In 1888 the literary critic Edward Salmon published the results of a four-year survey carried out by Charles Welsh. This critical appraisal sought to determine the favourite reads of schoolboys and schoolgirls drawn from a broad age range of eleven to nineteen years. Two thousand responses were received from the ‘Board schoolboy to the young collegian’ (Salmon 1888: 9–14). These revealed choices of popular poetry, books and authors with a keen taste for daringdo in the exploits of Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson and Ivanhoe. Children also elected their popular newspapers and magazines. Multiple titles were proposed, including those principally aimed at adults, such as Punch, Harper's Magazine and Chambers's Journal, as well as, significantly, twenty-one children's magazine titles of a breadth of genre, purpose and content (Salmon 1888: 15–23).

This range of children's titles only partially reflects the array of periodicals then circulating; indeed, by 1900, 160 children's periodical titles were in existence (Dixon 1986: 63). This chapter explores how such a number had come about. When did it take place and what were the prompts? Children also found appropriate reading within the weekly provincial newspaper press that had also undergone an exponential expansion during the 1800s. This media will discussed in some detail, as although the relationship between the periodical press and children has received widespread attention, children's reading of newspapers has, until only very recently, been overlooked (Milton 2008; Milton 2009a; Milton 2009b; Pooley 2015a, 2015b; Scott 2011). To be successful, a publication must sufficiently hold its readers’ interest, and as the children's press proliferated, its content was continually revised and broadened as publishers sought to meet readers’ needs. What then was the ideal content that delivered reader satisfaction and proved commercially successful? Salmon suggested that his survey respondents were drawn from a broad pool, but no further light was shone on this data. By exploring children's periodicals and newspaper columns in some detail, it is possible to indicate the target young audience reached by this periodical press and newspaper outputs. Once located, what was the relationship between publication and reader, and how were young readers regarded and manipulated by their favourite reads?