Overview

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

The first issue of this magazine was produced in January 1893, four months after the club was founded. According to its Editor, the magazine was ‘instituted in order to allow those who are not public speakers or orators to contribute in writing original pieces of Literature’ (Andrew Ross, ‘Editorial’, New Literary Club Magazine, 18 January 1893, p. 3). At that point, the club had not yet worked out what pieces to include within it, but members generally agreed that these should be on subjects ‘which are common and instructive to all’ (Ibid).

There are 9 issues of this (mostly) monthly magazine bound into four volumes. With the exception of one poem in typescript in the December 1893 issue, all of the pieces are in manuscript.

Most of the issues run about 40 pages each with between 9 and 17 contributions (including the frontispieces). The largest issues were those produced in Summer 1894 and Spring 1895, which average about 130 pages and just over 20 contributions apiece (the largest, the Summer 1894 issue, having 27 contributions).

These issues contain mostly prose works with about ten percent of the contributions overall being poems, all of which are in the authors’ own handwriting, with most choosing to sign their own names. There are also a small number of puzzles and games throughout.

While this club was restricted to men, from the editorials, we know that women contributed a few pieces  (a small percentage overall) of artwork to its magazine. The artwork is in a variety of media, but a sizeable percentage of the illustrations are in pencil, which is a bit unusual.

There is one (extant) issue of the magazine that the club produced under its new name, the Literary Twenty-One Club, which clearly carries on the format and style of the previous issues that were produced by the group as the New Literary Club, with several of its old members staying on (see ‘Additional Notes’ below).

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

The New Literary Club was formed in 1892. In 1896, it became the Literary Twenty-one Club. Even later, it amalgamated with the Holyrood Literary Society and took its name on 24 September 1897. On 3 October 1899, it changed its name to The Holyrood Literary Club, thento  The New Holyrood Literary Club. Later it was simply known as The Holyrood Club. (Glasgow)

Date of Existence

9 September 1892 – 21 April 1896; 21 April 1896 – 24 September 1897 (as Literary Twenty-One Club); on 24 September 1897 it amalgamated with Holyrood Literary Society and took its name

Date of Magazine

January 1893; [February?] 1893; [March?] 1893; October 1893; November 1893; December 1893; January 1894; Summer 1894; Spring 1895

Number of Issues

9 issues in 3 bound volumes

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Annotations; Art/Illustrations (original); Articles (non-fiction); Circulation List; Club notices; Editorials; Epilogue; Essays; Frontispieces; Jokes; Letters to Editor; Maps; Music; Photographs; Poems (original); Poems (republished material); Poem (translation); Prize competition; Puzzles; Readers’ criticisms (unused section); Serial articles/stories; Sketches; Song (original); Table of Contents

Repository

Mitchell Library Special Collections

Reference

(Note: The records for this club are housed together with the records of The Holyrood Club (891047))

Additional Notes

See also entry for New Literary Club on our sister website, Glasgow’s Literary Bonds.

See also The Literary Twenty-One Club Magazine and The Holyrood Magazine.

The young men’s association that founded this magazine met on Friday evenings in the 1860s at least. It is currently unknown if it was connected to the Newington United Presbyterian Church. The church was opened in 1848 and located on the corner of Grange Road and Causewayside in Newington, Edinburgh. (For a history of this church, see Newington United Presbyterian Church: Jubilee memorial, 1848-1898 (1898), available on the Archive.org website. See also the article, ‘Salisbury Church (Newington South Church)‘ on the Mayfield Salisbury Parish Church website.)

According to the Editor, the group had very modest aims for its new production, and he himself foresaw no great literary benefit to posterity. Rather, its purpose was to help society members improve their writing skills, as well as for the ‘edification of its readers’. The group apparently desired only a limited reading community with ‘merely a local circulation’. If its readership did extend beyond the group, it was hoped that their youthful, inexperienced productions would not be too harshly judged. The contributors were to include both current as well as former members as a means of keeping their ties to the association.

This miscellany has a total of 358 pages and includes 32 contributions. These consist mostly of essays and articles on a range of subjects with a few original poems, along with extracts of published poems in a couple of the essays, one example being a paper on ‘Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and His Works’.

Interestingly, in a letter to the Editor from ‘One who takes an interest in Young Men’, the writer suggests that the magazine could be improved by the inclusion of blank pages in each issue so that readers might be able to criticise the contributions (in the sense of discussing the piece’s positive and negative points). The writer refers to the practise in other magazines: ‘I have heard of this being done in other magazines and I believe the plan had a salutory [sic] effect in helping keep down the conceit of the young men’ (p. 274). The Editor’s note after the letter indicates that he would leave the decision with the association. The practice of leaving blank pages in these society magazines was a trend that was just beginning in the 1860s, and would become one of the defining features of this genre of magazine.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Newington Young Men’s Association (Edinburgh)

(Note: currently unclear if this is the same association as the Young Men’s Association in connection with Newington United Presbyterian Church)

Date of Existence

1869?-?

Date of Magazine

Vol. 1, 1869

Number of Issues

1

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Art/Illustrations (original); Articles; Editorial; Essays; Letters to Editor; Poems (original); Poems (republished material); Table of Contents

Repository

Edinburgh Central Library

Reference

From the card catalogue in Central Library: Class No. YAS 122 N54; Book No. 81426 A

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Young Men’s Association in connection with Newington United Presbyterian Church (Note: see Newington Literary Society; currently unclear if this is the same assoc.) (Edinburgh)

Date of Existence

1887?-1888?

Date of Magazine

Vol. 1, 1888

Number of Issues

1

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Repository

Edinburgh Central Library

Reference

Overview

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

North British Railway Literary Society (Glasgow)

Date of Existence

1900?-?

Date of Magazine

Feb. 1901, Dec. 1901

Number of Issues

2

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Type-script (& copied to distribute?)

Contents and Contributions

Repository

National Records of Scotland

Reference

BR/NBR/4/282; BR/NBR/4/283