The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave

Edward Cave

Edward Cave was an English printer, editor and publisher. In The Gentleman's Magazine he created the first general-interest "magazine" in the modern sense....

 in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term "magazine" (meaning "storehouse") for a periodical. Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

's first regular employment as a writer was with The Gentleman's Magazine.

History

The original complete title was The Gentleman's Magazine: or, Trader's monthly intelligencer. Cave's innovation was to create a monthly digest of news and commentary on any topic the educated public might be interested in, from commodity prices to Latin poetry. It carried original content from a stable of regular contributors, as well as extensive quotes and extracts from other periodicals and books. Cave, who edited The Gentleman's Magazine under the pen name "Sylvanus Urban", was the first to use the term "magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

" (meaning "storehouse") for a periodical. Contributions to the magazine frequently took the form of letters, addressed to "Mr. Urban". The iconic illustration of St John's Gate

St John's Gate, Clerkenwell

St John's Gate is one of the few tangible remains from Clerkenwell's monastic past; it was built in 1504 by Prior Thomas Docwra as the south entrance to the inner precinct of the Priory of the Knights of Saint John - the Knights Hospitallers. The substructure is of brick, the north and south...

 on the front of each issue (occasionally updated over the years) depicted Cave's home, in effect, the magazine's "office".

Before the founding of The Gentleman's Magazine, there were specialized journals, but no such wide-ranging publication (although there had been attempts, such as The Gentleman's Journal, which was edited by Peter Motteux

Peter Anthony Motteux

Peter Anthony Motteux , born Pierre Antoine Motteux, was an English author, playwright, and translator...

 and ran from 1692 to 1694).

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

's first regular employment as a writer was with The Gentleman's Magazine. During a time when parliamentary reporting was banned, Johnson regularly contributed parliamentary reports as "Debates of the Senate of Magna Lilliputia". Though they reflected the positions of the participants, the words of the debates were mostly Johnson's own. The name Columbia, a poetic name for America coined by Johnson, first appears in a 1738 weekly publication of the debates of the British Parliament in the Magazine.

Cave, a skilled businessman, developed an extensive distribution system for The Gentleman's Magazine. It was read throughout the English-speaking world, and continued to flourish through the eighteenth century and much of the nineteenth, under a series of different editors and publishers. It went into decline in the later nineteenth century, and finally ceased general publication in September 1907. However, issues consisting of four pages each were printed in very small editions between late 1907 and 1922 in order to keep the title formally "in print".

Series

• 1731–1735 The Gentleman's Magazine or Monthly Intelligencer
• 1736–1833 The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Chronicle
• 1834–1856 (June) New Series: The Gentleman's Magazine
• 1856 (July)–1868 (May) New Series: The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Review
• 1868 (June)–1922 Entirely New Series: The Gentleman's Magazine

Further reading

• Two supplements to Kuist were originally published in Vols. 44, 45, 46, 47, and 49 of Studies in Bibliography, The Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia

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External links

• The Gentleman's Magazine, archives at Internet Archive
  Internet Archive
  The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
  
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• The Gentleman's Magazine, archives at Google Books.
• Bodleian Internet Library of Early Journals: A digital library of 18th and 19th Century journals including The Gentleman's Magazine, (on-line text search)