Related Journals

• Colonial Book Circular and Bibliographical Record
  • The Torch was originally called The Colonial Book Circular and Bibliographic Record for just 1 issue when it began in 1887; the name changed in volume 1, number 2 (December 1887)

Start Date(s)

• 1887 (journal itself)

End Date(s)

• 1892 (NSTC )

Editor(s)

• Petherick, Edward Augustus

Printer/Publisher(s)

• E. A. Petherick & Co, Colonial Booksellers' Agency

City

• London, England (journal itself)

Type of Content

• Departments: address, notes, select lists of recent publications, recent colonial/English publications and books, special colonial libraries, announcements of forthcoming publications, English and American publications/magazine reviews, bibliography notes, publishers' short lists (Waterloo Online)
• “Contains classified lists of new publications -- English, American and Colonial -- in all Departments of literature, science and art” (vol. 1, no. 1, Sept. 1887, p. 1)

Notes

• Opening page of vol. 1, no. 2, Dec. 1887, p. 37 explains the renaming of this journal: “In naming The Colonial Book Circular, we had in mind the field of our labours Abroad rather than at Home; not so much the fact that Colonial Publications would be catalogued in it. The experience of one issue has shown that a change in the title is desirable. We have, therefore, borrowed a word of one syllable from the quotation placed at the head of our first number -- a word simple, expressive, and we think not inappropriate to the publication; namely The Torch” (vol. 1, no. 2, Dec. 1887, p. 37)
• “This new journal is likely to be useful to all interested in the Colonies. The first part contains a select list of recent publications in all departments, which no doubt many colonists will be glad to have, Then follows a classified list of recent Colonial publications and books relating to the Colonies” (Keltie p. 721)
• “Quoting Sir Richard Steele on how the ‘[k]nowledge of books is like . . . [a] lantern’, Edward Petherick described in the inaugural issue of The Colonial Book Circular and Bibliographical Record his desire to produce a journal that would provide a catalogue of primarily English-language fiction and non-fiction for readers at ‘Home and Abroad’ who wanted to purchase books but who had no idea what to buy. Once readers knew what to acquire and ordered the books, Petherick could then ship the books with his distribution company. Fittingly, the symbol of the Colonial Booksellers’ Agency and journal was a winged Mercury, as Petherick offered to procure and deliver books ‘to any part of the world’” (Rukavina p. 113)
• Editor and publisher's address (Petherick, at the Colonial Booksellers' Agency) in 1889: 32-33 Paternoster Row, London (Caspar's 1889, p. 1287)
• Printers: F. Gaskill (1887-88) and Richard Clay (Waterloo Online, journal itself)

Subject Categories

• Bibliography
• Book Trade & Bookselling
• Book Trade News
• Colonies
• Printing Trade
• Publishing

Issues

• The Torch and Colonial Book Circular 1.2 (Dec. 1887)
• The Torch and Colonial Book Circular 1.3 (Mar. 1888)

Sources that Discuss this Journal

• Caspar's Directory 1889, p. 1287
• Keltie p. 721
• NSTC
• Rukavina pp. 113-34
• Stewart vol. 1, p. 602
• Waterloo (online)

Works Cited

• Caspar's Directory of the American Book, edited by Carl Nicolaus Caspar. C. N. Caspar, 1889. Google Books.
• Keltie, J. Scott. “New Geographical Publications.” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, vol. 9, 1887, pp. 709-22. Google Books.
• NSTC (Nineteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue), in C19: The Nineteenth-Century Index, Chadwyck-Heaney, 2020. ProQuest.
• Rukavina, Alison. “The Colonial Booksellers’ Agency.” The Development of the International Book Trade, 1870–1895, edited by Rukavina. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 113-34.
• Stewart, James D., editor. British Union-Catalogue of Periodicals. 4 vols. Butterworths, 1968.
• The Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals: 1800-1900, edited by John S. North. North Waterloo Academic Press, 2009.