into the twentieth century. These were the most common categories, along with ‘metropolitan’ on the one hand, and ‘country’ and ‘local’ on the other. Proprietors of newspapers published outside London called themselves the Provincial Newspaper Society when they came together as a formal body in 1836, and the terms ‘provincial’ and ‘country’ were used interchangeably in the society’s 1886 jubilee publication.13 For provincial readers, too, the London press did not carry the supremacy by default accorded to it today. In the records of a Preston gentlemen’s club, the Winckley Club, titles were recorded as ‘London Times’ and ‘London Daily Mail,’ presumably to avoid 20 confusion with similarly named provincial papers.14 Colin Seymour-Ure is one of the few historians to deconstruct the term ‘national newspaper’ as used in the twentieth century. ‘What made a paper “national”? The term was purely conventional – and vague.’ If national circulation was a requirement, many London papers sold few copies in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the North-East of England until the second half of the twentieth century.15 If coverage of news from across the nation was necessary, the leading London dailies failed; Lucy Brown’s content analysis of provincial news in the Times, Standard and Telegraph in the 1860s and 1890s (excluding by-elections, market trends, and Home Counties news) found that news from around the UK made up between two and four per cent of these papers’ content. The 1947 Royal Commission on the Press found that the so-called nationals ‘tended to reflect the life and interests of three or four regions rather than those of the whole country’.16 London papers concentrated on national and international politics (perhaps on the assumption that provincial readers would find their other news elsewhere). High sales are also problematic as a qualification for national status: the Times was outsold by the Manchester Guardian from 1890 to 1903, and by the Glasgow Herald from 1890 to 1907.17 Table 2 uses most of Seymour-Ure’s criteria to assess their application to a variety of nineteenth-century publications. While most of the publications examined meet most of the criteria, only one, the Northern Star, meets them all. The unusually local nature of the London ‘parochial’ press such as the Hackney Gazette (see Lester, this issue), competing in a market where papers such as the Times, Daily News and other ‘metropolitan’ papers were available within minutes of publication, suggests that the latter titles were at most quasi-national, having a dual role as representatives of London as capital and London as locality. Nevertheless, in broad terms, it is fair to say that certain nineteenth-century newspapers could legitimately be called national. The provincial press as a national phenomenon The last column of Table 2 may seem incongruous. How can a motley collection of newspapers dotted around the map, of very different frequencies, serving very different circulation areas, be considered national? This essay argues that these hundreds of individual papers were connected to each other, sometimes closely, sometimes more loosely, so that they worked 21 Table 2 What makes a newspaper ‘national’? Criteria Times Popular Sundays (Lloyd’s, Reynolds’s Lloyd’s 150,000 (1860) 500,000 (1870) Reynold’s 60,000 (1860) 200,000 (1870) Northern Star Illustrated London News Provincial press High circulation figures 18,500 (1840) 65,000 (1861) 60,886 (1877) 48,000 (1839) 100,000 (1860) 70,000 (1870) Preston Guardian 8,500 (1860) 15,500 (1868) Manchester Guardian 20,000 (1860) 30,000 (1870) Circulation area is national Reports on all parts of country Reports on national institutions – Parliamentary news Reports on the nation’s dealings with other nations – diplomatic news National reputation Calls itself national     x but  x Lloyd’s  Reynolds’s x Lloyd’s x Reynolds’s                    Sources: Seymour-Ure.op cit; Brown. op cit ;A.Ellegard, 'The Readership of the Periodical Sources: Seymour-Ure. op cit; Brown. op cit; A.Ellegard, 'The Readership of the Press in Mid-Victorian Britain II. Directory,' Victorian PeriodicalsNewsletter. Vol.13. Periodical Press in Mid-Victorian Britain II. Directory,' Victorian Periodicals Newsletter. 1971; Preston Guardian jubilee supplement. 17 17 February 1894. p.5. Vol.13. 1971; Preston Guardian jubilee supplement. February 1894. p.5. together both as a a series networks and as a system. The terms ‘network’ together both as series of of networks and as a system. The terms ‘network’ and ‘system’ follow the usage of Simon Potter, who describes as and ‘system’ follow the usage of Simon Potter, who describes networksnetworks as ‘informal, open, multiple, competing, and dynamic … differ from ‘informal,open, multiple, competing, and dynamic … systemssystems differ from networks in that they are dominated by a restricted number of powerful 21 organizations, whose interests together dictate more formal, entrenched, 22 and limited patterns of interconnection.’18 While individual titles did not circulate nationally, much of their content did. The systems and networks which made the provincial press a national entity were an open secret to those inside the industry, but largely unknown, or uninteresting, to readers. Those in the know included advertisers, trade bodies, syndicators of material such as serialised fiction, and the trade press. Further evidence of the national nature of the provincial press comes from analysis of common content in the papers themselves, and an understanding of the communication systems which enabled content to be shared, such as telegraphy, and the individuals and organisations that acted as ‘nodes’ in regional and national networks, such as local correspondents, news agencies and advertising agents. Advertisers saw the provincial press as one big system, rather than a collection of small outlets, as seen in the excerpt below from an 1856 article about the work of the advertising agent, usually based in London, who placed the same advertisement in many ‘country newspapers’. ‘A considerable portion of the advertisements in a country newspaper probably come from the metropolis, comprising announcements of books, patent inventions, or particular articles of trade, sales by auction, railway and other joint-stock schemes, &c, &c, as to all of which advertising is, more or less, necessarily a system [‘system’ in italics in the original], and is scarcely ever confined, on any one occasion, to one paper or one insertion but requires perpetual, or at least periodical repetition.’19 Advertising is, of course, an important part of print culture, too often neglected by researchers with a bias to the literary.20 Like advertisers and their agents, politicians also saw the provincial press in national terms, linked to their strategic understanding of the nation as a collection of local constituencies. ‘The provinces, not London, chose the overwhelming majority of MPs … Palmerston did not give £1,000 and the Carlton Club £10,000 to the provincial press from motives of charity.’ Gladstone gave preferential treatment to reporters from the Press Association (supplying provincial newspapers), rather than London journalists.21 Likewise the instigators of the Press Association, the Provincial Newspaper Society, explicitly set out to create a more formal network of newspaper proprietors.22 23 Newspaper proprietors such as William Tillotson in Bolton and William Leng in Sheffield set up ad hoc syndicates of provincial papers as markets for serialised fiction, providing initial publication of some works by authors such as Thomas Hardy and Wilkie Collins in the 1870s and 1880s. Crucially, each syndicate was made up of newspapers with complementary rather than overlapping circulation areas, with the explicit aim of covering the entire map; indeed, the composition of these syndicates give clues as to the territories in which each title sold. 23 Publications such as the Printers’ Register, Press News and the Journalist reported and commented on the provincial press as a system. Finally, nineteenth-century historians of the press also saw it in this way, for example Andrews: ‘The provincial press … is the canal of information which irrigates the country, and makes knowledge fruitful in the land; it is the great system of arteries which, circulating through the body politic, carries nourishment to, and receives strength from, the heart which is in London: it is as a hundred tributaries bringing their streams of intelligence into the source from whence springs the London press.’24 Shared content in the provincial press As with the term ‘national newspaper’, the phrase ‘local paper’ is used more often in the twenty-first century than in the nineteenth. Nowadays we think of a publication largely consisting of news about one locality. However, in the nineteenth century, local news usually made up a minority of the editorial content. There were also significant amounts of Parliamentary reports, foreign news and snippets from around the UK (the latter notably absent from the Times), leader columns on national politics, serialised fiction and so on. Law found that only a genuinely local paper, the Leigh Journal, circulating in and around one small town, had a significant amount of local news (see Table 3 below). However, these figures under-represent the amount of local content as a whole, which would include advertising, the correspondence column, some local features, and some leader columns on local topics. An analysis of the Preston Herald, a bi-weekly serving North and North-East Lancashire (Figures 2 and 3), reveals a higher proportion of local content than in Law’s sampled papers, whilst highlighting the complications of the term ‘local’. News about the town of Preston never made up more than 25 per cent of the paper, but it also carried a significant amount of news 24 Table 3 Local news as percentage of content, selected newspapers, 1888 Leigh Journal & Times, 1888 Nottinghamshire Guardian, 1888 Local news 25.8 11.7 National/ international news 18.4 23.4 10.5 6.3 Sheffield Weekly Telegraph, 1886 18 Sheffield Weekly Independent, 18.8 1888 Source: Law. op cit. Table 5.2, p.144. about other parts of Lancashire, a very large and populous county. News about Accrington may have been local to the Herald’s Accrington readers, but not to the majority; news about Liverpool, where the paper did not circulate, would not have been local to any of them. Editorial matter concerning Preston varied from six to 25 per cent, while coverage of other parts of North and North-East Lancashire varied between 11 and 35 per cent. Foreign news peaked at 19 per cent in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, while general features, such as a gardening column and fiction, increased over the period, from one per cent to ten per cent. Levels of local and county advertising followed trends similar to local and county news, while advertising for national goods and services increased. In total, nonlocal content varied between ten and 38 per cent in the Preston Herald. For smaller newspapers with fewer resources, non-local content might account for five out of eight pages. This non-local content — news from around the UK, from Parliament and other national institutions, foreign news and advertising for branded products such as patent medicines – was sold wholesale, to be retailed by each paper, in the same way that own-brand Corn Flakes are produced in one factory but sold under many different brand names around the country. Here I will discuss some of the sources of this content, before examining the methods by which the content was distributed. The sources for the shared content of the local and regional press were often the reporting staff of provincial newspapers, who also supplied some of the serialised fiction, alongside better-known ‘professional’ novelists. Freelance journalists were another important source, as were other newspapers, British and foreign, and advertising agents. In 1865, Anthony Hewitson was the chief reporter of the bi-weekly 25 Figure 2 Preston Herald editorial as % of total content, 1860-1900 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 Preston Lancs not Preston Lancs county Rest of UK National Foreign General features Source: Preston Herald, Harris Reference Library, Preston. Figure 3 Preston Herald advertising as % of total content, 1860-1900 25 Preston 20 Lancs not Preston 15 National 10 5 0 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 Source: Preston Herald, Harris Reference Library, Preston. 26 Preston Guardian. His diaries reveal that a substantial part of his working day was taken up with sending news reports to London and provincial papers,sometimes in his employer’s time. Below are some typical entries: Wed Sept 27: [Railway crash] ‘Just got to place in time to obtain particulars, which I sent off to 14 newspapers … Returned in evening & telegraphed half a column about accident to The Times.’ Thu Sept 28: ‘Got particulars of 16 cows being seized in cattle plague. Wrote it out for 20 papers.’ Wed Dec 6: ‘I reported an inquest on two children (ages between 5 & 7) suffocated in a house in Mellings Yard, Friargate during their mother’s absence. Sent report to 15 newspapers.’25 Hewitson was not unusual. A year before, Henry Lucy had become chief reporter of the Shrewsbury Chronicle, and also the Shrewsbury local correspondent of 'the principal daily papers in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds.'26 It seems likely that ambitious and hardworking reporters in every town and city took on a similar role, sending selected local news to London and provincial papers; in turn, these snippets would have been reproduced in other papers elsewhere. Further work is needed on the role of these local correspondents, in particular whether their importance lessened after the advent of the Press Association (PA) in 1870, when the distribution of news about the provinces may have become more systematised and less networked. However, Hewitson and his like may have acted as local correspondents for PA, and also sent news direct to other papers, in parallel (late-twentieth-century provincial reporters certainly operated in this way). In 1890, the Journalist reported that ‘linage’ was one of the means which enabled him to ‘retire to some place in the country’.27 Fiction and other non-news content often originated in one part of the provincial network, before being disseminated across the country. In the 1870s and 1880s, when provincial newspapers were the primary publishers of new serial fiction, thanks to the syndicates of Tillotson in Bolton and Leng in Sheffield, much of the fiction was produced by local authors.28 So too with other content: a women’s column, entitled ‘A woman’s letter to women’ by Phillis [sic] Browne, seems to have made its first appearance in 1883, in the Liverpool Weekly Mercury, a weekend miscellany offshoot of the daily Liverpool Mercury. Three years later the same column was a feature of the South Wales Weekly News (‘the largest penny weekly in the 27 world’); by 1890 it was appearing in the Newcastle Weekly Courant under the name of Phyllis [sic] Browne; in the Manchester Times in 1891, and the South Wales Daily News by 1895.29 The ‘London Letter’ was a regular feature of provincial newspapers from early in the nineteenth century, retailing political and social gossip in a chatty style. Such columns were written by a rum assortment of staff journalists on London papers, freelances and hacks, who were mocked in the trade press for the doubtful veracity of their writing.30 Two of the most respectable such writers were Henry Lucy and Edmund Yates. Lucy’s column was syndicated to seven or eight provincial morning papers by the publisher of the Sheffield Independent, while Yates’s was distributed by a London advertising agent.31 Lesser known writers of London letters also supplied leading articles to the same provincial papers (most provincial leaders were customarily written about national and international politics, rather than local issues). The leaders and London letters of the Bury Times were written by the London newspaper editor J.M. Philp, from the paper’s birth in 1855 until its sale in 1890. Washington Wilkes, a London Radical journalist who wrote regularly for the Morning Star, also wrote leaders for the Preston Guardian until his death in 1864.32 It is not known whether such writers syndicated their material, or wrote exclusively for one provincial paper. Other leader columns in provincial papers came not from London but from other parts of the provinces. In the early years of the Sheffield Independent its editor, Robert Leader, commissioned leaders from the Rev John Pye Smith DD, theological tutor of Homerton College, and from Edward Baines Sr, editor of the Leeds Mercury. If this is correct, it suggests an acknowledgement that the circulation areas of the two papers were complementary.33 Earlier in the century, non-local origination of content for ‘local’ papers was taken to extremes: It was not unusual even at this time for a country paper to have a London editor. Writing of the year 1812, Mr Jerdan says: "It was better and more congenial employment to edit provincial newspapers in London, which, though absurd as it may seem at first sight, is just as effective (with a sub-editor on the spot for the local news, &c) as if the writer resided at the place of publication; for the political intelligence had to come from town to be handled in the country, and it was quite as easy and expeditious to have the news and the commentaries sent down together.”34 28 One such London-based editor, William Weir of the Glasgow Argus, was sacked for not producing enough local news.35 Provincial papers took much of their non-local material from other newspapers, periodicals and books. Sometimes a local paper would reproduce comment about the locality, flattering or otherwise, from ‘outsiders,’ as when the Preston Herald carried reports, with its own added commentary, from the Standard, Telegraph and Times about a speech by Lord Derby at a public meeting in Preston.36 In doing this, local papers continued one of their oldest functions, that of summarising any mentions of their town or subjects relevant to it, such as the Indian cotton trade or Parliamentary debates about protectionism, in the case of Preston. Every day, hundreds of newspapers were sent by post to each other’s offices, to be filleted for material, some of it acknowledged, some not. On pages 2 and 3 of the Preston Guardian for 1 September 1860, news was reproduced from the York Herald, Western Star, North British Mail, Times, Newcastle Chronicle and Manchester Guardian. While such summaries were probably the work of the local paper’s staff, other news taken from other publications was probably supplied ready-made, such as foreign news. On page 2 of the same issue of the Preston Guardian, reports are credited to The Nazione, the Corriere Mercantile of Genoa, Constitutionel (Italy), the Morning Star, Morning Herald, Times, Gazetta de Trieste, New York Tribune and New York Herald. Non-news content also came from a range of printed sources. The Preston Chronicle of 7 April, 1860 carried more than half a page of ‘literary extracts’, poetry, jokes and epigrams, ‘pickings from Punch’ and ‘gems of thought’. Sources included Grossmith’s Government upon First Principles, Fraser’s and Cornhill magazines, the Edinburgh Review, All The Year Round and Voltaire’s Letter concerning the English Nation. The Preston Guardian supplement of September 8, 1860 was typical of many provincial papers in taking its ‘Gardening operations’ column from the Gardener’s Chronicle and its review of the corn trade from the Mark Lane Express. Most morning and evening newspapers which carried betting news took their starting prices from one of three London papers, the Sportsman, Sporting Life or the Sporting Chronicle.37 However, there is some evidence that the practice of taking news from other papers declined towards the end of the century, particularly on better-staffed, higher-circulation titles: newspaper proprietor Alexander Mackie, comparing working practices in the 1890s and the 1860s, detected a reduced dependence on London newspapers in particular. In the sub-editors’ room: 29 as the gathering pile of original first-hand contributions accumulates, the sub-editor and his colleagues feel under no temptation to turn to contemporaries for second-hand news.38 We have seen where some of the shared content of provincial papers originated. Next, we will consider how it was ‘broadcast’ to the papers that published it. The spread of the railways, and the consequent improvement in postal speeds, facilitated the transport of news, in its raw form in letters and packets, and in more processed forms, as typeset copy, metal stereotypes and part-printed newspapers. William Saunders, owner of the Western Morning News and the Western Weekly News in Plymouth, the Eastern Morning News in Hull and the Northern Daily Express in Newcastle, used the train to share content between his far-flung papers. When he took over the Northern Daily Express in 1865, a disgusted James Macdonnell, then editor, described Saunders’ system: He has a manufactory in London, at which the news of the day is prepared and leaders written. The matter is then set up, and stereotyped three, four or five times. Then the stereotype blocks are sent, by evening trains, to the papers belonging to the firm, and to others with which they have an arrangement for the supply of matter. Eight columns would reach us daily, including the leader! Yes, the leader! Our politics would come down from London daily, sir, by train, packed in a box. Charming, isn't it?39 Macdonnell’s disgust at the industrial nature of the process is deepened by the fact that the Northern Daily Express was a prestigious big-city morning paper rather than a small-town weekly like the Shrewsbury Chronicle, which also had ‘its principal leading article sent down by luggage train from London’.40 Snippets of news sent by local correspondents would also have travelled by train, as part of the postal system, although in later years they sent more urgent items by telegraph. The new technology was used mainly by staff and freelance journalists, to send reports to newspapers, but the telegraph companies also originated some news, such as share prices, via their Intelligence Departments. In November 1847 the Electric Telegraph Company sent the text of the Queen’s Speech to the press via 60 central 30 towns or railways stations. However, Barton’s claim that ‘this was the first time that all the major cities in Britain could read simultaneously about a national event’ is mistaken: readers of local weekly papers, most of them published on a Saturday, were already taking part in Benedict Anderson’s ‘extraordinary mass ceremony: the almost precisely simultaneous consumption’ of the same news. What was new in 1847 was the shortened time between the event and its appearance in print across the nation.41 The telegraph became much more important after 1870, when newspapers, individually and through the Provincial Newspaper Society (PNS), succeeded in persuading the government to nationalise the telegraphs, as part of the Post Office. Preferential press rates made viable a new venture, the Press Association, a news agency owned co-operatively by provincial newspapers (founded in 1868 and fully operational from 1870). PA gathered and redistributed news to provincial papers at cheap rates, independently of the London press. The Printers’ Register heralded its arrival thus: ‘The Press Association has now its network extended completely over the Kingdom, catching up every stray item of news, recording it, despatching it up to its central depository in the metropolis, and finally distributing it to all the cities, towns, and villages of Great Britain. The advantages of this vast organisation are open to the most modest country editor. The purport of tonight’s debate at [Westminster] will be known to every reader of to-morrow’s newspaper, from John O’Groats to the Land’s End.’42 The language accurately conveys an industrial process. And although PA used the national network of the provincial press to gather much of its news, its ‘central depository’ was indeed in the metropolis, as was the headquarters of another news agency, Reuters, which supplied foreign news to PA. There was recognition from the Printers’ Register that this could make many papers, not just provincial ones, merely local outlets for centrally processed news: The one objection we see to the [Press] Association is, that all newspapers will receive from them the same news, in the same form, or nearly so; so that one newspaper will be to this extent, at least, the duplicate of the other, which is an objection, even now, prejudicial to many local papers, and very observable even in the London press.43 31 PA, and the cheaply telegraphed news of other older-established agencies, stimulated the development of a new publishing genre, the provincial evening newspaper. Their numbers grew from 13 titles in 1870 to 68 in 1880.44 Telegraphed news, including horse-racing and football reports, accounted for much of their content and their appeal to readers, as seen in the prospectus for a new halfpenny evening paper, the Birmingham Daily Mail, launched in 1870: The advantage of a local evening paper, over the country editions of London journals, will be evident when we state that it will anticipate by several hours the news reaching Birmingham by the London evening papers.45 Another way in which the same news, and advertising, was published in hundreds of provincial papers was through partly printed sheets. Known informally as ‘middles’ or ‘insides,’ these pages of Parliamentary and foreign news, literary extracts, leader columns and other content, including adverts, were printed in London, and sent in packages by train to the offices of small local newspapers, where they could be run through a printing press to add local news and advertising on the other side of the paper. The Printers’ Register described how the service was used as a stepping stone by many provincial newspapers: The most inveterate opponent of partly-printed sheets cannot deny that they have “laid the foundations” of several of the most prosperous country papers. Many towns have been supplied with independent papers of their own, which would not otherwise have been thought worthy separate representation in the press; and many newspaper proprietors, now well-to-do and thriving, admit that had not this comparatively inexpensive mode of entering the business been presented to them, they would never have hazarded entering it at all.46 At least three London printing firms appear to have provided such a service, William Eglington, W Johnson and Cassell (see Figure 4), whose advert said that the partly printed sheets were ‘for local publication’.47 The official history of Cassell describes the service as ‘a country newspaper’ (singular rather than plural): 32 In 1862 they started a weekly newspaper, edited and printed at the Belle Sauvage, which was … intended for conversion into a provincial paper by the addition of local news, advertisements and name… By the end of 1864 there were 400 differently titled country newspapers, with an aggregate sale of 320,000 copies, printed by three London printers of whom Cassell's were one.48 Figure 4 Advertisement for Cassell’s partly printed news sheets, ‘for local publication’ Source: London, Provincial, and Colonial Press News, January 15, 1870. Law estimates that well over half of the 113 new English papers founded between 1854 and 1856, particularly those serving smaller communities, were produced with ‘insides’ syndicated from London.49 As the Printers’ Register hinted above, this system had its opponents. The same journal mockingly noted how: People who, at this season of the year, go from one watering-place to another, frequently observe a remarkable similarity among the newspapers that are published in the various places of resort. The Pumpington Courier, the Spaborough Chronicle, and the Shrimptonon-Sands Intelligencer are found to be alike as two peas to each other on certain pages of their broad-sheet. There is the same wondrous “London Letter”, the same “Fine Arts, Music and the Drama,” the same “Table-talk,” and the same digest of news.50 Histories of individual newspapers often mention mishaps concerning these 33 ‘middles’, as when pages with the wrong newspaper title arrived, a Liberal leading article was sent to a Tory paper, or they failed to arrive at all.51 Metal printing plates, known as stereotypes, ready to fit into a printing press, were also used to distribute common content to papers, such as serialised fiction, London Letters and adverts. In 1870 the Printers’ Register reported that the London Letters of Edmund Yates are farmed by a great London advertising agent, who provides the local editor with a column of Edmund Yates in consideration of the insertion of a column of London advertisements. The same London letter, signed by the author of “Black Sheep”, appears on the same date in a large number of provincial journals in different parts of the kingdom.52 The Central Press news agency, another brainchild of the energetic William Saunders, disseminated its material in a novel way, via The Central Press, ‘a Newspaper for Newspaper Proprietors’. This publication, with matter arranged in two columns on each compact page, was printed on one side of the paper only, presumably to assist compositors in setting it in type, and reached subscribing newspapers by train every afternoon or evening.53 The National Press Agency distributed their material in a similar newspaper format. Such methods, along with partly printed sheets and stereotyping, gathered material from across Britain and across the world, mainly in London, and sent it out again to the provinces. Sharing of content within chains of local newspapers, as seen with Saunders’ titles in the South-West and North-East, was rarely centred on London; more often, the headquarters of each chain acted as its own local or regional centre. Examples include Mackie’s seven Guardians, based in Warrington and covering most of Cheshire. Each edition had some unique local content, and some editorial and advertising in common with other papers in the chain. Tillotson’s Lancashire Journal series operated in a similar way, centred on Bolton and launched symbiotically with the syndication of serial fiction. George Bacon ran 13 papers centred on the Sussex Advertiser office in Lewes, stretching from Hastings to Croydon, and the Journalist of 1895 mentioned ‘four suburban journals, circulating in different districts in Essex’, under the same ownership, two Conservative, two Liberal. Inevitably, the centrally typeset leader columns were mixed up, with the readers of a Liberal paper receiving a Tory leading article. But 34 the largest nineteenth-century chain of local papers comprised the 24 titles owned by W.E Baxter, proprietor of the Sussex Agricultural Express, also based in Lewes; his titles circulated in Sussex, Hampshire and Kent. In the early 1880s Samuel Storey, founder of the Sunderland Echo, and Andrew Carnegie, the American steel magnate, created a syndicate of Radical papers around the country, including the London Echo, but the group disintegrated in 1885. ‘The real defect of the syndicate,’ according to Milne, ‘was its use of “conveyor-belt” leader writing at a time when the provincial press still retained considerable vigour.’ He quotes a competitor, the Newcastle Daily Chronicle: Experience would appear to show that, while the public do not object to the combination plan when applied to the collection of news, they do object to it when applied to the distribution of opinion. They will accept their facts or their “fiction” from a central source; but they like their expositions to have a local colouring, and to be impregnated with the knowledge brought to the minds of the expositors by the events transpiring around them.54 My PhD research into readers’ responses to the local press aims to test such claims, but it should be remembered that these were daily papers, perhaps engendering higher expectations in readers than small weekly papers. Genres and formats, in contrast to specific content, were also reproduced via the network of local and regional papers, in a process of ‘mimetic production.'55 Elsewhere in this journal, Fred Milton demonstrates how the genre of children’s interactive readers’ clubs, focused on animal protection and nature, spread quickly from Newcastle to other publishing centres. And the provincial sports special, a publishing genre invented in the 1880s, was copied by newspaper publishers so that by the Edwardian period it was an established newspaper institution. It is probably no coincidence that one of the first, the Football Field and Sports Telegram, was published by Tillotsons in Bolton, while one of the most highly developed, the Yorkshire Telegraph and Star Football and Sports Special (the Green ‘Un), was published by Leng in Sheffield, as these men were two of the most dynamic provincial newspaper publishers of the time, as shown by their domination of syndicated fiction (see Alex Jackson’s article in this journal, pp. 63-84). There is much more work to be done on identifying the genres of provincial newspaper publishing, their development and mimesis, in provincial and 35 metropolitan titles. Finally, it would be wrong to give an impression that most local and provincial papers had most of their content in common. This may have been true for struggling small-town weeklies and the first evening papers, but was less accurate for weekend miscellany papers, while the more prestigious and better staffed provincial morning papers were closer to metropolitan titles in their type of content and production methods (but still with substantial amounts of common content). In summary, the Victorian provincial press could be characterised both as a network, and as a system. As we have seen, the network was highly complex, made up of newspapers, local correspondents and advertisers, and local, regional and national connections. Its shape was far more than a simple radial relationship with London. There were, however, relationships of core and periphery, between London and the provinces, between central offices of newspaper chains and their subsidiary titles, and between publishing centres and correspondents in nearby towns with no newspaper of their own.56 These networks were used by more formal, centralised systems (again, not always centred on London), such as partly printed sheets, local newspaper chains and the practices of news agencies, advertising agents and syndicators. If we were to imagine a map, or series of maps, showing these networks and systems, they would show news radiating out from each local correspondent, creating a many-centred, criss-crossing network, supplemented by copies of provincial newspapers travelling from their place of publication to other provincial newspaper offices around the country. News also travelled from these provincial nodes to London, where it was received by newspapers, news agencies and publishers of partly printed sheets. Until undersea telegraph cables were laid, news also arrived from around the world at British ports, chiefly London and Liverpool, the latter usually the first to receive news from the Americas.57 From these ports, news taken from correspondence and foreign newspapers would fan out across the country. Local newspaper chains would be shown on such a map as small centres in Warrington, Bolton, Lewes and so on, with lines radiating out to each paper in the chain, and also linked to the national networks of news and other content. A map of the more formal systems would show fiction radiating from the major syndication centres of Bolton and Sheffield to provincial papers, and women’s columns and other syndicated content travelling from their provincial place of origin to other parts of the provinces. However, most 36 of the systems for distributing content were controlled from London: news, market prices and other non-news content travelled from the provinces to news agencies, notably the Press Association after 1870, and to publishers of partly printed sheets; some advertising copy for provincial branded products such as Beecham’s Pills may have originated in the provinces, before being sent to London advertising agents. News and other content such as London Letters and leader articles, literary extracts and women’s columns would then have radiated out from London to provincial newspaper publishers as stereotypes, partly printed newspapers, telegrams and individual copies of newspapers, via the postal system, the railways and the telegraph. It would also be fruitful, and very difficult, to map the circulation areas of different titles. Such an exercise would need to show the varying density of sales across an area, the overlaps between neighbouring papers, and the layering of different kinds of paper, from small-town weeklies to regional morning and weekly titles. Figure 5 below purports to show the circulation area of publications produced by one Nottingham company; it is likely that the Nottingham Journal had the widest circulation area, while the Nottingham Evening News had higher sales across a smaller area. The map is made simpler by ignoring the rival publishing centres of Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Grantham, Peterborough and Boston. Conclusions None of this is new, of course. The idea that there was no equivalent of our modern-day national newspapers in the nineteenth century, or that the provincial press was a national phenomenon, have been stated by many historians, although not at this level of detail.58 However, the import of these ideas has yet to influence the study of the nineteenth-century newspaper press, or of Victorian print culture. An obvious implication, for historians using newspapers as source material, is the impossibility of gaining a ‘national’ picture from newspapers such as the Times, which reported so little of the nation. For the study of print culture, we need to be more careful with our terminology, particularly the words ‘local’ and ‘national’; this can help in much-needed work on the relationship between the provincial and metropolitan press, on the role of the press in wider discourses of local, county, regional and national identities, and on the reading diets of nineteenthcentury print consumers. More clarity about the nature of the provincial press will assist in developing much-needed syntheses, to overcome the ‘tyranny of the discrete’. This clarity can also assist in separating editorial rhetoric from industrial reality. Finally, it urges us to work towards a truly 37 national history of print culture, rather than the distortedly London-focused one we have at present. Figure 5 Core and periphery: Advertisement for Nottingham Journal and Nottingham Evening News, 1926 Source: Newspaper Press Directory 1926, published by C Mitchell & Co Ltd (reproduced by permission of Wilmington Business Information Ltd). More careful use of terms such as ‘national’ and ‘local’ in discussions of print culture would specify whether these terms apply to the place of production, to the circulation area, the content or merely editorial aspirations. For example, Sheffield’s Green ‘Un was a provincial publication with circulation across three regions, the North-East, Yorkshire and part of the Midlands, covering a national topic, and often speaking with a national voice (see Jackson, this issue). Many papers in seaside resorts began as visitors’ lists with adverts targeted at tourists, 'thereby materially assisting strangers', as the Southport Visiter [sic] put it. They were published locally, and included some local content, but their eventual circulation was intended to be national or regional, as tourists were expected to post them to family and friends as a 'memento'.59 It would be misleading to describe such productions as local. In terms of circulation, titles such as the People’s Friend (Dundee) and Sheffield’s Weekly Telegraph made the transition from local or regional to national. 38 Greater clarity about such terms will aid further study of the relationships between the local, regional and national press. At a conceptual level, we sometimes struggle with the idea that the national can be created locally. Yet study of provincial print culture shows how these discourses were comfortably and skilfully combined, for instance in the building of national identities in local publications.60 Most of the provincial press could be characterised as both local and national. Therefore, to accept the national nature of the local press is not to deny the importance of local distinctiveness; something can be unique, yet have many elements in common with other unique things. A more holistic understanding of the geographies of print culture is easier to gain when we begin from the reader’s point of view, rather than individual titles. It is also easier to understand how local identities could be promoted by cultural forms largely originated, or processed, in the metropolis, if we grasp an essential aspect of newspapers, that they are not what they claim to be. By analogy, twenty-first century music fans’ awareness of the industrial nature of popular music production and distribution does not destroy their uniquely personal experience of that music; in the same way, nineteenthcentury readers used the ‘local’ press to develop many distinctive aspects of their local cultures, despite the similarity of their newspapers to those in the neighbouring town.61 Provincial newspapers presented themselves as local watchdogs, dedicated to publishing the truth, their circulation areas the centre of the papers’ world, produced by individuals committed to the good of the area, and offered as a forum for the debate of local issues. In fact, they were often set up to use spare printing capacity; to advertise the printer’s business; to promote a particular product for which the printer was an agent, to put a political candidate in power, or simply to make money. In smaller towns, most of the paper’s content was produced or processed in London, and identical to most of the content of hundreds of other papers around the country; a certain amount of its correspondence might have been written by the editor rather than readers; almost all its leaders might have been written by an individual who had never heard of the town where his views were published, let alone the title of the paper or the local impact of the national issues on which he wrote. This tension, between editorial rhetoric and the industrial methods of distributing such rhetoric, can be seen in the outrage of the Newcastle editor Macdonnell, and occasional comments in the trade press. 39 The rhetoric has been a barrier to treating the press, provincial and metropolitan, as one big entity, rather than many small entities. Too much provincial press history has been akin to a history of the railways which studies only stations, and ignores the lines which connect them. Analysing the press as a number of overlapping networks and systems can assist us in focusing on types of content, rather than discrete titles or discrete publishing genres. Studying local papers and magazines as miscellaneous collections of texts which are produced, circulated, reconfigured and re-circulated, enables us more easily to connect them to wider cultural and social phenomena, such as dialect literature, poetry, fiction, the conduct of controversies and oral practices including open-air lecturing, public meetings and preaching.62 Raising the status of the provincial press as an object worthy of historical study, and treating it as a whole rather than in parts, makes possible a more synthetic history of the English newspaper and periodical press, which takes account of factors such as distance from London, railway and telegraph links, local and regional economies and distinctive literary and publishing traditions. There are methodological difficulties, not least the terrifying volume of provincial print, but digitisation has begun to make the material manageable. Concepts such as literary quality, or the ‘influence’ of a particular title, have been left unexamined by historians, and have led to an imbalance in the study of provincial and metropolitan print, an imbalance which has little historical basis. When more work has been done on the provincial press, the eventual aim should be to combine it with what we know of London publications, to develop a broader history of print culture. If the provincial press was a system, it was a bigger system than the London press, although obviously closely connected to London. There were more provincial papers, and together they sold more than the combined London press; so they were probably read more than the London press, so perhaps they were more influential than the London press. Perhaps, for the ‘common reader’, provincial newspapers and periodicals were not on the fringe of nineteenth-century print culture, but at the very heart of it. NOTES 1. This article is based on PhD research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The author is grateful to Alexander Jackson, Dave Russell, Steve Caunce and Dawn Archer for comments on an earlier version, and to Aled Jones and other participants at the ‘Place in Print, Print in Place’ conference. 2. This significant but under-researched genre is termed the ‘supplementary weekly’ by Graham Law, one of the few scholars to have studied it (G. Law, Serializing Fiction in the Victorian Press. (Palgrave. Basingstoke 2000). p.137.) 40 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24 P. Brett, 'Early Nineteenth-Century Reform Newspapers in the Provinces: The Newcastle Chronicle and Bristol Mercury,' in T. O'Malley and M. Harris (eds), Studies in Newspaper and Periodical History : 1995 Annual. (Greenwood. London 1997). p.50; C. Seymour-Ure, The British Press and Broadcasting Since 1945. (Blackwell. Oxford 1996). p.16. H. Whorlow, The Provincial Newspaper Society. 1836-1886. A Jubilee Retrospect. (Page, Pratt & Co. London 1886). pp.16-17. For the national nature of the provincial press in the late eighteenth century, see D. Eastwood, Government and Community in the English Provinces, 1700-1870. (Macmillan. Basingstoke 1997). p.74. For the rise of the national press in the twentieth century, see Seymour-Ure. op cit. p.16. J.D. Marshall, The Tyranny of the Discrete: a Discussion of the Problems of Local History in England. (Scolar. Aldershot 1997). p.4. M. Milne, The Newspapers of Northumberland and Durham: a Study of Their Progress During the 'Golden Age' of the Provincial Press. (Graham. Newcastle upon Tyne 1971). p.14; A.J. Lee, 'The Structure, Ownership and Control of the Press, 18551914,' in D.G. Boyce, J. Curran, and P. Wingate (eds), Newspaper History From the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day. (Constable. London 1978). p.120. 19th Century British Library Newspapers (19CBLN) <http://find.galegroup.com/ bncn/> [accessed 11/3/2009]; advertisement for United Kingdom in Hull Packet, 19 October 1830; advertisement for The Britannia in the Morning Chronicle, 22 April 1839. 19CBLN. op. cit. Northern Star, 23 May 1840, p.4. 19CBLN. op. cit. The Bristol Mercury, 5 December 1896. 19CBLN. op. cit. ‘Scotch Notes’, The Belfast News-Letter, September 19, 1896, p.6. 19CBLN. op. cit. ‘The “Figaro” in England (from our Own Correspondent),’ Leeds Mercury, December 27 1877; Newcastle Courant, August 26 1881; Pall Mall Gazette, August 14 1886. Whorlow. op cit. Winckley Club, Preston, Minute Books, Lancashire Record Office, DDX 1895/1. Seymour-Ure. op cit. pp.18, 18-20. Royal Commission on the Press 1947-1949 Report, Cmnd 7700 June 1949, p.8, cited in Seymour-Ure. op. cit. p.19. A.P.Wadsworth, 'Newspaper Circulations, 1800-1954,' Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Society. Vol.9 March. 1955. S.Potter, 'Webs, Networks, and Systems: Globalization and the Mass Media in the Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Empire,' Journal of British Studies. Vol.46. 3. 2007, p.622. ‘The Advertising Agent’, Mitchell’s Newspaper Press Directory (NPD) 1856. p3. On advertising as evidence for readership, see Alison Toplis’s paper in this issue, p. 85-103 F.D.Roberts, 'Still More Early Victorian Newspaper Editors,' Victorian Periodicals Newsletter. Vol.18. December. 1972; C. Moncrieff, Living on a Deadline: a History of the Press Association. (Virgin. London 2001). pp.24-25. Whorlow. op. cit. p.15. Law. op. cit. pp.132-33. A. Andrews, The History of British Journalism: From the Foundation of the Newspaper Press in England to the Repeal of the Stamp Act in 1855, With Sketches of Press Celebrities. (Richard Bentley. London 1859). vol. 2. p.282. <http://books. google.co.uk/books?id=_dFZAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=alexander+an drews+history+of+british+journalism> [accessed 12/3/2009]. 41 25. Diary of Anthony Hewitson, 1865. Lancashire Record Office, DP512/1/1. 26. H.W. Lucy, Sixty Years in the Wilderness: Some Passages by the Way. (Smith, Elder. London 1909). p.57. 27. The Journalist. September 20, 1890. p.10. 28. Law. op. cit. p.148. 29. 19CBLN [accessed 11 March 2009]. Advertisement, Liverpool Mercury. November 30, 1883; advertisement, Bristol Mercury and Daily Post. December 1, 1886; Newcastle Weekly Courant. September 27, 1890; Manchester Times. September 4, 1891. 30. The writer of a London Letter makes a brief appearance in G. Gissing, (Ed. Taylor, D. J. ), New Grub Street. (Everyman. London 1997). p.269. 31. Lucy. op. cit. p.113; The Printers’ Register (PR). August 6, 1870. p.174. 32. The Journalist. July 12, 1890. p.10, S.J. Reid, Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid, 18421885. (Cassell. London 1905). p.76. 33. Roberts. op. cit. p.14. 34. Andrews. op. cit. p.125. 35. K.J.Cameron, 'Finance, Politics and Editorial Independence in the Early Victorian Provincial Press: The Case of the Glasgow Argus 1833-1847,' Publishing History. 5. 1979. p. 85. 36. Preston Herald. 29 October 1870. 37. M.McIntire, 'Odds, Intelligence, and Prophecies: Racing News in the Penny Press, 1855-1914,' Victorian Periodicals Review. Vol.41. 4. 2008. p.357. 38. J.B. Mackie, Modern Journalism, a Handbook of Instruction and Counsel for the Young Journalist. (Crosby, Lockwood and Son. London 1894). p.112. 39. Letter from James Macdonnell to H. Gilzean Reid, 1 May 1865, in W.R. Nicoll, James Macdonnell, Journalist. (Hodder and Stoughton. London 1890). p.112. 40. Lucy. op cit. p.46. J. Curran, ‘The industrialisation of the press’, in J. Curran and J. Seaton, Power without Responsibility: Press and Broadcasting in Britain. (Routledge. London 2003). 41. R.N. Barton, Construction of the Network Society: Evolution of the Electric Telegraph 1837-1869 (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of London, 2007). pp.195-96, p.211; B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. (Verso. London 2006). p.35. 42. ‘Town talk on trade topics’, PR supplement. March 7 1870. p.65. 43. PR. December 7 1868, p.293. 44. A.J. Lee, The Origins of the Popular Press in England: 1855-1914. (Croom Helm. London 1976). p.122. 45. PR. October 6, 1870, p.220. There is no history of the British evening newspaper as a genre. 46. ‘Provincial journalistic enterprise: The Wellington Journal,’ PR. January 6 1871. p.1. 47. Johnson, of Fleet Street, began this service in 1852 (PR. July 6 1870. p.145), Eglington, of 163 Aldersgate Street, London, began in 1855 (NPD. 1865. p.174). 48. D. Dixon, 'New Town, New Newspapers: the Development of the Newspaper Press in Nineteenth-Century Middlesbrough,' in P. Isaac and B. McKay (eds), The Moving Market: Continuity and Change in the Book Trade. (Oak Knoll Press. New Castle, DE 2001). p.108; ‘Provincial Journalistic Enterprise: “Mackie’s Series of Newspapers,”’ PR. July 6 1870. p.145; S. Nowell-Smith, The House of Cassell, 1848-1958. (Cassell. London 1958). p.78. 49. Law. op cit. p.251. 50. PR. August 6 1870. p.174. 42 51. ‘First number,’ October 26, 2004 <http://www.teesdalemercury.co.uk/teesdale-news/ feature,820.html> [accessed 10 March 2009]; Nowell-Smith. op cit. p.78; J. Ogden, ‘The Birth of the “Observer,”’ Rochdale Observer. 17 February 1906. 52. Law. op cit. p.104, A.G. Jones, Press, Politics and Society: a History of Journalism in Wales. (University of Wales Press. Cardiff 1993). pp. 27, 67; PR. August 6 1870. p.174. 53. PR supplement. January 6 1871. p.19. 54. PR. July 6, 1870. pp.145-46; J. Grant, The Newspaper Press: Its Origin, Progress and Present Position, Vol.3. The Metropolitan Weekly and Provincial Press. (Routledge. London 1871). pp.223, 347-48; The Journalist. July 6 1895. p.210; Milne. op cit. pp.124-27. 55. L. Erickson, The Economy of Literary Form: English Literature and the Industrialization of Publishing, 1800-1850. (Johns Hopkins University Press. London 1996). p.8. 56. For an illuminating study of early 19th-century Manchester’s core-and-periphery relationship with Oldham, see M.Winstanley, 'News From Oldham: Edwin Butterworth and the Manchester Press, 1829-1848,' Manchester Region History Review. Vol.4. 1. 1990. 57. Barton. op cit. pp.208, 210. 58. L. Brown, Victorian News and Newspapers. (Clarendon Press. Oxford 1985), p.125; Eastwood. op cit. p.74; Jones. op cit; Lee op cit. p.73. 59. A. Jackson, ‘Football Coverage in the papers of the Sheffield Telegraph, c1890-1915,’ this issue; A Century of Progress 1844-1944, Southport Visiter. (Southport Visiter. Southport 1944). p.2. 60. A. Jones, 'The 19th Century Media and Welsh Identity,' in L. Brake, B. Bell, and D. Finkelstein (eds), Nineteenth-Century Media and the Construction of Identities. (Palgrave. Basingstoke 2000); D.Russell, 'The Heaton Review, 1927-1934: Culture, Class and a Sense of Place in Inter-War Yorkshire,' Twentieth Century British History. Vol.17. 3. 2006. p.346; the Northern Star made local news part of a national discourse (J. Epstein, The Lion of Freedom: Fergus O’Connor and the Chartist Movement, 1832-1842. [Croom Helm. London 1982]. p.60, cited in C. Yelland, ‘Speech and Writing in the Northern Star’, Labour History Review, Vol. 65.1.2000, p.22) 61. Brown. op cit. p.82. 62. M.Beetham, 'Ben Brierley's Journal,' Manchester Region History Review. Vol.17. 2. 2006. 43