Overview

According to the opening article in the first issue of this magazine, the Abbey Foregate Congregational Church Literary Society was founded in 1893. Meetings were held weekly, and it was quite a large society of predominantly young men and women: it was reported that between two and three hundred people often attended, and the number grew to three or four hundred by 1897.

It was three years before they decided to start their own magazine. The first issue was put into print in March 1896 and cost 2d. The second issue appeared over a year later in April 1897, and the cost went up to 3d. It seems that production costs were covered by both the subscriptions and the advertisements for local businesses that are included at the front and back of both issues. Each issue is 18 pages in length.

This miscellany contains a mixture of various non-fiction articles, a few fictional stories, a number of reports on past society meetings and several original photographs that accompany the articles.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Abbey Foregate Congregational Church Literary Society (Shrewsbury)

Date of Existence

1896?-1897?

Date of Magazine

March 1896 and April 1897

Number of Issues

2

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Print (Shrewsbury: W. G. Napier, Printer, 1896); (Shrewsbury: W. G. Napier, Printer, 1897)

Contents and Contributions

Advertisements; Articles (non-fiction); Fiction/Narratives; Photographs; Poems (original); Poem (republished material); Reports; Table of Contents; Title pages

Repository

Shropshire Archives (Shrewsbury)

Reference

NO4212/7/1/1-2

The mutual improvement group that produced this magazine was based at River Terrace Church (River Terrace was later renamed Colebrooke Row), Islington, London. The church was built in 1834 for its Scottish congregation. The River Terrace Young Men’s Association later became The River Terrace Bible Class, before changing again to the Islington Presbyterian Church Young Men’s Association in 1862.

There are two minute books (also housed in the London Metropolitan Archives) and three extant volumes of a manuscript magazine from this later group (see also LMA catalogue for the records of the earlier River Terrace groups). From these, we know that the association was made up of young Scottish men that met weekly at the church between December and June, a session that was a bit unusual for this type of society.  The object of the association was the ‘moral, intellectual and religious improvement of the Young men connected with the church’. Women were allowed to join as full members in January 1891. Four years after its founding, the group started its own manuscript magazine for its members.

In 1866, the first issue of The Aemulus was produced. The contributions to the issue were previously read aloud at the society’s ‘Magazine Nights’. ‘Magazine Evenings’ or ‘Magazine Nights’ were meetings that were devoted to the reading of original essays (or occasionally poems) written by group members that were submitted to the Magazine Editor beforehand. The Editor would be responsible for collecting, occasionally selecting, and reading the pieces aloud to the group (more rarely this was done by the contributor him/herself) on the appointed night. This would be followed by ‘criticism’ — or discussion on the piece’s positive and negative points — by the group members.

After the meetings, these contributions were sometimes bound and saved in the society’s library (if they had one) or would be kept by one of the office bearers. In these cases, it was intended that the magazine was to be preserved and that group members would have access to it at a later date. It is of note that literary and mutual improvement groups used the term ‘magazine’ to refer to the oral as well as the material medium.

The 1866 volume serves as a ‘typical’ example of the later volumes. There are 35 prose pieces, 14 poems (of which two that are listed as such in the front ‘Index’ are acrostics), one musical score for piano and one voice, three illustrations, and six photographs of Office Bearers. According to the ‘Preface’, the pieces were produced over the course of one year, and nineteen members and two non-members contributed.

As the Editor, Thomas William Thacker, wrote at the beginning of the volume, ‘[t]his manuscript magazine was started to give the members of the Islington Presbyterian Church Young Men’s Association a means of committing to paper thoughts more or less matured. It is strictly anonymous: and few beyond the fellow members have seen the parts as they were issued month by month.’ While the group continued to meet until 1894 (at least), it is currently unknown if they continued to produce their magazine after 1878.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Islington Presbyterian Church Young Men’s Association (London)

Date of Existence

1862-1894?

Date of Magazine

Vol. I, ‘(Parts IX)’, 1866; Vol. III, 1868-1869; Vol. III [sic], 1878

Number of Issues

3

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Art/Illustrations (original); Articles (non-fiction); Editorials; Essays; Indexes; Lists of Office Bearers; Magazine Rules; Music; Photographs (members); Poems (original); Prefaces; Puzzles; Title pages

Repository

London Metropolitan Archives

Reference

LMA/4303/E/04/015;
LMA/4303/E/04/016;
LMA/4303/E/04/017

Overview

Like The College Stethescope, this magazine was founded by and for the students of the University of Glasgow (see ‘Additional Notes’ below).

In the ‘Preface’, the purpose of the magazine was set out: ‘Our aim has been to relieve the severities of academical study, by furnishing a volume, in which instruction should be combined with amusement’ (‘Preface’, The Athenaeum, An Original Literary Miscellany, ed. by Students in the University of Glasgow (Glasgow: Printed by Hutchinson & Brookman, For Robertson & Atkinson; Constable & Co., Edinburgh; and Hurst, Chance & Co., London, MDCCCXXX [1830]), p. v).

There are 242 pages with 45 contributions in this magazine, which consists of essays and poems. There are a few translations of poems into English, but also a couple translated from English into Latin and Greek. There is roughly an equal mix of poetry and prose.

Authors sometimes chose to identify themselves, but in a number of cases either their initials or a pen-name was used. Original pieces appear alongside works by (more) established authors and poets. For example, several of Thomas Atkinson’s poems appear in this volume. (For more information about Thomas Atkinson (1801?–1833), see the article, ‘Atkinson, Thomas (1801?-1833)‘, by Thomas Finlayson Henderson in Volume 2 of the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, which is available on the Wikisource website. See also the entry for ‘Atkinson, Thomas, ? 1801-1833, poet and writer, bookseller‘ on the University of Strathclyde Archives website.)

According to the ‘Preface’, contributions were accepted from various quarters and not just from the students nor just from men: ‘extra-collegiate friends’ were thanked, as was one Mrs. Grant of Laggan for her poem.

It is currently unknown if any further issues were produced.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

(Students of the University of Glasgow)

Date of Existence

1830-?

Date of Magazine

1830

Number of Issues

1

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Print (Glasgow: Printed by Hutchinson & Brookman, For Robertson & Atkinson; Constable & Co., Edinburgh; and Hurst, Chance & Co., London, MDCCCXXX [1830])

Contents and Contributions

Articles (non-fiction); Dedication page; Essays; Fiction/Narrative; Poems (original); Poems (republished material); Poems (translation); Preface; Reviews; Table of Contents

Repository

Mitchell Library Special Collections (MLSC)

University of Glasgow Special Collections (UGSC)

Reference

Mitchell (GC) 311821 (MLSC)

Sp Coll Bh12-g.39; Sp Coll Mu21-d.22 (two copies available) (UGSC)

Additional Notes

See also The College Stethescope and Literary Index.

Overview

A summary of the history of the Albion Mutual Improvement Union is available on our sister website, Glasgow’s Literary Bonds (see ‘Additional Notes’ below).

There are three extant issues of this quarterly manuscript magazine which are bound individually. This is a relatively slim periodical: the second issue has 111 pages with 18 contributions; the third  has 104 pages with 14 contributions; and the fourth has only 80 pages with 8 contributions. Of note is that there is no artwork in any of these issues.

The first page of the April 1862 issue has an ‘Order of Readers’, which lists 21 names (the July issue only lists 17), presumably all men (some are listed with their first initial only). We know, however, that non-members also read the magazine: a letter to the Editor from a lady named Lizzie can be found in this issue, in which she reviews the previous number. It was not unusual for these magazines to be passed among family and friends outwith the ‘official’ list of readers.

Underneath this list, readers are told that they are allowed only two nights for perusing the magazine, and that they were to keep it ‘as clean as possible‘. In addition, ‘No writing or scribbling [was] allowed within its pages on any consideration’. This suggests that readers of the previous issue engaged in this practice. Nonetheless, a child’s (?) scribblings can indeed be found on pages 90 and 91, and a few corrections to the text in pencil are sparsely distributed throughout the issue.

According to the ‘Prefatory’, the members were not previously acquainted with the idea of a society magazine, but after reading the first issue, the project caught on. Indeed, the Editor ventured to say that he hoped it might be possible to have the magazine in print one day.

The contributors use pen-names to sign their pieces, but we are told that the Editors have taken the trouble to re-write them (there were reportedly at least two Editors). This was an uncommon practice in mutual improvement and literary groups. It was usually done to try to maintain the anonymity of the authors as their respective handwriting was presumably recognisable by other group members. This practice also helped to give a uniformity to the magazine, which, for some societies was of some import. In this case, the Editors might have taken it in turns to rewrite it, perhaps even changing Editors within one piece. For example, the handwriting at the start of several contributions begins in neat script, and when one turns the page, the characters are much larger and looser, and appear to be a different handwriting altogether.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Albion Mutual Improvement Union (Glasgow)

Date of Existence

13 September 1860-1863?

Date of Magazine

No. 2 (April 1862); No. 3 (July 1862); No. 4 (June 1863)

Number of Issues

3 (extant)

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Address; Annotations; Articles (non-fiction); Circulation Lists; Correspondence columns; Debates; Essays; Game (acrostic); Letters to Editor; Poems (original); Prefaces; Serial articles/stories; Tables of Contents

Repository

Mitchell Library Special Collections

Reference

Mitchell (AL) 891260

Additional Notes

See also entry for Albion Mutual Improvement Union on our sister website, Glasgow’s Literary Bonds.

Overview

The Attic Journal, launched in 1848, while not explicitly affiliated with a particular society, was edited by Peter Begg, who was also a member of other literary societies in Dundee. Its readers included John Sime and two members of the Scrymgeour family, also familiar names; as well as a Gow, who may be poet James Gow, and unusually for Dundee manuscript magazines, two women, Miss Cook and Miss Cooper.

Peter Begg was a temperance activist and political campaigner. His convictions are evident in the magazine’s editorial, which was more explicitly class-conscious than many of the other MS magazines in Dundee. The editorial reflects on a sense that that existing magazines’ focus was too narrow both in subject matter and in function, only aiming to improve their own contributors while ‘millions of souls’ existed in ignorance of their own value and with little control over their lives:

“We know that the Journal will not circulate among the class on whose behalf it is originated, but we wish to create a sympathy among our own readers on behalf of their own less fortunate fellow mortals, and this sympathy once established, will extend itself and make its influence felt. […] We chiefly desire to assert the dignity and claim the rights and privileges of man – to reach the hearts of the ignorant and degraded many by homely appeals, rather than captivate, by splendid literary productions, the souls of the intellectual few.”

The Attic Journal is also a particularly good example of how conflict could occur within literary societies, and the ways people reacted to it. They republished a long letter sent by someone writing as “Abillimo” (potentially Begg himself) to the Dundee Natural History and Literary Magazine, defending Begg’s poem “The Bonnie Woods of Luthrie” after it met with harsh criticism there. The ‘hurried and thoughtless’ criticism, Abillimo suspects, must originate from “the debilitating influence of some secret antipathy towards the poet himself. Such ought not to be!” Later, Abillimo makes more general comments on criticism in Dundee literary societies: “Criticism, in M.S. magazines, does no good. It has just now created divisions, and strife in the Lochee Literary Society, and the horrible scenes that took place on magazine criticism night, at the Literary Institute, are beyond description. Believe me, it does no good.” It is likely the strife between Dundee societies was made worse by the fact that so many of them were operating within a very small central area at the same time, probably competing for writers and attention.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

(Currently unknown) (Dundee)

Date of Existence

1848?-?

Date of Magazine

Vol. I, No. 1, January 1848

Number of Issues

1

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Editorial; Essays; Letter to ‘Critic’; Poems (original); Title page

Repository

Dundee District Central Library, The Wellgate

Reference

266(1), Lamb Collection

Additional Notes

These magazines were collected in the 1860s by A.C. Lamb, a Dundee temperance hotelier. Many of the societies represented met on premises owned by either himself or, in earlier decades, in his father Thomas’ coffee house. Lamb was often involved in society life himself, and his collection of over 450 boxes covers a wide range of material relating to literature, poetry, culture and politics in Victorian Dundee. For more information on this material, please contact local.history@leisureandculturedundee.com.