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.

Overview

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

There is one (extant) issue of this club’s magazine, which clearly carries on the format and style of the previous issues that were produced by the group under its former name, the New Literary Club, with several of its old members staying on. (See entry for New Literary Club Magazine.)

There are 107 pages in this issue. At the front, there is a list of 20 members with their respective addresses. The 15 contributions (see accompanying photo of the ‘Contents’) are mostly prose pieces with only one original poem; an article on Robert Burns, however, transcribes extracts of several of his poems. The artwork in this issue is in various media, the most common being watercolour. There are also several photographs.

Of interest is a recurring feature called a ‘Page of Confessions’, which is a list of ‘favourite’ items that must be filled in (e.g. ‘Your favourite Author’; ‘Your favourite Book’, etc., ending with ‘What is the height of your ambition’). There are three examples of these ‘confessions’ in this issue. While one contributor professed to love Charles Lamb and the Bible, another’s reported favourite author was the French Renaissance writer and philosopher, Michael Sieur de Montaigne (1533-1592) and favourite book was The Compleat Angler (1653). One example of the ‘Page of Confessions’ also appears in The Holyrood Magazine, which was produced later.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Literary Twenty-One Club (Glasgow)

Date of Existence

21 Apr. 1896-26 Mar. 1898

Date of Magazine

1896

Number of Issues

1

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Art/Illustrations (original); Articles (non-fiction); Circulation List; Editorial; Essays; Frontispiece; Map; Music; Photographs; Poem (original); Poem (republished material); Readers’ criticisms (pages left blank); Sketch; 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 (later became Literary Twenty-One Club) on our sister website, Glasgow’s Literary Bonds.

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.