John Limbird, Thomas Byerley, and the Production of Cheap Periodicals in the 1820s

Abstract

In January 1884 the Bookseller reported the death of the stationer, bookseller, and publisher John Limbird (1796?–1883), observing: few persons were even acquainted with his name, and fewer still with the work he had performed, and it will, perhaps be startling to some to be told that in losing John Limbird we lose the father of our periodical literature. Before Charles Knight, before William and Robert Chambers, Limbird published the most reputable and most successful of weekly publications, the Mirror, a sheet of sixteen demy octavo pages, with one or at most two woodcuts at the price of twopence.1 Described by Richard Altick as "the first long-lived cheap periodical," the Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction (1822–49) was by far the most successful among the spate of twopenny weekly miscellanies that appeared during the 1820s.2 Within a couple of years of its inception more than 80:000 copies of some parts had been printed, and total sales [End Page 75] of the first number ultimately exceeded 150:000.3 In regard to these most popular numbers, the editor, Thomas Byerley (1788–1826), had some justification for his hyperbolic claim that it gained "a circulation infinitely more extensive than that of any Periodical Work that ever was published."4 Sustained sales were undoubtedly lower, and a reported figure of 10:000 to 15:000 copies seems realistic.5 Even at this more modest figure, however, the Mirror matched the circulation of the six-shilling Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews (around 12:000 copies), and outstripped those of the half-crown (2s. 6d.) Blackwood's and two-shilling Monthly Magazine (around 3:000 to 4:000 copies), the eightpenny Literary Gazette (around 3:000 copies), and the sevenpenny Times (around 6:000 copies). Indeed, in numerical terms it was second only to such sixpenny religious monthlies as the Evangelical Magazine and the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine (around 18:000 to 25:000 copies).6 The Mirror thus had reasonable grounds for claiming to have "created a new era in the history of periodical literature."7 While it was neither the first of the cheap miscellanies nor the only one to experience a degree of success, it had a symbolic significance in demonstrating the commercial potential of the genre. The "men of trade," Byerley pointed out, seemed previously not to have grasped that "small profits on an extensive sale might be as productive as exorbitant charges where the sale was limited." One contemporary observed: There was a time, when it was considered, even by the most opulent booksellers, a great hazard to undertake a periodical publication. … But how different is the spirit of enterprise now-a-days. After the "Mirror of Literature" was established, innumerable twopenny or threepenny works arose in imitation, and at one time, we believe, there were upwards of sixty in existence. So profitable were these speculations then imagined, from their apparently flourishing condition, that every literary garreteer, and broken-down bookseller's clerk, considered the establishment of a twopenny publication as a new and certain way of realizing a fortune.8 Despite its obvious importance in periodical history, however, the circumstances of the Mirror's inception have remained obscure.9 It is clearly not a history that should be told in terms of a heroic "father of our periodical literature," as Limbird's obituarist had it. On the contrary, like many innovative periodicals, the Mirror resulted from a series of encounters among those we might call the technicians of print—publishers, printers, editors, writers, engravers, wholesalers, and retailers—who drew on existing [End Page 76] literary and publishing practices to create a commercially viable product. Unlike many of the better-known literary periodicals, however, those involved in shaping the Mirror were obscure publishers and Grub Street hacks, about whom little is recorded. In 1825 a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine imagined how such twopenny miscellanies were generally commenced: "Two youngsters...