The significant expansion in press readership that occurred throughout the nineteenth century was the product of a number of key societal and publishing transformations. Ready and habitual engagement with periodicals, especially titles attuned to the envisaged reading needs and priced in line with the discretionary incomes of their particular target audiences, became possible for greater numbers of readers. This was visible in the increasing diversity in the marketplace strata ranging from expensive quarterly journals like the Westminster Review (1824–1914), targeting a well-to-do erudite readership, through to cheap ephemeral titles, some trading in racy or sensationalist stories of crime, aimed primarily at working-class readers. The resulting reading experiences facilitated by this newly acquired immersion in a more diverse print media culture arguably played a major part in shaping the frames of reference, ideologies and interests of the consumers of these newspapers and magazines.

Excavating and reconstructing these encounters has been a major part of research into the nineteenth-century press, with pioneering contributions from the likes of Laurel Brake, Margaret Beetham, Kate Jackson and Andrew King at the forefront of such recovery endeavours (Beetham 2000; Brake 2001; Jackson 2001; King 2004). The work of these scholars and others have illuminated how feeding a thirst for news, satisfying a desire for recreation and amusement, and taking advantage of the opportunity to acquire new knowledge, along with gaining a potential worldview or validation of one's identity, were some of the leading motivations driving press readership. This chapter maps the ways in which several of the century's major sociocultural changes, coupled with the rise of print culture producers and purveyors whose business models, were predicated on the distribution and dissemination of print media titles among the middle and working classes.

Issues of accessibility are at the heart of this topic. First, beginning with the marked rise in literacy rates and reading abilities, engendered in part by enhanced educational provisions, I examine the kinds of cheap press titles specialising in the provision of accessible, engaging content that sprang from the growth in readership. These publications aimed to find particular favour with emerging reader demographics, and this tier of the press arguably reached its apotheosis with the newspapers and periodicals started by George Newnes and Alfred Harmsworth in the 1880s and 1890s, such as Tit-Bits (1881–1984) and Answers (1888–1955).