Overview

A summary of the history of the Kelvinside Parish Church Literary Society is available on our sister website, Glasgow’s Literary Bonds (see ‘Additional Notes’ below).

There is only a single extant issue of this society’s (yearly?) magazine, which is bound with a softcover and imprinted with the title and year on the front. With the exception of the title page, this magazine is entirely in typescript. There are 80 pages with a total of 25 short contributions, being mostly prose essays, a couple of sketches, and only three original poems. If the two articles on Robert Burns that include extracts of his poems is added, the number of pieces with poetry rises to five.

Unlike other periodicals of this type, this society devoted a larger percentage of its magazine to its own activities: over a quarter of the contributions were on the literary society’s meetings and socials. Most of the pieces are anonymous, with authors signing with pen-names, and only one essay’s author using initials.

Included in this issue is a page of jokes and a piece called, ‘Do you Know?’, which lists thirteen trivia questions about the society, some of which are jokes. The five pen-and-ink illustrations were all done by the same artist (E.N. Payne).

At the end of the magazine is the society’s eighth annual report (Session 1903-04) and its financial statement for the same session.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Kelvinside Parish Church Literary Society (Glasgow)

Date of Existence

1895-1926?

Date of Magazine

1903-04

Number of Issues

1

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Type-script, with illustrations

Contents and Contributions

Annual Report; Art/Illustrations (original); Essays; Financial Statement; Jokes; Poems (original); Poems (republished material); Sketches; Title page

Repository

Glasgow City Archives

Reference

CH2/1149/9/2/2

Additional Notes

See also entry for Kelvinside Parish Church Literary Society on our sister website, Glasgow’s Literary Bonds.

Overview

A summary of the history of the Kent Road United Presbyterian Church Young Men’s Institute is available on our sister website, Glasgow’s Literary Bonds (see ‘Additional Notes’ below).

The one extant issue of this magazine is a miscellany comprising 162 pages with 11 contributions being mostly prose essays and only two original poems. If we include the article entitled ‘Peasant Poet: Charles Davelin’, that includes extracts of his poems, the number of poetry contributions rises to three. (For a discussion of the work of Chartist poet Davelin (or Davlin), see Michael Sanders, The Poetry of Chartism: Aesthetics, Politics, History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).) Outwith the illustration on the title page (shown in the accompanying photograph, which is a copy of the cover of The Sword and the Trowel, a Christian magazine founded in 1865), there is no artwork in this issue.

There are 35 listed readers in the circulation list at the front of the magazine. However, it was not unusual for these magazines to be passed among family and friends outwith the ‘official’ list of readers.

The Editors’ ‘Notes to Readers’ at the front of the magazine acts as a list of rules for the submission of contributions. Also, it gives the length of time allowed for reading the magazine (two days), and adjures readers to promptly deliver the issue to the next person on the waiting list, a rule that was, apparently, routinely transgressed by several members previously. In addition, the Editors request that contributors and ‘critics’ (i.e. readers who wrote in their comments on the articles and/or the magazine after reading) use a pen-name. Critics were to use the blank pages provided at the back of the magazine for their ‘criticisms’, and these were to be not too lengthy. There are 20 pages of readers’ criticisms at the back of this issue.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Kent Road United Presbyterian Church Young Men’s Institute (Glasgow)

Date of Existence

1 November 1865-?

Date of Magazine

No. 2, Vol. 3 (1 April 1872)

Number of Issues

1 (extant)

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Annotation; Circulation List; Correspondence column; Editorial; Essays; Magazine Rules; Poems (original); Preface; Readers’ Criticisms; Serial article/story; Sketch; Table of Contents;  Title page

Repository

Mitchell Library Special Collections

Reference

725431

Additional Notes

See also entry for Kent Road U. P. [United Presbyterian] Church Young Men’s Institute on our sister website, Glasgow’s Literary Bonds.