''The Leisure Hour'' was a British general-interest periodical of the
Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed the ...
published weekly from 1852 to 1905.
It was the most successful of several popular magazines published by the
Religious Tract Society
The Religious Tract Society was a British evangelical Christian organization founded in 1799 and known for publishing a variety of popular religious and quasi-religious texts in the 19th century. The society engaged in charity as well as commerc ...
, which produced Christian literature for a wide audience.
Each issue mixed multiple genres of fiction and factual stories, historical and topical.
The magazine's title referred to campaigns that had decreased work hours, giving workers extra leisure time.
Until 1876, it carried the subtitle ''A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation'';
after that, the subtitle changed to ''An illustrated magazine for home reading''.
Each issue cost one
penny
A penny is a coin (: pennies) or a unit of currency (: pence) in various countries. Borrowed from the Carolingian denarius (hence its former abbreviation d.), it is usually the smallest denomination within a currency system. At present, it is ...
and contained 16 pages.
The layout typically included approximately six long articles, formatted in two columns per page, and five or six illustrations. The articles were a mix of biographies, poetry, essays, and fiction. Each issue usually started with a piece of
serialised fiction
In literature, a serial is a printing or publishing format by which a single larger work, often a work of narrative fiction, is published in smaller, sequential instalments. The instalments are also known as ''numbers'', ''parts'', ''fascicul ...
.
The creation of the magazine was partly a response to non-religious popular magazines that the Religious Tract Society saw as delivering a "pernicious" morality to the
working class
The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...
es.
The ethos of the magazine was guided by
Sabbatarianism
Sabbatarianism advocates the observation of the Sabbath in Christianity, in keeping with the Ten Commandments.
The observance of Sunday as a day of worship and rest is a form of first-day Sabbatarianism, a view which was historically heralded ...
: the campaign to keep Sunday as a day of rest.
It aimed to treat its diverse subjects "in the light of Christian truth".
Despite this, ''The Leisure Hour'' carried far fewer statements of Christian doctrine than the Society's other publications,
[" via Open Research Exeter http://hdl.handle.net/10036/31895] and had a greater emphasis on fiction than popular magazines of the time.
Two days before the magazine's launch in 1852, a warehouse fire destroyed the first batch of ''The Leisure Hour'', so replacement copies had to be printed.
The magazine was edited by William Haig Miller until 1858,
from 1858 to 1895,
and William Stevens from 1895 to 1900.
Harold Copping
Harold Copping (25 August 1863 – 1 July 1932) was a British artist best known as an illustrator of biblical scenes. His 1910 book ''The Copping Bible'' illustrated by himself became a best-seller.
Biography
Born in Camden Town in 1863, he was ...
was one of its illustrators.
Authors were initially only credited by initials rather than by name, giving the writing a collective rather than individual authority, though naming of authors became more common from the 1870s.
In its jubilee issue, published in 1902, the magazine identified 111 authors who had contributed.
Notable contributors
*
Isabella Bird
Isabella Lucy Bishop (; 15 October 1831 – 7 October 1904) was an English explorer, writer, photographer and naturalist. Alongside fellow Englishwoman Fanny Jane Butler, she founded the John Bishop Memorial Hospital in Srinagar in modern-da ...
*
John William Dawson
Sir John William Dawson (1820–1899) was a Canadian geologist and university administrator.
Life and work
John William Dawson was born on 13 October 1820 in Pictou, Nova Scotia, where he attended and graduated from Pictou Academy. Of Sco ...
*
Edwin Dunkin
*
John Keast Lord
*
Joseph Butterworth Owen
The Reverend Joseph Butterworth Owen (22 July 1809 - 24 May 1872) was an English clergyman, social reformer and author of the nineteenth century. Known primarily for his published work, he is also notable for being the last minister of the famed ...
*
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet and playwright.
His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...
*
Elizabeth Hely Walshe
Gallery of illustrations
File:John Keble from the magazine "Leisure Hour".jpg, John Keble
John Keble (25 April 1792 – 29 March 1866) was an English Anglican priest and poet who was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Keble College, Oxford, is named after him.
Early life
Keble was born on 25 April 1792 in Fairford, Glouces ...
, 1867
File:Mary Somerville Leisure Hour.jpg, Mary Somerville
Mary Somerville ( ; , formerly Greig; 26 December 1780 – 29 November 1872) was a Scottish scientist, writer, and polymath. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and in 1835 she and Caroline Herschel were elected as the first female Honorar ...
, 1871
File:Dickens-at-the-Blacking-Warehouse.jpg, Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...
, 1904
File:A-Vision-of-the-future-q85-1447x1326.jpg, “A Vision of the Future. An aërial motor-car”, 1905
References
Further reading
*
External links
Scans of ''The Leisure Hour'' online at the Hathi Trust
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leisure Hour, The
Defunct magazines published in the United Kingdom
Magazines established in 1852
1852 establishments in the United Kingdom