Introduction

This chapter is an account of the development of the physical aspects – format, layout and illustrations – of printed periodical news in Britain and Ireland, from its beginnings in 1620 to its relative stabilisation in the early part of the eighteenth century. The unwieldy term ‘printed periodical news’ is used deliberately, as the word ‘newspaper’ was not used until later – before that, a whole range of terms were common (Arblaster et al. 2016: 90–6). The changes in these physical aspects cannot be explained simply by a process of evolution or reaction to market forces, but should be considered in the context of politics, censorship, contingency and attempts to establish credibility. Additionally, the form of the British and Irish newspaper was profoundly influenced by the wider European news market and network.

Today the word ‘newspaper’ conjures up an (albeit increasingly anachronistic) object with a fairly recognisable set of characteristics: a publication printed either in tabloid or broadsheet format, probably at least weekly, with an identical title from week to week, containing pages with multiple columns of text, headlines and individual articles of news (Frank 1961: 1). This was not the case with the earliest printed news publications. Some had consecutive numbering, others restarted each week or had none; some had the same or similar titles, others completely different ones each week; some printed news in a book or pamphlet style, others in a larger ‘newspaper’ format with multiple columns. What did remain consistent, however, was the use of form and layout to say something about the content itself, whether to establish credibility, emphasise (or hide) certain items, or draw attention to editorial content. While at first they copied the printing traditions of books, these publications soon developed their own distinct, if multifarious, style.

The First Corantos, 1621–41

The history and provenance of the very first printed periodical news in England is difficult to unpack, chiefly because the survival of the earliest publications is haphazard and they were produced by a number of complicated and unstable partnerships and syndicates (on the details, see Boys 2011; Raymond 1996; Muddiman 1908; Frearson 1993; Frank 1961), the evidence for which remains mostly in the imprints of the individual issues and occasional entries in the Stationers’ Register.