The Leisure Hour A Family Journal of Instruction & Recreation Bound Volumes 1864

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The Leisure Hour A Family Journal of Instruction & Recreation Bound Volumes 1864:
$19.99

The

LEISURE HOUR

A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation

Bound volumes

January 2, 1864 – December 31, 1864

Illustrated.

Published:

LONDON:

The Religious Tract Society

1864

Someone clever has bound all the editions from 1864 together herein one book, without covers. Stitching atbinding is loosening so independent magazines are loosening, all are present.

Foxing/stains particular to inside binding strings, Some foxingthroughout, some pages are chipped on edges, some staining, and toning. A few torn pages, Some creasing and occasionalnote from previous owner on the side from pen and quill.

The Illustrations are quite good, some are bright, others areheavily toned and foxed.

The Leisure Hour was a Britishgeneral-interest periodical of the Victorian era which ran weekly from 1852 to1905. It was the most successful of several popular magazines published by theReligious Tract Society, which produced Christian literature for a wideaudience. Each issue mixed multiple genres of fiction and factual stories,historical and topical.

The magazine\'s title referred tocampaigns that had decreased work hours, giving workers extra leisure time.Until 1876, it carried the subtitle \"A Family Journal of Instruction andRecreation\" after that, the subtitle changed to \"An illustratedmagazine for home reading\".

Each issue cost one penny andcomprised 16 pages. The layout typically included approximately six long articles,formatted in two columns per page, and five or six illustrations. The articleswere a mix, including biographies, poetry, essays, and fiction. Each issueusually started with a piece of serialized fiction.

The creation of the magazine waspartly a response to non-religious popular magazines that the Religious TractSociety saw as delivering a \"pernicious\" morality to the workingclasses. The ethos of the magazine was guided by Sabbatarianism: the campaignto keep Sunday as a day of rest. It aimed to treat its diverse subjects\"in the light of Christian truth\". Despite this, The Leisure Hourcarried far fewer statements of Christian doctrine than the Society\'s otherpublications. Compared to other popular magazines of the time, The Leisure Hourhad a greater emphasis on fiction.

Two days before the magazine\'s launchin 1852, a warehouse fire destroyed the first batch of The Leisure Hour, soreplacement copies had to be printed.

The magazine was edited by WilliamHaig Miller until 1858, James Macaulay from 1858 to 1895, and William Stevensfrom 1895 to 1900. Harold Copping was one of its illustrators. Authors wereinitially only credited by initials rather than by name, giving the writing acollective rather than individual authority, though naming of authors becamemore common from the 1870s onwards. In its jubilee issue, published in 1902,the magazine identified 111 authors who had contributed.