Detailed Record
Tit-Bits;
vol 1 no 1, 22 Oct 1881 - no 5107, 09 Jun 1984
London,Middlesex (Jan 1882 - 1884)
Manchester,Lancashire (30 Oct 1881 - 1884)
Editor:
George Newnes (1881 - 1910)
E.P. Thompson (Oct 1881)
E.P. Thompson (Oct 1881)
Proprietor:
George Newnes (founder 1881-1890+)
Publisher:
George Newnes Ltd
George Newnes (22 Oct 1881 - 1887)
George Newnes (22 Oct 1881 - 1887)
Printer:
William Evans
Contributors:
Grant Allen
Philip Beaufoy
Alfred Charles Harmsworth
James Joyce
George Newnes
James Payn (1889)
C. Arthur Pearson
Charles Stevens
Philip Beaufoy
Alfred Charles Harmsworth
James Joyce
George Newnes
James Payn (1889)
C. Arthur Pearson
Charles Stevens
Size:
30cm, 16pp
Price:
1d (1887, 1894, 1912)
Circulation:
900,000/no (1882); 850,000 (1889); 500,000/no (1890) Easter week: 671,000; sold 400,000-600,000/no (1881-1910)
Frequency:
weekly (Sat 1887; Wed 1912)
Illustration:
cartoons
Departments:
tit-bits of information, poetry, anecdotes of gamblers, collection of excerpts (1881); answers to correspondents, editorials, social services, immigration, emigration, working class, letters, jokes, stories, crime, gossip
Orientation:
middle class
Sources:
Blake, George. The Press and the Public.; COPAC; Drotner, Kirsten. English Children and Their Magazine, 1751-1945. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1988.; Ellis, Alec. "Influences on the Availability of Recreational Reading for Victorian Working Class Children." Journal of Librarianship 8:3 (1976): 185-195.; Ferris, House of Northcliffe.; Gifford, Denis. Victorian Comics. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1976.; Griffiths,.; Layton, Handy Newspaper List.; Mason, Tony. "Sporting News, 1860-1914." The Press in English Society from the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries. Eds. Michael Harris and Alan Lee. London, Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1986. pp.168-186.; Mitchell's Newspaper Press Directory.; Sell’s Dictionary p.161.; Successful Advertising, 1902. p.488.; Sumpter, Caroline. The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.; Sutherland Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction.; Turner, E.S. Boys Will be Boys. London: Michael Joseph, 1975.; Uffelman, 1992.
Histories:
Altick, English Common Reader.; Brake and Turner, Rebranding the News of the World, p.29.; Cranfield, The Press and Society.; Engel, Tickle the Public.; Friederichs, Hulda. The Life of George Newnes, Bart. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911.; Fyfe, Sixty Years of Fleet Street.; Gifford, D. Victorian comics. 1976.; Harrison, Poor Men’s Guardians.; Herd, March of Journalism.; Jackson, "Textual Interaction in Tit-Bits".; Jackson, Kate. "The Tit Bits Phenomenon: George Newnes, New Journalism and the Periodical Texts."; James, Louis. "Tom Brown’s Imperialist Sons." VS 17 (1973): 80-99.; Jones, Kennedy. Fleet Street & Downing Street. London: Hutchinson And Co.,1920.; Kenner, H. "Beaufoy's masterplaster." 24 JJQ (1986): 11-18; Koss, Rise and Fall of the Political Press.; Lawson, John and Harold Silver. A Social History of Education in England. London: Methuen & Co Ltd, [c.1973].; Lee, Origins of Popular Press; Locke, G. "Wells in three volumes? a sketch of British publishing in the 19th century." SFS 3 (1976): 282-6.; Menke, "Touchstones and Tit-Bits." 47:4 (2014), 559-576.; Nicholson, "Remixing the Nineteenth Century Archive".; Taylor, S. J. The Great Outsiders: Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996.; VPR 11:1, p.34; 12:2, pp.71-72; 13:3, pp.86, 93; 20:4, p.153.; 30.3 (Fall 1997): 201-226.; Vranken, "From Copying to Originality in Tit Bits".; Williams, Francis. Dangerous Estate: The Anatomy of Newspapers. London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1957.
Comments:
The paper's format and title derived from Newnes' habit of clipping interesting snippets of information from newspapers, magazines, and other publications; the paper was a "miscellany of little-known facts assembled for amusement" (Taylor p.11-12).
It was "a collection of easy-to-read snippets from every published source" (Harrison 178).
Tit-Bits "dedicated itself exclusively to entertainment, by publishing only the entertaining paragraphs that the Sundays included" (Brake and Turner 29).
It has been "acknowledged by many historians and contemporaries to be the most popular penny paper of the late nineteenth century" (Jackson, Newnes and the New Journalism, 56).
"Newnes proved to be a marketing genius, and his new magazine quickly began to entice its readers with the use of competitions and prizes that had no precedent" (Cox & Mowatt 55).
The History of Times mentioned that "this new penny paper of scraps culled by Newnes from odd sources was -- 'destined to modify in the most profound degree, the intellectual, social and political tone of the Press as whole'" (Williams 131).
"[James] Henderson's biggest rival in popular publishing was George Newnes, who pioneered scrap-book journalism with his phenomenally successful Tit-Bits" (Gifford, Denis. Victorian Comics, p.8).
Vranken: "At first glance, the preface to the first issue of Tit-Bits seems to disavow originality entirely, presenting itself as a kind of 'open and avowed' parasite, an epitome of the highly intertextual late Victorian press. At the same time, though, Newnes marketed his journal as a radically new style of periodical by suggesting that extensive indexing would constitute a form of originality" (680).
Newnes' success with Tit-Bits set him up as one of the best newspaper people and allowed him to establish a host of other publications, including the Strand (Jackson, Textual Interaction 12).
Harmsworth's Answers to Correspondents "was modeled on... Tit-Bits" (Turner, E.S.; p.100).
When Newnes first got the idea for his newspaper, he tried to find someone who would be willing to lend him the funds to start it, but was unsuccessful. In order to get the funds, he then opened a successful vegetarian restaurant (which were popular at the time) and sold it for the amount of money he figured he needed for the paper (Herd, Harold; p.234).
Tit-Bits began "by the former owner of a vegetarian restaurant in Manchester, George Newnes. Alfred [Harmsworth] made it his chief source of income" (Ferris, Paul; p.27).
Harmsworth served in the office of George Newnes after 1885..."The continuing success of Tit-Bits and the comparative ease of its weekly compilation was inspiration to [Harmsworth's] ambition... Choice Chips [became] a cheap imitator of Tit-Bits..." (Gifford, Denis. Victorian Comics, p. 10, 12).
"Newnes gave the new reading public exactly what it wanted: potted, easily assimilated information. Everything was short and written simply and clearly: a predigested literary breakfast food for the family" (Cranfield, G.A. The Press and Society, p.217).
Bingham, Conboy: "The magazine provided brief articles on a wide range of subjects designed for easy reading-dismissed by condescending contemporaries as 'snippet journalism'-and sought to develop what has been identified as a 'sympathetic intimacy', a direct, personal and informal form of address which became central to the popular market" (p. 5).
"The public it appealed to was one which desired...'occupation much rather than intellectual exertion and, above all, something to pass the time' " (Jones, Kennedy).
"Like other editors of the period, Newnes had an interest in developing, publicizing, and promoting the text of Tit Bits as the site of a community of mutual responsibility, and he did so in such a way as to create one of the most successful examples of the so-called 'New journalism'. The management of limited time (within limited space) – the ethos of work discipline…– was the very raison d'être of Tit Bits....the readership of Tit Bits consisted of a lower middle and aspiring middle class, largely commuting, often salary-earning, self-helping public...well dressed, bonneted women...clerical types. But the attraction of Newnes’ paper was, at the same time, the way in which it offered connection, representation and creative potential to readers, and enabled Newnes to establish a responsive editorial presence...Tit Bits began as a collection of excerpts converted into 'text' purely by a process of creative editorial synthesis. Newnes...identified an issue of immense significance to contemporaries...that of the tension between commercial value and literary value in journalistic production" (Jackson, Phenomenon).
Jackson explains that "Newnes conceptualized Tit-Bits as an extremely responsive medium, immersed in the rhythms of industrial life and realizing the humble needs of hardworking people." This "was one of the most lucrative publishing ventures of the 1880s (Jackson, Textual Interaction 11).
"Tit-Bits, one of the most successful and influential players in this emerging market [humour periodicals], consistently filled its front cover with jokes and scattered them throughout its other pages as column fillers" (Nicholson 6).
Tit Bits published a story called "What's Bred in the Bone" for which it paid the writer, Grant Allen a £1000 prize. This was likely the largest received by any Victorian writer. Strange Stories, published in 1884, was made of fiction he had contributed to magazines under the name J. Arbuthnot Wilson.
At first, Tit-Bits had no advertisements, but Newnes was later persuaded to accept them and he added a green cover for that purpose. Also at first, the paper used only items from other publications, but later it began to use original items. Newnes liked to use schemes in Tit-Bits. For example, he buried tubes containing five hundred sovereigns each and told the readers they could keep the money if they found it. There were clues to the various tubes' whereabouts in his paper (Herd 235).
"There is no paper in the world conducted on the lines which will be followed in Tit-Bits. It will be a production of all that is most interesting in the books, periodicals, and newspapers of this and other countries.... The business of the conductors of Tit-Bits will be like that of the dentist an organised system of acting; but instead of, like the dentist, acting that which is bad, and leaving that which is good, they will pursue exactly the opposite course and extract that which is good, and leave the remainder. A complete system has been arranged whereby all the most interesting papers and books of England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, America, Australia, the Indies will be regularly searched, and whatever is found of interest to the general reader in short, wherever a tit-bit is discovered it will be drafted into the new paper Tit-Bits. Tit-Bits will contain interesting incidents, amusing anecdotes, pithy [?]graphs" (Tit-Bits no 1, p.1).
Blake: "The strict historian of such matters would probably name the year 1881 as marking the beginning of the decline of our journalistic standards, for it was in that year that the late George Newnes founded Tit-Bits (6).
Blake also mentions that Tit-Bits "inspired Lord Harmsworth to found Answers and, in due course, the Daily Mail" (6).
Tit-Bits was especially known for its ability to engage its audience. According to Jackson, this was a role that Newnes took seriously, even creating characters to engage with his readers (Textual Interaction 16).
Satirised in George Gissing's New Grub Street (1891) under the title Chit-Chat (a magazine full of "'chit-chatty information—bits of stories, bits of description, bits of scandal, bits of jokes, bits of statistics, bits of foolery'" [quoted in Menke 561]) and in a Punch parody "announcing a plan for a 'new Weekly Paper' called Sweet Stuff. This paper will give readers textual treats without the trouble of a nourishing meal, but it promises its founders a 'colossal fortune' to be made without capital, journalistic staff, or much effort" (Menke 571).
1,000 Answers to 1,000 Questions in Tit-Bits Inquiry Column, with the replies thereto was a reprint of Tit-Bits in 1884.
It was "a collection of easy-to-read snippets from every published source" (Harrison 178).
Tit-Bits "dedicated itself exclusively to entertainment, by publishing only the entertaining paragraphs that the Sundays included" (Brake and Turner 29).
It has been "acknowledged by many historians and contemporaries to be the most popular penny paper of the late nineteenth century" (Jackson, Newnes and the New Journalism, 56).
"Newnes proved to be a marketing genius, and his new magazine quickly began to entice its readers with the use of competitions and prizes that had no precedent" (Cox & Mowatt 55).
The History of Times mentioned that "this new penny paper of scraps culled by Newnes from odd sources was -- 'destined to modify in the most profound degree, the intellectual, social and political tone of the Press as whole'" (Williams 131).
"[James] Henderson's biggest rival in popular publishing was George Newnes, who pioneered scrap-book journalism with his phenomenally successful Tit-Bits" (Gifford, Denis. Victorian Comics, p.8).
Vranken: "At first glance, the preface to the first issue of Tit-Bits seems to disavow originality entirely, presenting itself as a kind of 'open and avowed' parasite, an epitome of the highly intertextual late Victorian press. At the same time, though, Newnes marketed his journal as a radically new style of periodical by suggesting that extensive indexing would constitute a form of originality" (680).
Newnes' success with Tit-Bits set him up as one of the best newspaper people and allowed him to establish a host of other publications, including the Strand (Jackson, Textual Interaction 12).
Harmsworth's Answers to Correspondents "was modeled on... Tit-Bits" (Turner, E.S.; p.100).
When Newnes first got the idea for his newspaper, he tried to find someone who would be willing to lend him the funds to start it, but was unsuccessful. In order to get the funds, he then opened a successful vegetarian restaurant (which were popular at the time) and sold it for the amount of money he figured he needed for the paper (Herd, Harold; p.234).
Tit-Bits began "by the former owner of a vegetarian restaurant in Manchester, George Newnes. Alfred [Harmsworth] made it his chief source of income" (Ferris, Paul; p.27).
Harmsworth served in the office of George Newnes after 1885..."The continuing success of Tit-Bits and the comparative ease of its weekly compilation was inspiration to [Harmsworth's] ambition... Choice Chips [became] a cheap imitator of Tit-Bits..." (Gifford, Denis. Victorian Comics, p. 10, 12).
"Newnes gave the new reading public exactly what it wanted: potted, easily assimilated information. Everything was short and written simply and clearly: a predigested literary breakfast food for the family" (Cranfield, G.A. The Press and Society, p.217).
Bingham, Conboy: "The magazine provided brief articles on a wide range of subjects designed for easy reading-dismissed by condescending contemporaries as 'snippet journalism'-and sought to develop what has been identified as a 'sympathetic intimacy', a direct, personal and informal form of address which became central to the popular market" (p. 5).
"The public it appealed to was one which desired...'occupation much rather than intellectual exertion and, above all, something to pass the time' " (Jones, Kennedy).
"Like other editors of the period, Newnes had an interest in developing, publicizing, and promoting the text of Tit Bits as the site of a community of mutual responsibility, and he did so in such a way as to create one of the most successful examples of the so-called 'New journalism'. The management of limited time (within limited space) – the ethos of work discipline…– was the very raison d'être of Tit Bits....the readership of Tit Bits consisted of a lower middle and aspiring middle class, largely commuting, often salary-earning, self-helping public...well dressed, bonneted women...clerical types. But the attraction of Newnes’ paper was, at the same time, the way in which it offered connection, representation and creative potential to readers, and enabled Newnes to establish a responsive editorial presence...Tit Bits began as a collection of excerpts converted into 'text' purely by a process of creative editorial synthesis. Newnes...identified an issue of immense significance to contemporaries...that of the tension between commercial value and literary value in journalistic production" (Jackson, Phenomenon).
Jackson explains that "Newnes conceptualized Tit-Bits as an extremely responsive medium, immersed in the rhythms of industrial life and realizing the humble needs of hardworking people." This "was one of the most lucrative publishing ventures of the 1880s (Jackson, Textual Interaction 11).
"Tit-Bits, one of the most successful and influential players in this emerging market [humour periodicals], consistently filled its front cover with jokes and scattered them throughout its other pages as column fillers" (Nicholson 6).
Tit Bits published a story called "What's Bred in the Bone" for which it paid the writer, Grant Allen a £1000 prize. This was likely the largest received by any Victorian writer. Strange Stories, published in 1884, was made of fiction he had contributed to magazines under the name J. Arbuthnot Wilson.
At first, Tit-Bits had no advertisements, but Newnes was later persuaded to accept them and he added a green cover for that purpose. Also at first, the paper used only items from other publications, but later it began to use original items. Newnes liked to use schemes in Tit-Bits. For example, he buried tubes containing five hundred sovereigns each and told the readers they could keep the money if they found it. There were clues to the various tubes' whereabouts in his paper (Herd 235).
"There is no paper in the world conducted on the lines which will be followed in Tit-Bits. It will be a production of all that is most interesting in the books, periodicals, and newspapers of this and other countries.... The business of the conductors of Tit-Bits will be like that of the dentist an organised system of acting; but instead of, like the dentist, acting that which is bad, and leaving that which is good, they will pursue exactly the opposite course and extract that which is good, and leave the remainder. A complete system has been arranged whereby all the most interesting papers and books of England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, America, Australia, the Indies will be regularly searched, and whatever is found of interest to the general reader in short, wherever a tit-bit is discovered it will be drafted into the new paper Tit-Bits. Tit-Bits will contain interesting incidents, amusing anecdotes, pithy [?]graphs" (Tit-Bits no 1, p.1).
Blake: "The strict historian of such matters would probably name the year 1881 as marking the beginning of the decline of our journalistic standards, for it was in that year that the late George Newnes founded Tit-Bits (6).
Blake also mentions that Tit-Bits "inspired Lord Harmsworth to found Answers and, in due course, the Daily Mail" (6).
Tit-Bits was especially known for its ability to engage its audience. According to Jackson, this was a role that Newnes took seriously, even creating characters to engage with his readers (Textual Interaction 16).
Satirised in George Gissing's New Grub Street (1891) under the title Chit-Chat (a magazine full of "'chit-chatty information—bits of stories, bits of description, bits of scandal, bits of jokes, bits of statistics, bits of foolery'" [quoted in Menke 561]) and in a Punch parody "announcing a plan for a 'new Weekly Paper' called Sweet Stuff. This paper will give readers textual treats without the trouble of a nourishing meal, but it promises its founders a 'colossal fortune' to be made without capital, journalistic staff, or much effort" (Menke 571).
1,000 Answers to 1,000 Questions in Tit-Bits Inquiry Column, with the replies thereto was a reprint of Tit-Bits in 1884.
Location:
complete runs: LO/N-1 A; OX/U-1 A (1881-1906); partial runs: QZ/P-1 vols 1-50 (1881-1906); ED/N-1 A; LO/U-1 G; CA/U-1; AB/N-1 A; N.America: ULS 3
Reproduced by permission, British Newspaper Library
Successful Advertising (1902)
Successful Advertising (1902)