Read All About It! The Daily Courant Hits the Presses

by Catherine Curzon

Reading through newspapers of the Georgian era  has always been a source of delight to me; long hours can be lost to browsing the dailies, and if we think our news today is scandalous and prurient, we have nothing on the 18th century. One of the first I encountered was The Daily Courant, a newspaper owned by a most estimable lady named Elizabeth Mallet. 

Mallet launched the Courant from her premises besides the Kings Arms on Fleet Bridge, London, on 11th March 1702; her adders was given as the wonderfully evocative against the Ditch at Fleet Bridge, which puts it somewhere in the vicinity of the building occupied by The Times two centuries later. As the first daily English language newspaper to be published in Britain, it was a remarkable endeavour undertaken by a remarkable woman, yet by our standards, the newspaper resembled a newsletter rather than the supplement and advertisement-stuffed behemoths that plop through our letterboxes today.

The Courant was only one page, so there were none of troublesome glossy inserts to clutter up one's home, but what it did contain was reports of the major stories of the day. When one's curiosity for current affairs was sated, one could turn over and browse advertisements on the reverse. 

Mindful of the public's thirst for news from overseas and sensing that the availability of such material was sorely lacking, the paper confined itself to reporting only on stories that came from abroad. The news was  curated from overseas gazetteers and translated into English, presented without any editorial or opinion to muddy the facts. Instead, Mallet considered her readers "had sense enough to make reflections for themselves", something that the news writers of today might do well to remember!

Sadly, Mallet did not receive recognition for her endeavours as, well aware that a female name on the byline might not endear her newspaper to the public, she published the Courant under the gender-neutral name E Mallet. In 1703 she sold the paper to Samuel Buckley and then faded from the annals of history until 1706, when reference can be found to her posthumous estate. Buckley, of course, went from strength to strength and became a famed name in the industry, eventually securing his place in news history as the printer of The Spectator, a title that exists on newsstands to this day.

Like most groundbreaking endeavours, the Courant was not without its controversies, and on 7th April 1712, the paper fell foul of government when it printed an account of business in the House of Commons translated from a Dutch source. Publishing the private business of parliament was a serious matter, and Buckley was punished with a hefty fine for his wrongdoing. Naturally, the case did no harm to sales of his newspaper! 

The Courant continued for 34 years under Buckley's stewardship, and in 1735 it merged with the Daily Gazetteer. Buckley himself passed away five years later, his place in the history of printing assured.

References
Dunton, John, The Life and Errors of John Dunton, Citizen of London. J. Nichols, 1818.
Leach, Henry Leach. Fleet Street from Within. J.W. Arrowsmith, 1905.
Wheatley, Henry Benjamin and Cunningham, Peter. London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Williams, Kevin, Read All About It!: A History of the British Newspaper. Routledge, 2009.

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Glorious Georgian ginbag, gossip and gadabout Catherine Curzon, aka Madame Gilflurt, is the author of A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide to Life. When not setting quill to paper, she can usually be found gadding about the tea shops and gaming rooms of the capital or hosting intimate gatherings at her tottering abode. In addition to her blog and Facebook, Madame G is also quite the charmer on Twitter. Her first book, Life in the Georgian Court, is available now, and she is also working on An Evening with Jane Austen, starring Adrian Lukis and Caroline Langrishe.

The Publication of Pride and Prejudice

This week marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. It actually was on Monday, January the 28th. Today, though, is my day in our haphazard rotation, and as I have mostly presented pieces of history from the Regency era, this is one of them.

Often we equate John Murray (1778-1843) as a preeminent publisher of the period. He was. His father, also John (1745-1793), had started the famous publishing business. John II brought forth such works as Scott's Marmion, Byron's Childe Harold,  The Quarterly Review with the help of future prime minister George Canning.

Still, John Murray was not the first publisher of Austen's works, and not the publisher of Pride and Prejudice. This fell to Thomas Egerton. A man who did publish Austen's Sense and Sensibility.

Jane Austen began the writing of her most famous novel in 1796 and finished this novel then called First Impressions in August of 1797. On November 1 Austen's father, George, sent a letter to the London bookseller Thomas Cadell to see if he might have an interest in it. Cadell declined.

Jane revised the novel in 1811 and 1812. Fifteen years after she had written it, as a writer it is safe to say that her technique and skill would have improved in that time. She also of course changed the name of her novel during this time. Also of importance was that her Sense and Sensibility had been published.

But even prior to this, Austen had secured a publisher. In 1803 her brother henry had offered to Benjamin Crosby, Susan. The sum of £10 was paid. Crosby did nothing with the book beyond advertising it was "in the press." Even with her later success, the company did nothing and Austen repurchased her rights to the piece in 1816.

Thomas Egerton in the meantime accepted Sense and Sensibility for publication in three volumes in 1811 for his Military Library publishing house. Austen paid for the book to be published and then paid a commission on sales of the book. It cost more than a third of the annual household income of Jane and her family at the time. Yet she made a profit of £140 on the first edition, 1000 copies which sold out by July of 1813. A second edition was then published in October of 1813, but this is after Pride and Prejudice was released.

Thomas Egerton was obviously doing much better at taking a book from manuscript to sales than Crosby, and so Pride and Prejudice was offered to Egerton as well. Yet At the time, Austen did not know how well the book would sell, and Sense and Sensibility still had not finished selling its first printing. She sold the rights for a one-off payment to Egerton who made £450 from the first two editions. The amount Jane had paid Egerton to produce just the first printing of Sense and Sensibility.

You could have purchased the first edition of Pride and Prejudice for 18s. Today one of those editions would cost you more than £60,000. The first print run of 1500 copies sold out and a second edition was printed in November of 1813. A third edition was published in 1817. A French edition also appeared in 1813, and there were translations in German, Danish and Swedish. The First US edition was published in 1832. At the present time, Pride and Prejudice sells approximately 110,000 copies a year in about 130 different editions.

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Mr. Wilkin writes Regency Historicals and Romances, Ruritanian (A great sub-genre that is fun to explore) and Edwardian Romances, Science Fiction and Fantasy works. He is the author of the very successful Pride & Prejudice continuation; Colonel Fitzwilliam’s Correspondence. He has several other novels set in Regency England including The End of the World and The Shattered Mirror. His most recent work is the humorous spoof; Jane Austen and Ghosts, a story of what would happen were we to make any of these Monsters and Austen stories into a movie.

And Two Peas in a Pod, a madcap tale of identical twin brothers in Regency London who find they must impersonate each other to pursue their loves.

The links for all locations selling Mr. Wilkin's work can be found at the webpage and will point you to your favorite internet bookstore: David’s Books, and at various Internet and realworld bookstores including the iBookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords.

He is published by Regency Assembly Press

And he maintains his own blog called The Things That Catch My Eye where the entire Regency Lexicon has been hosted these last months as well as the current work in progress of the full Regency Timeline is being presented.

You also may follow Mr. Wilkin on Twitter at @DWWilkin

Mr. Wilkin maintains a Pinterest page with pictures and links to all the Regency Research he uncovers at Pinterest Regency-Era