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

Members of this literary society were part of the congregation of Bridge Street United Presbyterian Church, located in Musselburgh, East Lothian, to the east of Edinburgh. (For a brief history of the church, see the National Records of Scotland catalogue entry.)

There are three extant volumes of the manuscript magazine that this society produced. The ‘Index’ at the start of the 1890-1891 volume lists the contributions by the date of the meeting at which they were read aloud. This tells us that the society held regular ‘Magazine Nights’ during their yearly sessions. Thus, almost all of the contributions included in the magazine were intended to be heard first and then read later.

‘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 1890-1892 volume is a ‘typical’ issue containing a mixture of prose non-fiction articles and essays, original poems, along with a few letters to the Editor. There is no artwork in any of the issues. Interestingly, readers’ criticisms — the comments written into the magazine by readers on the various aspects of the contributions and/or the magazine itself — are not included in this magazine, but a regular feature entitled ‘Appendix’ (later called ‘Editor’s Remarks’) written by the Editor works in a similar manner. This reports on the society’s magazine nights and provides us with some indication of the reception of each piece that was read aloud. In addition, it discusses the ‘Appendix of Criticism’ that was also read aloud at the meetings, which did include comments about the previous issue of the magazine.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Bridge Street United Presbyterian Literary Society (Edinburgh)

Date of Existence

1890?-1901?

Date of Magazine

Vol. II, 1890-1891; Vol. IV, 1892-1893; 1899-1901

Number of Issues

3

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Articles (non-fiction); Editorials; Essays; Indexes; Letters to Editor; Poems (original); Reports; Table of Contents; Title page

Repository

National Records of Scotland

Reference

CH3/1495/12;
CH3/1495/13;
CH3/1495/14

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

The Freethinking Christians formed in 1799, or possibly in 1801, after having broken off from a Universalist Baptist congregation in Parliament Court Chapel, located in Bishopsgate Street, City of London (Hannah Adams (1755-1831), in her Dictionary of All Religions (1817), gives 1799 as the year in which this society was founded, while William T. Whitley’s, The Baptists of London (1928), dates the congregation’s secession as 1801).

In 1809 (?) they built a church at (Jewin) Crescent, Jewin Street, where between 400-500 ‘members and strangers’ attended the weekly meetings (Hannah Adams, ‘Freethinking Christians’,  A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations, Jewish, Heathen, Mahometan and Christian, Ancient and Modern… (Boston: James Eastburn and Company, and Cummings and Hilliard, 1817), p. 82-3. A Dictionary of all Religions and Religious Denominations <https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Dictionary_of_All_Religions_and_Religi.html?id=yQRaAAAAMAAJ> [accessed 17/06/18].) In 1832, a new meeting house was completed in St John’s Square for the congregation which could seat 300 people, and it served as their place of meeting until 1871 (‘St John’s Church and St John’s Square,’ Survey of London: Volume 46, South and East Clerkenwell, ed. By Philip Temple (London: London County Council, 2008), pp. 115-41. British History Online <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol46/pp115-141> [accessed 17 June 2018]).

This church produced  (at least) two different magazines, the first perhaps as early as January 1811, and the second in 1842 until at least 1844. (The evidence for the earlier magazine comes from the second volume of The Freethinking Christian’s Magazine. See The Freethinking Christians’ Magazine; Intended for the Promotion of Rational Religion and Free Enquiry, No. 13, Vol. 2 (London: printed and published by Charles Mitham, 1812). The Freethinking Christians’ Magazine <https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wTIEAAAAQAAJ> [accessed 17 June 2018]).  The first magazine will not be discussed here as it was a church magazine used  primarily as a discussion forum for its members and a vehicle to set out its differences from other established religious doctrines and dogma.

The group based at the Freethinking church produced at least twenty-six issues of their own manuscript magazine, of which only five issues – those dating from August to December 1844 bound into one volume – have survived. The volume itself is 442 pages, and is bound in a hard-board cover with a leather spine and corners, held by a brass clasp. The book housed in the collection of the London Metropolitan Archives once belonged to Thomas Wolstencroft, whose signature appears on the blank page inside the cover. The five issues are preceded by a title page for this fourth volume, and an index of the entire contents was added at the front. Each issue begins with a short transcription of a sermon or quote from the Bible written on the back of the ‘Contents’ page. The magazine is a miscellany that includes essays on church policies and practices along with moralistic pieces, but contributions of original prose fiction and particularly poetry also feature regularly.

When compared to the earlier, print magazine produced by the church, the manuscript magazine is decidedly more ‘literary’, and literature along with the ‘Uses of Books’ are discussed with some zeal. For example, a series entitled ‘Scraps’, and later ‘Our Scrapbook’, includes short transcriptions from a variety of sources under themed headings, all of which were meant to be instructive.  Books are reviewed in two of the issues.  In addition, a series of articles entitled ‘My Literary Favourites’, featuring Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dugald Stewart and Charles Lamb, were written by a frequent contributor to the volume known only as ‘V’. But the magazine could also be the site of less serious, more playful discussion of books and literature, as in the article entitled, ‘A Glance at One of the Uses of Books’, which takes the form of a pseudo-medical, half-jesting treatise.

Other regular features in all the issues were letters to the Editor, extracts from personal letters, the ‘Editor’s Present Reply to Questions Sent’, a correspondence column, and articles written in reply to previous pieces. What is evident from these five issues is that the magazines acted as a medium in which to carry out a series of dialogues between the contributors, the Editor, the readers, as well as the church community. This interdiscursivity is foregrounded throughout all of the issues. The church Elder, in his role as magazine Editor, acted as gate-keeper to the magazine as well as moderator. The predominant purpose of the letters to the Editor was to ask for his opinion on, or clarification of, the finer points of various doctrines, or alternatively for the elucidation of religious terms.

This later manuscript magazine appears to have been a platform for which a number of writers, both men and women, of varying experience could improve and hone their skills in writing not only religious and moral essays and poems, but also more ‘literary’, even humorous, contributions for a sympathetic audience, and who hoped, perhaps one day, to earn acclaim for his/her writing.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Freethinking Christians (Church of God, St John’s Square, London)

Date of Existence

1842?-1844?

Dates of Magazine

Vol. 4 (containing No. 22, 4 Aug. 1844; No. 23, 1 Sept. 1844; No. 24, 6 Oct. 1844; No. 25, 3 Nov. 1844; No. 26, 1 Dec. 1844)

Number of Issues

5 (extant)

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Correspondence columns; Essays; Extracts of published works; Fiction/Narratives; Index; Letters to Editor; Poems (original); Poems (republished material); Proverbs; Reviews; Sketches; Tables of Contents; Title pages

Repository

London Metropolitan Archives

Reference

CLC/197/MS02199

The London Metropolitan Archives suggests that this Sunday school was connected to a Baptist church that was located on Worship Street, City of London. The church itself was running from at least 1791. It was still running in the 1870s, but by 1896, was demolished for the expansion of the North London Railway. From ‘An account of the rise and progress of the Worship Street Sunday School’ in the magazine it produced, we know that the school was established in the spring of 1818 by the minister, John Simpson, and ‘the younger members of his family and some other friends’ (J. C. Means, ‘An account of the rise and progress of the Worship Street Sunday School’, The Monthly Instructer, V, March 1827, pp. 59-65 (pp. 56-60)).

On April 18th of that year, its first students were admitted. The school had separate classes for boys and girls, and the teachers were made up of ‘young persons in the congregation’, and later from some of its former pupils. While classes were originally taught in the chapel, by the time of the ‘account’, they had moved to Dunning’s Alley, Bishopsgate.

The first issue of The Monthly Instructer appeared in 1823, five years after the school had been founded. Only Volumes V, VI and VIII have survived. According to its Editor, the magazine provided ‘useful or interesting information, and tend[ed] to promote in some way the interests of religion and morality’ ([Editor], ‘The Editor’s farewell’, The Monthly Instructor, VI, December 1828, pp. 287-88 (p. 287)). These moralistic miscellanies consist predominantly of transcribed extracts from various printed materials.

Other features in later issues include moralistic, fictional (original?) stories, non-fiction articles on different animals that included original illustrations and a correspondence column. The correspondence column appears at the very end of the magazine in the majority of the issues. From this feature, we learn about the production process of the magazine. What is interesting about this Sunday school magazine is that the contributions appear to have come from teachers as well as the students.

The 1830 volume of the magazine contains the original pink paper covers of the monthly issues that were omitted in the previous bound volumes. The covers are of interest as they give the subscription price (6d per annum) and a list of the subscribers on the back covers. If each of the (separated) listings represent a class, the magazine might have served as a weekly textbook before being passed to the next class.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Worship Street Sunday School (London)

Date of Existence

1818-1830?

Dates of Magazine

Vol. V (Jan.-Dec. 1827); Vol. VI (Jan.-Dec. 1828); Vol. VIII (Jan.-Dec. 1830)

Number of Issues

36 issues in 3 bound volumes

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Art/Illustrations (original); Articles (non-fiction); Circulation Lists; Correspondence columns; Extracts of published works; Fiction/Narratives; Indexes; List of Sunday Evening Lectures; Prefaces; Tables of Contents; Title pages

Repository

London Metropolitan Archives

Reference

CLC/229/MS07513A

Overview

According to the ‘Preface’ of the 1849 volume, The Society for Mutual Improvement was formed in 1846. Since that time, it had admitted 48 men (see below) and had 108 essays delivered at its meetings. The society had its own library for its members’ use in which it was estimated there were between two and three hundred volumes. The object of the society was ‘the improvement of the Minds of its Members in Useful and Entertaining knowledge’ (‘Laws and Constitution, 1849’, The Society for Mutual Improvement, Edinburgh, in The Weekly Miscellany, Nos. 1-26, 02 February 1849 – 25 July 1849, p. viii).

The group met weekly on Friday nights at 7pm, but the venue is not mentioned (possibly somewhere in the New Town?). The subscription fee was 4d per quarter. There is no list of readers in this volume, and, with the exception of the Office Bearers — a list of which is found at the front of the volume — we don’t know the members’ names or addresses. It is unclear if the 48 members stated to have been admitted since the society’s founding represented the then current state of its membership: in February 1849, the number of members is given as 22, with only about half of the members attendant at the meetings (‘A Correspondent’, ‘Correspondence’, The Weekly Miscellany, 9 February 1849, p. 16).

The magazine (the full title of which is The Weekly Miscellany; Containing Contributions from various Members of The Society for Mutual Improvement) ‘originated in a desire for benefiting the Society with which it is connected by furnishing a medium for the interchange of sentiment between its Members’ (James Boyd, ‘Preface’, The Weekly Miscellany, p. iv). There are 26 issues bound together in one hardcover volume. With very few exceptions, each issue is eight pages with between four and five short contributions apiece written by various members of the society using a nom-de-plume, all of which are re-written by James Boyd, the Editor-cum-Treasurer. 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. It also helped to give a uniformity to the magazine, which, for some societies — including this one — was of some import.

The issues contain a mixture of essays and articles on various topics, and some serial fictional pieces along with original poetry. Beginning in May 1849, it also includes a few extracts from published authors (e.g. Samuel Johnson, Saint Basil, William Haslitt) as filler material at the very end of an issue. There is no original artwork in any of the issues.

What is interesting about this magazine is that the society seemed to use it as a magazine-cum-minute book: included in each issue is a piece entitled ‘Society for Mutual Improvement’, which records the details of the essay given at the previous week’s meeting, and includes a summary of the ‘criticism’ (i.e. the comments made by members) that followed. Debates were usually held after the essays, and a note of the subject and some general comments are included. Typically, these things are recorded in a society’s minute book rather than its magazine.

A ‘Correspondence’ section is a regular feature in these issues. Members wrote letters to the Editor suggesting improvements for various aspects of the society meetings or the magazine (or both), or indeed for the members themselves. These letters could include criticism of the criticisms. This section thus acted as a dynamic discussion forum for society members.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

The Society for Mutual Improvement (Edinburgh)

Date of Existence

October 1846-1849?

Date of Magazine

Nos. 1 – 26, 02 February 1849 – 25 July 1849

Number of Issues

26

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Articles (non-fiction); Correspondence column; Essays; Extracts of published works; Filler; Index; Laws and Constitution; List of Office Bearers; Poems (original); Preface; Serial articles/stories; Title pages

Repository

Mitchell Library Special Collections

Reference

Mitchell (AL) 358075

On Overview

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

There are three extant issues of this magazine, which together contain an eclectic mixture of prose and poetry, original artwork (pencil, pen-and-ink, and watercolour being the most popular media), along with original music compositions.

The 1883-84 issue has 153 pages with 21 contributions. After each piece, there are readers’ ‘criticisms’, or discussions on the work’s positive and negative points that were written on the blank sheets of paper that were left for this purpose. On pages 146-51 there can be found the society’s syllabus, Constitution, programmes for various meetings and musical evenings, and a notice for a local Parliamentary election.  Contributors — which included men and women, members and non-members — used their own names or pen-names to sign their pieces. At the very back there is an index. The later 1887-88 and 1888 magazines are similar in also being miscellanies that include readers’ criticisms, with 203 pages and twenty contributions in the former, and 201 pages and sixteen contributions in the latter.

In each of the issues, there is a list of ‘Readers’ along with their respective addresses. There are 34 readers in the 1883-84 issue, 32 in the 1887-88 number, and 29 listed in the 1888 issue, which means that this group was of a relatively modest size and fairly stable in its membership, if these years can be said to be representative.

A full case study of this society and its magazine was published by Lauren Weiss in 2016 (see Lauren Weiss, ‘The Manuscript Magazines of the Wellpark Free Church Young Men’s Literary Society’, in Media and Print Culture Consumption in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Victorian Reading Experience, ed. by Paul Raphael Rooney and Anna Gasperini (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 53-73).

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Wellpark Free Church Young Men’s Literary Society (Glasgow)

Date of Existence

1883?-1888?

Dates of Magazine

Vol. II, No. 1 (1883-84); Vol. II, No. 1 (1887-88); 1888

Number of Issues

3 (extant)

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Art/Illustrations (original); Articles (non-fiction); Circulation Lists; Constitution; Editorials; Essays; Fiction/Narratives; Frontispiece; Index; Letter to ‘Critic’; Letters to Editor; Magazine Rules; Maps; Music; Notice (printed); Poems (original); Programme; Readers’ criticisms; Sketches; Syllabus; Table of Contents; Title page

Repository

Mitchell Library Special Collections

Reference

1. Mitchell (AL) 428697 (1883-84 magazine);

2. Mitchell (AL), 428698-99 (1887-1888, and 1888 magazines) (Note: there are three manuscript magazines but only two separate listings in the online catalogue)

Additional Notes

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