About the VPTJ Database

Synopsis

The Victorian Print Trade Journal Database [VPTJD] began at Brigham Young University in 2020 as a bibliographic resource for scholars interested in periodicals relating to the print trade in nineteenth-century Britain. Jamie Horrocks, Associate Professor of English at BYU, and Brian Croxall, Associate Research Professor of Digital Humanities at BYU, are primarily responsible for its content and coding, respectively.

The project has two main goals: to provide an index of periodicals associated with the print trade that were published in Britain between 1800 and 1900, and to provide fully cited bibliographic information about these journals.

Because of factors relating primarily to acquisition and accessibility, it is difficult to find reliable information about many Victorian print trade journals. In the past, scholars have consulted the original texts where possible; when this has been impossible, scholars have relied for their information on press directories, advertisers, catalogue entries, finding aids, and other secondary reference sources. This has led to factual conflicts in the standard periodical bibliographies, especially in entries for the shortest-lived and least-circulated titles. The fluidity of the journals themselves—their tendency to change titles, editors, publishers, prices, formats, and other elements—also makes establishing accurate bibliographic information difficult.

The VPTJD attempts to clarify these discrepancies, and where we have been unable to do so, it offers citations for the conflicting information. It also lists sources that discuss the journals in greater detail, should users want more information about a particular title.

Individual issues of the periodicals (which are listed below the notes on most of the journal pages) will continue to be added to the VPTJD on an ongoing basis, as will titles of journals themselves, if discovered. As we gain access to copies of issues, we will replace conflicting information with information confirmed by the journals themselves.

Because bibliographic information varies most often on the issue or number level, we have listed the most highly-variable facts—price, issue editor, length, etc.—on the issue pages instead of their parent journal pages. This allows us to be as accurate as possible about each issue, and it allows one to track changes from issue to issue. Users may search the database by journal title, editor, publisher, printer, date, city of publication, or keyword.

If you would like to know more about the corpus selection criteria, methodology, or sources used in this project, please see the overview below.

If you find errors or have additional information about any of the items in the VPTJD, please reach out via the contact link.

Overview: Print Trade Journalism in Victorian Britain

In England, as in much of Europe and the United States, the nineteenth century saw tremendous change in print trade practices and technologies: the mechanization of presses, the development of new kinds of paper and ink, the creation of new sales and distribution circuits aided by the expansion of the railway and the telegraph, the introduction of “fancy” and ornamental typefaces (especially from American foundries), the separation of printing from the publishing industry, the demise of the apprenticeship system, the shift from woodcuts and lithography to offset printing and photoengraving, the widespread adoption of stereotyping, the appearance of line-casting machines like the Linotype, and much more.

Accompanying these developments were changes in what, how, when, and with whom people read. Taxes that hampered the expansion of cheap print disappeared, free public education became widely available, libraries eased prohibitive subscription requirements, and literacy rates in Britain climbed to well over 90% by the end of the nineteenth century. Moreover, rising income levels and falling prices in the production and distribution of print meant that nearly everyone who wanted to could get their hands on a poem, a novel, a newspaper, a pamphlet, or a poster.

No print medium, however, was as popular in the Victorian era—or as prevalent—as the periodical. “As we look at the periodical publications of the day,” writes Victorian journalist E. S. Dallas in 1859, “we see every profession with its journal, every interest with its literary organ” (104). Many scholars, historians, librarians, and collectors have studied the rise of the nineteenth-century British periodical, which gratified the literary appetite of the millions of readers that Wilkie Collins famously dubbed “the unknown public.” Mitchell’s Newspaper Press Directory (which began adding magazines and periodicals to its newspaper listings in 1860 and is by no means comprehensive) contains a total of 1,764 periodical titles in its 1864 annual volume; by 1887, that number has risen to 3,597 (King and Plunkett 2). Many of these titles lived and died quickly, within a year or even a few months of their initial publication. Others hung on despite intense competition, acquiring new editors, publishers, and titles, if need be, to preserve their niche in the Victorian media ecology.

Among these thousands of periodicals, trade journals comprised a notable segment. Trade journals, explains the 1863 author of an article in Chambers’s Journal, were often lumped into the broad and protean category of “class papers” or “periodicals addressed each to a particular class of traders and manufacturers and dwelling in a marked way on subjects which those persons alone understand, and in which they alone are likely to take much interest” (“Trade Newspapers” 370). Indeed, the highly-circumscribed audiences of nineteenth-century trade journals and the industry-specific content they ran turned scholars away from the study of this branch of the print industry for most of the twentieth century (Martel 20). As King notes, Richard Altick’s 1951 pronouncement that “Some day someone is going to write a book about nineteenth-century English trade journals, a deed which may well enrich our knowledge of Victorian social history” went a long time unheeded and unfulfilled (King, “Trade” 585).

Academic reluctance to study trade journals may have also stemmed from the fact that these texts “refuse tidy categorization” (King, “Trade” 565), a feature that has long complicated the archiving, cataloguing, digitizing, and thus the accessibility of them. In Victorian press directories—a major source of information for the periodicals in the VPTJD—trade journals are sometimes called magazines, sometimes called newspapers, sometimes called periodicals, and sometimes called journals; their location within the directories (and, consequently, the type of information recorded about each) varies accordingly.

In the 1886 edition of Sell’s Dictionary of the World Press, for example, the British Journal of Photography, a special interest journal that evolved into a trade journal, is listed among the London weekly newspapers, as are The Lancet and The Law Times. These latter two are both professional journals (rather than trade journals) that few would think of as newspapers, but their categorization as such meant that they appear in much earlier volumes of Sell’s than other trade journals do. Likewise, the trade journals Paper Making and Paper Makers’ Circular are both listed as monthly newspapers in Sell’s, but Paper Makers’ Circular is also listed in the “Magazines and Periodicals” section of that directory (while Paper Making is not re-listed there). Without a detailed index—or a machine-readable scanned version that enables keyword searches of the digital text—finding titles in multiple locations in the 700-page Sell’s would be next to impossible. Additionally, researchers who do not have access to hard copies of press directories like Sell’s or to original copies of the journals would have been wholly unable to conduct any study of these periodicals at all before digitizing consortia like Google Books, HathiTrust, and ProQuest began scanning copies and making them available online (which also made them impervious to library shut-downs, like those we experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic).

Long before this, in pre-digital 1969, historian Blanche Beatrice Elliott registered her frustration with the near impossibility of locating old trade journals in libraries and archives due to the instability of the journals and their categorization. Elliott insists that the “value of the work they [trade journals] perform is scarcely appreciated by the public, who are for the most part ignorant of their existence” because “no attempt to record or classify them appears to have been made (with the notable exception of the Printing and Paper trades)” (Elliott 179). Her parenthetical exception here is significant. The print trade, Elliott claims, “has the distinction of being the only trade that has carefully studied the contents of its early periodicals” (183). Since Elliott’s time, attempts to index and classify all types of trade journals have, fortunately, been made—efforts that have helped the VPTJD enormously. One is John North’s magisterial Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals, first appearing in print in 1979 and later expanding and moving online. Joanne Shattock’s Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (volume 4 covers 1800-1900), also begun without the aid of the internet, is another magnificent compendium of information. We are indebted to both of these resources.

Elliott is right, however, in suggesting that the print trade has long had an especially self-reflexive relationship with the trade press, and for good reason: printers created and maintained it, and it often maintained printers. A writer for the London, Provincial, & Colonial Press News (better known as simply The Press News) points out to readers in 1878 that printers owe “a good deal” to trade journals, “more than, perhaps, they think” (“Trade Journals” 22). The author goes on, “Even though in some cases there are but a few hundreds circulated, the journals have to be set, and compositors and machine-men have cause to be thankful that class papers are so numerous. They [printers] would come off badly if they depended solely upon general newspapers with long numbers, which have to be got out with a rush, whilst the other kind of work can be taken more leisurely, and is often very useful as a stop-gap, to prevent men being idle. Let no Printer, then, look down with contempt upon the ‘Wooden-Leg-Makers’ Journal’” (“Trade Journals” 22). Such a trade journal may, perhaps, be responsible for keeping a printer’s family fed.

More than simply relying on the trade press for reliable “stop-gap” work, though, many Victorian printers considered it a duty to record the details of their specific trade. Printing was, after all, the “art preservative of all arts,” according to the motto that appears on the title page of several nineteenth-century print trade journals. It seemed only fitting that printers should preserve the history and practice of their own art, and they did, producing more periodical trade literature than any other trade in Victorian Britain.

How much did they produce? Knowing, as King’s research has demonstrated, that there was a “continual rise in the number of trade and professional periodicals over the nineteenth century” (King, “Trade” 558), what does this mean in actual numbers of journal titles and issues? What print trade periodicals were published, when, where, and why? Who edited and published them? How much did they cost? What were their circulation statistics? Their advertisement fees? Their page length and format? How often did they change titles? Get sold to other proprietors? Go under? If, as Elliott contends, the print trade is the only trade in Britain to have “carefully studied” its periodicals, where can this information be found?

These are the questions that prompted the creation of the VPTJD. While trying to track down information about a few specific Victorian print trade journals, we soon found that no single, reliable source of bibliographical information on print trade periodicals exists. The Waterloo Directory was a wealth of information, but its massive purview and early date of initial creation means that it misses many small, provincial journals and that the information it does contain is often spotty, unsourced, and idiosyncratic. Much of its information cannot be confirmed by other sources. Comparing information from the Waterloo Directory with the information in Shattock’s Cambridge Bibliography, for example, reveals many contradictions and discrepancies. Sometimes, referring to yet another source—say, Bigmore and Wyman’s Bibliography, James Stewart’s British Union-Catalogue of Periodicals, or Demoor and Brake’s Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism—resolves these contradictions. But more often than not, more sources mean more conflicting (typically uncited) information, resulting in more layers of confusion.

The reason for this welter of conflict is, in one sense, simple: many of the print trade journals discussed by reliable bibliographic sources are/were no longer extant or are/were inaccessible to researchers. Many journals lived and died too rapidly for any copy to have been preserved, or they exist only in partial runs, in geographically scattered and sometimes ill-documented archives. The British Library has the most complete set of nineteenth-century British print trade periodicals; libraries at Oxford and Cambridge also have good collections, as does the St. Bride Library in London. None of these have digitized versions of their periodicals, however, and the St. Bride Library, in particular, is difficult to use (it is more often closed than open and charges £1 for every item requested from the stacks). Early print trade historians who didn’t have access to primary sources, who were working in pre-digital eras, and/or who had to rely on inaccurate catalogue descriptions and finding aids introduced a number of errors into their reference data.

Consider, too, the problems presented by the variability of the journals themselves. Many bibliographic sources list, among other things, the frequency with which a journal was published as well as the price, the editor, the publication location, and the number of pages. But all of these details were liable to change from year to year or even issue to issue. Take, for example, a very popular print trade periodical begun in 1888, The British Printer. In her bibliography of British art periodicals, Helene Roberts identifies the editor of The British Printer as Robert Hilton. This is true only from 1888 to 1895, however, when Hilton’s acrimonious severance from Raithby, Lawrence & Co. resulted in his replacement by Harry Whetton. Readers relying solely on Roberts’s bibliography would be unlikely to know that Whetton replaced Hilton as editor in 1895. Similarly, Peter Brown and George B. Stratton posit Leicester as The British Printer’s city of publication, but again, this is only partially correct. Raithby, Lawrence & Co.’s head office was located in Leicester and the journal was often written and compiled there, but by the 1890s, it was published out of their London office near Ludgate Circus.

Equally confusing is the fact that in different sources, one can find the price of The British Printer listed as 1 penny, 1 shilling, 3 shillings, 5 shillings, 6 shillings, or 7 shillings sixpence. All of these are correct, with qualification, as are the sources that variously describe the journal as being 22 pages in length, 32 pages, 52 pages, or 58 pages. Because the periodicals themselves did not remain static, in other words, the information recorded about them changes as well. The bibliographic data in reference texts, especially texts produced in the nineteenth century, varies widely depending on the moment such data was collected, the journal issue or number that was consulted by the researcher, or the previous source material that was relied upon. 

Methodology

With this in mind, I intended the VPTJD to mitigate two primary obstacles against which I stumbled repeatedly in my research: first, the lack of a single, thorough bibliographic list of print trade journals published in nineteenth-century Britain; and second, the conflicting information about these journals spread throughout multiple sources. When I read Elliott’s claim that The Printers’ Register, begun in 1863, was the “first organ for the printing trade” published in England (182), I had no way of gauging the accuracy of this. Was it the first?¹ Using Shattock’s information and data from King’s BLT19 Trade and Professional Press Database, Rachel Calder has more recently suggested that “thirty-one book trade publications”—she is specifically referring to periodicals here—“were launched in the UK and Ireland between 1800 and 1900” (King, “Trade” 585). This is a very exact number; is it correct? ²

To answer these questions, as well as the ones mentioned above, I began compiling the information I had collected from multiple sources, first into a spreadsheet and then, with the help of Dr. Brian Croxall, Associate Research Professor of Digital Humanities at Brigham Young University, into an online database. In Andrew King’s chapter “Taxonomies and Procedures” in Work and the Nineteenth-Century Press, he describes four different classificatory procedures for organizing research on nineteenth-century periodicals, based on a model drawn from physical science. This model, he explains, provides the methodological structure for his Trade Press Database, which includes some of the print trade journals I also include.

To use King’s terminology, the VPTJD is primarily morphological in scope, relying on similarities form and genre, but the information contained within it will help curious readers draw genetic, ecosystemic, and functional conclusions, depending on their interests. It is possible, for example, to compare timelines of publication (including lengths of journal lifespans), to track editors or publishers involved in multiple journals, or to compare periodicals published at a similar price. It is equally possible to track changes over the lifetime of a single journal, tracing shifts in length, price, editors, publishers, format, etc.

In specific terms, I ultimately decided to set the parameters described below, according to which the VPTJD is organized.

Corpus Selection Criteria

Trying to determine what is a Victorian print trade journal—what, in other words, should be included in the VPTJD and what should not—was perhaps the most difficult bibliographic aspect of this project. Like many literary critics, I tend to use the terms “journal” and “periodical” interchangeably (as I have in this overview). This was only sometimes the case in the nineteenth century. As I mention above, nineteenth-century bibliographies, directories, books, and articles tend to be idiosyncratic about their use of the terms “periodical,” “journal,” “magazine,” and even “newspaper.” Sometimes these terms are supplanted entirely in favor of a designation of publication frequency: something called a “monthly” or a “weekly” might be any of the above. And Victorian writers often used terms like “paper” or simply “literature” (as in “class literature”) for the same purpose.

If one defines “periodical” capaciously as any publication that appears periodically with new content (but maintains a central, unified brand or identity), then journals, magazines, and newspapers might all fall under this category, as might also regular publications like annual or quarterly reports, union newsletters, yearbooks, almanacks, and house circulars and advertisers (many of which—like Hailing’s Circular—were first distributed free to customers and later evolved into fully-fledged trade journals).

If one uses the category of “class literature,” preferred by many nineteenth-century press directories, this generally includes three types of single-topic, single-audience periodicals (professional journals, trade journals, and special interest journals) but excludes newspapers, magazines, and other printed material (like miscellanies) that catered to more general audiences (Martel 20).

In the most technical sense, however, Victorian tax law distinguished class periodicals from newspapers on the basis of content more than audience: those publications that appeared periodically and contained “general or public news” (Martel 22) were considered newspapers and were required to pay the stamp duty. Those publications that appeared periodically but did not contain general news could circulate unstamped. What qualified as “general news” was, of course, debatable, and the stamped/ unstamped distinction only held until the repeal of the Stamp Tax in 1855. Plus, as King points out, many class periodicals chose to pay the stamp duty when they were not required to because stamped papers received a reduced postal rate that could save some publishers more than the cost of mailing unstamped papers to their subscribers (King, “Trade” 567).

Considering all of this, I decided to adopt a delimiter used by many in the nineteenth-century British press industry once the stamp taxes were repealed and the legal definitions that followed these duties were no longer relevant. For the purposes of the VPTJD, I include as “print trade journals” any periodical publication written by members of the print trade primarily for members of the print trade. This allows me to include some titles that began as advertising sheets (which appeared long before trade journals); some titles that functioned wholly or partially as almanacks for printers, typographers, or presses; and some titles that call themselves “printers’ diaries” or “printers’ guides,” provided they contain information relevant to the current (nineteenth-century) or historical print trade in Britain.

But this raises the equally contentious question of what, exactly, comprises the nineteenth-century print trade. Drawing a firm line between the print trade press and the general Victorian press industry is difficult, as the latter was everywhere implicated in the former. A journal like The Press News catered most immediately to booksellers and publishers, but it called itself a journal for “every trade connected with the production of a book,” which included printers and newspaper proprietors as well as binders and stationers. The Bookseller similarly targeted booksellers and thus might instead be considered part of the larger book trade press rather than the more specific print trade press, but in addition to its lists of new books and prices (and its numerous ads), The Bookseller published information about bankruptcies of presses, legislation relevant to printers, and pieces of journalism that members of the print trade would surely have found useful.

In its fullest form, the nineteenth-century print trade might reasonably be thought to encompass journals about printing, typography, and type founding, of course, but also journals dedicated to paper and stationery, lithography, bibliography, and publishing. All of these are essential components of the print trade. There are also a number of union and society papers that were published regularly, like The Amalgamated Society of Lithographic Printers’ Annual Report or The Linotype Users’ Association Monthly Circular, which provided crucial information to members of the print trade but are very different in tone and content from something like The Modern Printer.

In short, defining the nineteenth-century print trade journal is a tricky task, and one might easily argue for or against some of the titles I’ve omitted or included in my database. But I ultimately decided to include:

• Journals specifically written to and for members of the print trade

• Union newspapers and newsletters, created by print-related organizations (typographers, compositors, printers, lithographers, etc.)

• Advertisement sheets and house circulars aimed specifically at members of the print trade, but only if they contain written content as well as ads (such as New Impressions, which is part advertiser, part specimen sheet, and part print trade news forum)

• Journals devoted to bibliography, but only if their scope extends beyond librarianship to topics of print history and/or practice (for example, I have included The Bibliographer, which meets the latter conditions, but not The Library Chronicle, which does not)

• Special interest journals where the special interest intersects more than tangentially with the print trade (such as The Amateur Printers’ Journal and Philatelists’ Gazette)

• Trade journals for print-adjacent trades (bookselling, journalism, paper and stationery, process work, lithography, etc.), but only when they carry content directly relevant to the general print trade (so The Press News and The Newspaper Owner and Manager, but not The Journalist and Newspaper Proprietor)

My current list will, no doubt, undergo changes as I find new print trade journals and become more familiar with titles in my database (and perhaps learn they are not as relevant as I had supposed).

Date Range

The VPTJD includes only trade journals founded between 1800 and 1900. These dates are somewhat arbitrary; I could have restricted my corpus to the reign of Queen Victoria or her dates of birth and death, had I wanted to be more technically “Victorian” in my selections. More important to me, however, was tracing the emergence and popularization of print trade periodicals over the course of the nineteenth century, and this requires the inclusion of pre-1830s texts.

When a title continues publication after 1900, I have included any subsequent names it takes during its evolution in the notes attached to the related pre-1900 periodical. One can search for post-1900 titles by typing the name in the search box in the main menu bar, but these titles are not included in the main list of journals.

The date ranges of journals listed on the main “Journals” page are preceded by “c.” because of the number of periodicals with conflicting start and/or end dates that I have not yet been able to resolve. Not all start/end dates are uncertain or approximate; the software we used required that I put “c.” on all dates or none, so I opted for all. Check the individual journal pages to see if, indeed, there are multiple contested start or end dates.

Location

All of the periodicals listed in the VPTJD are published in Great Britain. The majority are English in origin. This reflects my access to resource materials and the focus, to this point, of other scholars on whose work I’ve relied. Some journals included in the VPTJD were regularly reprinted in the United States, but I have included no journals solely of U.S. origin. 

Citations

After most pieces of bibliographic information, I have indicated my source in a parenthetical citation. Full citation information for these references (including pagination and links, where relevant) can be found at the bottom of each individual page and on the VPTJD’s main “Sources” page. When I have seen a copy of a journal myself and obtained the information from it, I cite the “journal itself” as my source.

See “Sources” below for descriptions of the principal sources on which I have relied for my information. 

Conflicting Information

Ideally, the VPTJD would contain no conflicting information. Were all the issues of all the journals preserved and archived somewhere, and were they accessible to me, I would be able to present only non-conflicting information confirmable via primary source evidence. When I have examined a copy of a periodical myself, I have cited the information in the VPTJD as coming from the “journal itself.” But because of the impossibility of doing this for all the titles, I’ve had to resort to reporting the conflicting information contained in other sources.

When two or more reliable sources provide contradictory information, I have retained the contradictions but cited the source of each piece of information. Readers may thus know the origin of the information and can determine for themselves which data seems most credible or probable.

When conflicting dates appear non-chronologically, however, this signals my own (perhaps flawed) determination of reliability. The first date listed is the date given by either the largest number of sources or by the most credible source. Typically, but certainly not always, more recent scholarship is more reliable than information published in the nineteenth century, and information published in academic sources is often more reliable than that offered by commercial sources. Often, too, conflicting dates can be resolved by reading through the publication history of a journal. A title that began in 1856 but changed its name in 1860 might be listed in some sources as beginning in 1860; context resolves the conflict in these cases.

As I continue to gain access to journals, I will update or resolve conflicting information. Scholars who work with any of the journals in the VPTJD (or with titles I’ve accidentally omitted) are encouraged to contact me via the link online. Please also send corrections or clarifications, as you find errors.

Terminology, Punctuation, and Spelling

I have maintained original terminology, punctuation, and spelling wherever possible, even when doing so may seem inconsistent or inaccurate.

For example, some publishing companies or printing firms use “&” in nineteenth-century publications of their names (such as A. Ritchie & Co.), while others spell out “and” (like Alexander and Shepheard). Other firms use both interchangeably (like A. W. Penrose & Co./A. W. Penrose and Co.):

In these cases, I have simply chosen to use the form I see most frequently. This is also the reason why commas and especially apostrophes tend to float around inconsistently in VPTJD entries. For example, The Stationer, Printer & Fancy Trades’ Register keeps the apostrophe on “Trades,” while the next iteration of this journal, The Fancy Trades Register and Trade Circular for Stationers, Printers, Binders, Music, Toy, & Pianoforte Dealers, and Manufacturers, etc., omits it:

Editors

Many trade journals have more than one editor over the course of their lifetime. This is the reason why different editors’ names are attached to individual journal issue pages. On the main page of each journal, I list all editors who worked on the paper at any time, but where possible, I have listed only the editor who edited that specific issue on each individual “Issues” page. The main page of any editor contains both a list of all the journals they edited and all of the individual issues they oversaw.

Some editors are also the publishers of a journal; in these cases, they are listed on both the “Editors” page and the “Printer/Publishers” page.

Printers/Publishers

I chose not to separate printers and publishers, even though in many cases they were different entities, for a handful of reasons. First, it was often impossible for me to tell whether a name or a firm listed in a bibliographic source was the printer or the publisher. Second, many printers in the nineteenth century were publishers and vice versa; the separation of the industries was not yet complete when a number of the VPTJD titles came out. Third, keeping both in the same list sometimes allowed me to see relationships (especially geographical and commercial ones) where I did not know they existed.

When I have had the information, I have indicated whether a person/firm is a publisher or a printer.

Issues/Numbers

Some key information about the journals—the most variable information—does not appear on the main page of each journal but instead appears on the individual “Issues” pages. This includes the publication date and frequency, the printer/ publisher and editor of the issue, the paper size, format, and number of pages, the price, and any information unique to an issue. I also include a link to a facsimile copy of each issue when it is available online (freely, or via subscription). This is an ongoing process; more issues will be attached on a continuing basis.

The reason this information is not visible on the parent journal page is because it is the information most likely to vary from issue to issue or volume to volume. Keeping this information separate, and allocating it to the specific issue to which it pertains, allows me to avoid the problem (replicated in most bibliographies of periodical literature) of listing conflicting information due to changes in a journal over time.

Thus, when a new editor or a guest editor takes over, when the price or size changes, or when a new publication frequency begins, this is indicated on the specific issue that registers the change.

Individual issues are listed below the notes and subject categories on their parent journal pages.

VPTJD Sources

When I have been unable to examine copies of the journals themselves, I have drawn the bibliographic information contained in the VPTJD from a number of nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century sources. A full bibliography of these sources can be found on the main “Sources” page; lists of sources pertaining to specific journals appear on the bottom of each journal page.

For scholars interested in conducting further research on Victorian print trade periodicals (and Victorian periodicals in general), the sources that have been most useful to me include the following.

Nineteenth-Century Sources

Many nineteenth-century reference texts exist that provide a wealth of information about trade journals. Because they are compiled for different purposes (sometimes unrelated to the study of periodicals), some are not systematic about the journals they include or the facts they relate. In addition, most rely on information obtained by respondents willing to return inquiry cards mailed to them; thus, accuracy and breadth varies. A few of these sources are digitized and available online; this number will hopefully expand in coming years.

The VPTJ Database relies on information found in:

• Bent’s Monthly Literary Advertiser (1802, as Literary Advertiser; 1805, as Monthly Literary Advertiser; 1829–1860, as Bent’s Monthly Literary Advertiser): focuses on literature and engravings/fine art but also occasionally contains information about magazines, newspapers, and journals.
  
  
• The Bibliography of Printing, by E. C. Bigmore and C. W. H. Wyman: The most comprehensive nineteenth-century source for information about Victorian print trade journals. Bigmore and Wyman began publishing monthly installments of their Bibliography in Wyman’s trade journal, The Printing Times and Lithographer, in 1880 (the “periodical publications” section begins 15 January 1881). A full edition of the Bibliography (with minor changes from the PT&L version) was published in three volumes in 1886, and a reprint of this edition was issued by Oak Knoll Press in 2001. Bigmore and Wyman’s work was assisted by English printer and historian William Blades and by American printer Theodore Low De Vinne.
  
  Bigmore and Wyman’s Bibliography contains information about books, pamphlets, and periodicals in many languages, printed throughout the Western world. It lists titles, founding dates, editors, publishers, prices, formats, frequency, locations, and bibliographic oddities, and most entries are followed by a short paragraph description. Information is not always accurate or verified by other sources, and it does not include periodicals begun in Britain after 1886, but its fairly-comprehensive scope makes this Bibliography a good place to begin research on print trade periodicals in Britain.
  
  
• The Bookseller (1858–1928, now online): a rival of Bent’s, which was incorporated with it in 1860. A reference for booksellers and publishers, useful especially for information about publishers of trade periodicals.
  
  
• Caspar’s Directory of the American Book News and Stationery Trade (1889): American, but lists names, addresses, and “estimated capital” of print trade related businesses, including those in “British Possessions.” Contains a list of “practical bibliographies, trade and library catalogues, . . . literary and trade journals” in the U.S. and Canada (where many U.K. periodicals were republished) and in the “British Empire (exclusive of Canada”), and a list of trade journals relating to the “Foreign and American” book trade. Its “directories of booksellers and publishers” is also helpful, as is its “price and address list of periodicals and newspapers,” though most of these are American.
  
  
• Deacon’s Newspaper Handbook and Advertiser’s Guide (1877–94, according to King; 1863-1904, according to Jones): includes facsimiles of the front page of some periodicals. Attempted to procure reliable, verifiable circulation statistics. Not terribly successful in this, as it had to rely on publishers/editors, who often provided wildly inaccurate information (Brake 582).
  
  
• Everett’s Directory of the Principal Newspapers of the World (1881–): London-based newspaper directory. Copies only available in U.K. libraries.
  
  
• Hammond’s List of London and Provincial Newspapers, Periodicals, Etc. (1850): limited, primarily contains lists of newspapers. Organized by geography, frequency, and in the “magazines” section, by topic and (sometimes) profession/trade.
  
  
• The Handbook for Advertisers and Guide to Advertising, by “An Old Advertiser” (1854): contains some circulation numbers of periodicals (based on stamp returns) and a list of “Journals of Trade, etc.” in which some print trade journals are described.
  
  
• Hubbard’s Newspaper and Bank Directory of the World (1882–84): American, claims to have names and descriptions of 33,000 newspapers in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Europe. Much more North American content than British or European.
  
  
• Kelly’s Post Office Directory (1799–1967): early volumes only cover London; later volumes cover other U.K. cities. Valuable especially for information about the premises of editors and publishers.
  
  
• [C. & E.] Layton’s Handy Newspaper List (1895–1916): London-based newspaper directory. Copies only available in U.K. libraries.
  
  
• May’s British and Irish Press Guide and Advertiser’s Handbook and Dictionary (1874, 1877–80, 1883–89); continued as Willing’s British and Irish Press Guide (1890–92, 1894–98); continued as Willing’s Press Guide (1899–1905, 1907–09, 1911–): contains alphabetical lists and various classifications of newspapers and periodicals in England, the provinces, and Europe (English-language only). Subtitle explains that volumes include a “dictionary of each interest, profession, trade,” indicating its attunement to class literature. Multiple volumes over many years make May’s/Willing’s ideal for tracking changes in titles, editors, and publishers.
  
  
• Mitchell’s Newspaper Press Directory (1846–1847, 1851, 1854–1907): like May’s/Willing’s, an advertiser’s directory first and foremost; begins including periodicals in 1860 (although some periodicals are included as “newspapers” in earlier volumes). Separates “class papers and periodicals” from “trade papers and periodicals” in 1895. An excellent source for periodical titles, editors, publishers, dates of founding, frequency, prices, and days of publication. Most content taken from publishers’ self-descriptions. Shows “meticulous attention to industry detail” (O’Malley 593) but is not always accurate, as information was “not collected with anything approaching a system” (599).
  
  
• Robson’s London [Commercial] Directory (1819–42): a street directory like Kelly’s, but less expansive. Indexed by street name, by surname, and by profession (including printers, publishers, and those in print-adjacent trades). Ideal for searching locations of editors and publishers working in London.
  
  
• Sell’s Dictionary of the World’s Press and Advertiser’s Reference Book (1883–1915): an advertising directory first published as The Philosophy of Advertising in 1881 and 1883. Began with London newspapers only, then expanded to newspapers in the provinces, Scotland, Wales, Ireland. Eventually added annual magazines, then class papers, and then foreign papers. Lists titles, publishers’ addresses, political leaning, and price per issue, and includes hundreds of pages of advertisements in the back (largely self-composed by publishers), which often offer more information than the lists (written by Sell’s editors). Also contains a “Classified List of Newspapers in the Various Trades and Professionals,” which singles out printers, booksellers, stationers, and type founders (see Turner).
  
  
• Scottish Newspaper Directory and Guide to Advertisers: A Complete Manual of the Newspaper Press (1855): uses stamp returns to calculate circulation numbers of Scottish periodicals and newspapers and provides short paragraph descriptions as well as founding date, place of publication, political leading, and publication days. Advertisements with more information included in back.
  
  
• Street’s List of Newspapers Published in Great Britain and Ireland (1873, 1890, 1892); continues as Street’s Newspaper Directory (1898–1917, 1920): only available in the U.K., and not as comprehensive as Willing’s or Mitchell’s.

Modern Sources

Scholars of print trade periodicals can also find information in twenty- and twenty-first-century print and digital publications, catalogues, and databases. Unfortunately, however, the lack of primary documents and/or access to them has meant that most of these more contemporary reference texts contain partial, inaccurate, or conflicting information.

Many discrepancies among these sources arise from the frequent title changes made to Victorian print trade periodicals. When journals merged or incorporated other journals, gained new editors, or were taken on by different publishers, they often adopted new titles or subtitles. Establishing a beginning date thus becomes complicated: does one list the founding date of The Printer, or Compositors’ and Pressmen’s Chronicle as 1843, for example, when the first number with that titled was issued, or as 1840, when Robert Thompson actually began the journal (as The Compositors’ Chronicle) before having to halt publication briefly to reorganize the financial arrangements of the paper? Does The Compositors’ Chronicle thus end publication in 1843 (although all aspects of management and production remained the same through the short hiatus and the title change) or in 1845, when the periodical shut down for good?

Different sources adopt different bibliographic strategies for managing such fluid information, resulting in contradictions across texts. As mentioned above, the VPTJD attempts to resolve as many discrepancies as possible by presenting the sources of the conflicting information so readers may assess the credibility of each piece of information for themselves, and by linking periodicals that share a familial lineage and indicating, when possible, where, when, and why changes took place. Readers can then decide which titles, dates, names, prices, places, sizes, etc. to use, based on the needs of their research.

Perhaps the most helpful thing the VPTJD can offer, then, is information directing readers to sources that discuss each periodical. Some of the most useful to me have been:

• Annals of Printing: A Chronological Encyclopedia from the Earliest Times to 1950 (1966), by Berry and Poole: Print, or a digital edition exists through JSTOR, by subscription only. Contains alphabetical entries for the largest and most influential print trade journals, editors, and publishers.
  
  
• BLT19: Nineteenth-Century Business, Labour, Trade & Temperance Periodicals: Website and database compiled and maintained by King. Under the “Academic” tab, users can download an Excel spreadsheet listing nearly 600 nineteenth-century trade journals from Britain and Ireland, along with their publication frequency, price, founding date, publisher, and address. Trade journals are subject-tagged for easy sorting. Information does not reflect changes over time and is not cited, and many smaller print trade journals are omitted.
  
  
• British Union-Catalogue of Periodicals (BUCOP), edited by Stewart (1968): Available in print only, a record of periodicals worldwide from 1700 to the twentieth century. Multi-volume, and organized by subject. Contains bibliographic information for many titles, including (often) very specific date information (day and month as well as year of issues). Also records subtitles of many journals.
  
  
• Books and Printing: A Selected List of Periodicals, 1800-1942, by Ulrich and Kup (1943): Old, available in print only, but good especially for little-known titles relating to the print trade. Basic bibliographic information is often followed by a short paragraph description. Information is unsourced, and its reliance upon nineteenth-century reference sources (rather than primary documents) means it often perpetuates older errors.
  
  
• C19: The Nineteenth Century Index: Subscription database available through academic libraries. Contains the Curran/Wellesley Index and the Nineteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue, both good sources of information on trade journals. Much of the Nineteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue is repeated in COPAC, however, which is freely available online.
  
  
• Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, volume 4 (1800-1900), edited by Shattock: A massive reference text, covering all genres of English literature. Begun decades ago, a third edition of volume 4 (edited by Shattock) came out in 1999/2000. Lists titles, publishers, authors, editors, etc. The sections on “Book Production and Distribution” and “Newspapers and Magazines” are most relevant to Victorian trade journals.
  
  
• Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism, edited by Brake and Demoor: First published in 2009, expanded online and included in C19 (with generous previews on Google Books). Contains nearly 1800 entries about all aspects of nineteenth-century British/Irish periodical publication, including some entries on specific journals and editors. An excellent resource, and quite accurate in its information, though lesser-known and shorter-lived periodicals and the people associated with them are not included.
  
  
• Guide to the Early British Periodicals Collection on Microfilm (1980), by Hoornstra and Puravs: A printed source helpful in directing readers to information about periodicals archived on microfilm in many academic libraries. Lists titles, editors, and some dates. Organized by subject.
  
  
• Library catalogues (COPAC, WorldCat, St. Bride’s, British Museum, British Library, etc.): Many libraries and archives have good online catalogues that can be accessed freely. Depending on the thoroughness of the cataloguer, entries for individual journals may contain information about volume and issue numbers, start and stop dates, publication frequency, editors, publishers, size, format, length, and related journal titles. Not always accurate, and sometimes journal titles can be difficult to find.
  
  
• Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals: 1800-1900: Last alphabetically, but Brake rightly identifies this as “currently the most inclusive digitized reference work on the nineteenth-century press” (575). Began in print format in the 1970s by John North but is now available online via subscription. Most of Waterloo’s entries derive from COPAC and from actual texts in the British Library. Contains facsimiles of some title pages as well as editors, publishers, printers (these three are sometimes conflated), sizes, prices (often multiple), frequency, topics, contributors, political or religious orientation, and—most helpfully—short sections of comments or notes on many titles, and lists reference texts that mention the journal. Also lists libraries worldwide that retain copies. Much information listed, however, is impossible to attribute to a source, and many errors obtain. Information about the largest, most popular journals is most accurate; smaller periodicals have little or no, and less reliable, information. Searching for titles that contain hyphens or apostrophes is especially difficult.

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