Overview

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

St. Paul’s Mutual Improvement Society (Bennett Street Sunday School, Manchester) (by 1875, became the Literary and Educational Society)

Date of Existence

Oct. 1843-1962

Date of Magazine

1855-1962 (issued annually)

Number of Issues

102 (1855-1962) (Note: 60 issues produced within the date rage of this study)

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Repository

Manchester Archives and Local Studies

Reference

M38/4/2/1-106 (magazines within date range of this study: GB127.M38/4/2/1-60)

Overview

The one (extant?) issue of this magazine currently housed in Argyll and Bute Archives is a photocopy of the original manuscript.

The ‘Order of Circulation’ at the front of the issue lists 36 male members. From the ‘Introductory remarks by the Editor’, we learn that the society met weekly on Tuesday evenings.

This group is particularly notable for their very keen desire to found a society magazine, in that they probably produced it within about a week:

‘The proposal of having Manuscript Magazine in connection with our Association, first suggested at one meeting, adopted at the next, and the result is in the hands of the members at the third’ (‘Introductory remarks by the Editor’, Helensburgh Young Men’s Association, Our Literary Album, Part 1, January 1867, [p. 2]).

Contributors to the magazine were also members of this association with one exception: the critical remarks that follow the article, ‘God and Chance’, credit ‘the Lady who wrote it’. It was not unusual for women to contribute to mutual improvement and literary society magazines that were produced by groups composed of exclusively male members.

The magazine consists of 53 pages of contributions — prose articles and essays, poems, illustrations and a musical score — along with an informal introduction to the ‘Critical Remarks’ (one page), and 13 (unnumbered) pages of readers’ criticisms.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Helensburgh Young Men’s Association

Date of Existence

1861 or 1862?-?

Date of Magazine

January 1867

Number of Issues

1

Manuscript/Published Magazine

(Photocopy of the manuscript original)

Contents and Contributions

Art/Illustrations (original); Articles (non-fiction); Circulation List; Editorial; Essays; Music; Poems (original); Table of Contents; Title page

Repository

Argyll and Bute Archives (Lochgilphead)

Reference

DR/1/200/8

Overview

A summary of the history of the Lansdowne Young Men’s Christian Association (aka L.Y.M.C.A.) is available on our sister website, Glasgow’s Literary Bonds (see ‘Additional Notes’ below).

According to the editorial in the first issue produced in November 1890, the idea to found a magazine was raised at a business meeting of the society held the month before. It was felt that a magazine would provide a ‘lasting benefit’ to the contributors (those young men and women from Landsdowne United Presbyterian Church) as well as its readers. In addition, it was to ‘be a means whereby the spark of social interest in one another’s affairs might be kept aglow & stimulated’ (John G. Miller and James Macfarlane [Editors], ‘To Our Readers’, Our Magazine (Lansdowne Young Men’s Christian Association), Part 1, November 1890, p. 1).

Including an issue solely devoted to its members’ artwork, there are seven issues of this society’s magazine. These are all individually hand stitched (which was not usual for these magazines), and are in kept in five hardcover, A5-sized binders with imprinted covers. The magazine began as a monthly, but by 1891, had become bi-monthly.

Each issue is roughly between 90 and 120 pages with between 20 and 25 contributions, these being a mixture of poetry and prose contributions, along with original artwork in various media as well as photographs. The authors and artists included members and non-members, men and women who mostly left their pieces anonymous, or they signed with pen-names or an initial or initials (presumably with the intention of being identifiable). Only a very small percentage of contributors used their first or full names.

The Art Supplement has 14 contributions that include pen-and-ink drawings, paintings in watercolours and in oil, as well as photographs, including a photo of the group members annotated underneath ‘Our Noble Selves’. Of note in the first issue (November 1890), there are photographs identified as being salt paper prints.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Lansdowne Young Men’s Christian Association (L.Y.M.C.A.)

Date of Existence

1890?-1892?

Date of Magazine

Part 1 (Nov. 1890); Part 2 (Dec. 1890); No. 3, Vol. I (25 Feb. 1891); No. 4, Vol. I (25 Apr. 1891); Part 1, Art Supplement to Our Magazine (Nov. 1891); No. II (Dec. 1891); Vol. II (Apr. 1892)

Number of Issues

7 (includes Art Supplement) (extant)

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Art/Illustrations (original); Articles (non-fiction); Correspondence column; Essays; Fiction/Narratives; Letters to Editor; Poems (original); Photographs; Proverbs; Serial articles/stories; Sketches; Tables of Contents (located at the back of each issue); Title pages

Repository

Glasgow City Archives

Reference

TD864/2/1-7

Additional Notes

See also entry for Lansdowne Young Men’s Christian Association (aka L.Y.M.C.A.) on our sister website, Glasgow’s Literary Bonds.

Overview

There are 12 issues of this monthly print magazine dating from June 1887 to May 1888 which were bound together in one volume in 1888. The entire volume is a total of 240 pages with each issue having 20 pages.

In the ‘Preface’, to Our Mutual Friend — a title chosen from the work of Charles Dickens —  it is stated that the periodical was founded by members of the Bold Street Wesleyan Improvement Society and intended for local circulation, but the group desired to have it preserved in a more permanent form. Members of other ‘improving’ groups in Warrington and the local region also contributed. The magazine was non-political and non-denominational, but was more generally framed as a Christian magazine.

Following the ‘Preface’, there is a ‘List of Contributors’. Of the 32 listed, most of them are men, of which there are seven Reverends and one Alderman. There are also four women contributors, three being unmarried women and one married.

The ‘Index’ at the front lists the contents by month. This miscellany contains mostly prose articles and essays along with serial fictional stories, with about a quarter of each issue being original poetry.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

[Various Literary and Mutual Improvement Societies of Warrington, St Helens and the Surrounding District]

Date of Existence

1887?-1888?

Date of Magazine

1 June 1887-1 May 1888

Number of Issues

Vol. I (12 issues)

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Print

Contents and Contributions

Articles (non-fiction); Ballad (original); Correspondence column; Editorials; Essays; Fiction/Narratives; Hymn; Index; List of contributors; News (local branches of society); Poems (original); Preface; Title page

Repository

Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, held at Cheshire Record Office (Chester)

Reference

EMC 21/5334/149

Overview

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

This society’s magazine (as it was called by its contributors) is unusually presented on single sheets, with articles on both sides presented in two columns, echoing broadside or newspaper format. Its self-presentation as a newspaper rather than monthly periodical is highlighted by the title page illustration, which shows the ‘Overnewton Whisper Office’ with a newsboy outside selling ‘Whisper no. 2’.

Four single sheets survive, including the title page. These may not belong to the same edition as three are undated, and the undated sheets include an article (‘Through Feminine Optics’ by Genevieve) and a response to it (‘Through Masculine Optics’ by Savant), presumably written later. Though ‘Genevieve’ might imply a female contributor, Savant’s article mentions ‘one who terms “herself” Genevieve’, which may suggest that one of the society’s young men is writing under a female pseudonym.

The magazine leans more towards the comic, satirical and entertaining than others, and imitates some popular features of newspapers such as an ‘Answers to Correspondents’ column by ‘Our Own Physician’, a gossip column (‘The members of this Club are saying’) and a poetry column. The first sheet includes a list of meetings held by the society on its reverse.

The contents of this periodical are more akin to other mutual improvement society magazines in having a mixture of (mostly) prose essays (n. 6) and a couple of articles. The first of these is on the then current small pox epidemic in the city, which strangely morphs into an article about the upcoming Glasgow Exhibition.

This magazine was printed in bulk and sold to members of the club (and presumably to paying non-members). Its cost, while apparently being a bit of an issue (quoted from an anonymous member: ‘That the best joke in the first magazine was the price’), is not given.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Overnewton Literary Club (Glasgow)

Date of Existence

1901?-?

Date of Magazine

1901

Number of Issues

1

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Original in manuscript, then print (lithograph?) (see The Foundry Boy, and The Magnet)

Contents and Contributions

Art/Illustrations (original); Articles (non-fiction); Correspondence column; Essays; Filler; Poems (original); Short stories; Sketch

Repository

Mitchell Library Special Collections

Reference

Mitchell (GC) CD f072 91445 OVE

Additional Notes

This periodical is the size of a broadsheet. Interestingly, this group referred to it as their magazine.

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