Start Date(s)

• 1884 (journal itself)

End Date(s)

• 1885 (Ulrich and Kup)
• 1888 (Shattock)

Editor(s)

• McCoy, M. P.

City

• London, England (journal itself)

Type of Content

• "[A]rticles elucidating modern appliances and methods, by examples at once artistic and thoroughly practicable, and by instituting job competitions for the encouragement and development of native talent" (Joyner p. 32)
• "Technical instruction, and issue of specimen sheets of fine letterpress" (Sell's 1887, p. 477)
• Contains "modern printers, the press room, the composing room, our exchanges, trade notes, correspondence, odd sorts, advertisements" (Waterloo Online)

Notes

• "House organ of Green & McAllen" (Catalogue p. 22)
• "For a long time we have felt that the many publications devoted to the trade, while admirable as mediums for advertising the various manufactures connected therewith, do not satisfy the desire of modern printers for purely practical information. . . . In the attempt to accomplish this object we feel we are not trenching on the many able trade journals already in existence. It will rather be our aim to carve out a new career for The Modern Printer by endeavouring to make it A Technical Journal, as distinguished from a journal for advertising trade industries" (vol. 1, no. 1, 1884, p. 1)
• “The publication of Modern Printer, in March, 1884, marks the date of commencement of a British trade journal solely devoted to the advancement of artistic typography. Its advent was most opportune. The American Model Printer, during the preceding four years, had excited the admiration of some few British printers, but the elaborate masterpieces exhibited in that beautiful journal, so eminently suggestive to the more accomplished Transatlantic craftsman, presented to the mind of the average printer of this country ideals altogether beyond his reach, and commercially prohibitive withal” (Joyner p. 32)
• “Although The Modern Printer did not live to see ‘English printing in the front rank among the nations,’ during the two years of its existence it rendered most valuable help in that direction by articles elucidating modern appliances and methods, by examples at once artistic and thoroughly practicable, and by instituting job competitions for the encouragement and development of native talent” (Joyner p. 32)
• “Mr. McCoy . . . established and conducted a journal called The Modern Printer, on the lines of The American Art Printer, which changed the complexion of British job typography and pressmanship, so that when in an exhibition of commercial printing in London in 1888, it was complained by the London Times that the printers exhibited little patriotism in so using American types, the answer of the English trade journals was that the British typefounders had failed to supply the needs of such printers as desired to advance their art” ("Discursions" p. 666-67)
• “McCoy . . . secured the good will and respect of the British printers, and his influence as editor and publisher of The Modern Printer did more than any other factor to turn the tide of unpopularity and establish the leadership of American printing machinery and materials in Europe. Every American manufacturer who has established a market for his wares in Europe has been indirectly and greatly benefited by Mr. McCoy’s missionary work” ("Discursions" p. 667)
• Publisher's address (Green and McAllan: 3 Ludgate Circus (Sell's 1887, p. 477)

Subject Categories

• Printing History
• Printing Trade

Sources that Discuss this Journal

• British Museum Catalogue p. 640
• COPAC
• "Discursions" pp. 666-67
• Joyner p. 32
• NSTC
• Sell 1887, p. 477
• Shattock p. 52
• Stewart vol. 3, p. 236
• Ulrich and Kup p. 46, 205
• Waterloo (online)

Works Cited

• British Museum Catalogue of Printed Books, Supplement: Newspapers Published in Great Britain and Ireland 1801-1900. Clowes & Sons, 1905.
• COPAC: Consortium of Online Public Access Catalogues. Library Hub Discover, JISC.
• “Discursions of a Retired Printer.” The Inland Printer, vol. 38, no. 5, Feb. 1907, pp. 672-80. Google Books.
• Joyner, George. Fine Printing: Its Inception, Development, and Practice. Cooper and Budd, 1895.
• NSTC (Nineteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue), in C19: The Nineteenth-Century Index, Chadwyck-Heaney, 2020. ProQuest.
• Sell, Henry. Sell’s Dictionary of the World’s Press. Sell’s Advertising Agency, 1883-1915. Google Books.
• Shattock, Joanne. The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. Vol. 4: 1800-1900. Edited by Frederick W. Bateson. 3rd ed. Cambridge UP. 1999.
• Stewart, James D., editor. British Union-Catalogue of Periodicals. 4 vols. Butterworths, 1968.
• Ulrich, Carolyn F., and Karl Kup. Books and Printing: A Selected List of Periodicals, 1800-1942. W. E. Rudge, 1943.
• The Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals: 1800-1900, edited by John S. North. North Waterloo Academic Press, 2009.