Introduction

The interplay of technological change and market forces provides the principal economic drivers of press and periodical publishing in nineteenth-century Britain and Ireland. However, these forces have always functioned within a variety of institutional frameworks that have served to shape their effective operation and final form. As John and Silberstein-Loeb (2015: 2) point out in a recent survey of the political economy of journalism, ‘These institutional arrangements have taken many forms: advertising, sponsored content, cartels, administrative regulations, government monopoly.’ Of all these institutional factors, the policies towards publishing adopted by the British government before 1855 were of crucial significance. The decision of the British governments before this date to manage the dissemination of published news largely by recourse to fiscal measures had a major bearing on the operation and structure of the periodical publishing industry across the whole of the United Kingdom and Ireland. It would be impossible to provide an account of the economic development of periodicals in Britain and Ireland without an appreciation of the role played by the raft of government policies which were collectively known as the ‘taxes on knowledge’. The following review of the economic development of periodical publishing in nineteenth-century Britain and Ireland therefore begins with an analysis of the impact of government policies on the industry before the abolition of the newspaper stamp duties. It then goes on to consider the evolution of the industry during three broad sub-periods of the century: 1800–1840s; 1850s–1860s; and 1870s–1900.

The Political Context and the ‘ Taxes on Knowledge’

The role played by political activity in the economic development of Britain's newspaper and periodical publishing industry during the nineteenth century can be conveniently subdivided around the year 1855. Up until this date, the evolution of the industry was shaped to an important degree by government policy. Legislative controls together with fiscal impositions which were levied on the publication of news, the placing of advertising matter and the cost of paper – popularly known as the ‘taxes on knowledge’ – played a decisive role in determining the conditions faced by firms active in newspaper and periodical publishing.