From a magazine “for the million” to a “domestic magazine”: Voicing society in The Family Herald during the 1840s

Description

When George Biggs launched his penny weekly The Family Herald or Useful Information and Amusement for the Million in in 1842 and then re-launched it in 1843, his title was a combination of familiar tropes. The title clearly and without ornament announced it as a family publication produced with the respectable label of “useful information,” while the last part, “Amusement for the Million”, projected its aims of entertainment and mass-market appeal. It would succeed on this last count at the very least, as it was a consistent top seller. In 1850 when Dickens’ entered the marketplace with Household Words, The Family Herald had weekly sales of 125,000 or around twice as many as other high-selling publications like Chambers’s Journal, Eliza Cook’s Journal, and the Illustrated London News. In 1855 it was reportedly selling around 240,000-300,000 weekly copies, and in 1858 these figures were still as high as 260,000.

This paper explores how in its first decade, the Family Herald developed a pluralistic structure which enabled it to appeal to different audiences in different ways while also voicing responses to social issues. In 1846, The Family Herald dropped the “million” from its title, becoming The Family Herald: A Domestic Magazine of Useful Information and Amusement and signalling a change in its relationship with the masses. Its leading articles, too, increasingly contained a distinct moralistic social vision in which public issues were presented as private failings, a vision which became most pronounced in response to the revolutionary politics of 1848. The Family Herald, therefore, gradually broke from the conventions of the “useful knowledge” periodicals launched in the 1820s and 1830s and, as it evolved, became an interesting and important forerunner to well-known later titles like Household Words.

Period	12 Jul 2025
Event title	Research Society for Victorian Periodicals conference 2025: Voices and Visions of the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press
Event type	Conference
Location	Chicago, United States, IllinoisShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International