17 and 18 Century Newspapers

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By Ryan Mcgovern, Zach Nowak, Delaney

Carter, Paige Adams

Brief Timeline
1436 Johannes Gutenberg invents moveable type letters for his printing
press, making it easier to manually create written works.
1621 First titled newspaper, Corante, was published in London
1665 The first major British newspaper, The London Gazette, created for
the Crown
1690 The oldest surviving regular publication, The Worcester Postman,
starts

Brief Timeline
1710 The first Copyright Act, the Statute of Anne, was passed.
1712 - Broadsheet newspapers as we know today evolved to get around a tax
(Stamp Act) based on the number of pages a paper had.
*During the period of time from 1690 1780, the number of newspapers printed
annually in England rose from less than 1 million to over 14 million*

The Printing Process

History of Newspapers
17th Century
The first newspaper in English language was printed in
Amsterdam by Joris Veseler
Soon these publications spread to England, yet under the
heavy scrutiny of the Crown
These early papers modeled their style after contemporary
books, adopting a pamphlet layout
The Civil War escalated the demand for news
News pamphlets would report the war, but usually
with ample amounts of bias

History of Newspapers
18th Century
By 1720 there were 12 London newspapers
o The Daily Courant being the first daily
newspaper in London
Beginning of important publications:
1704 - The Review by Daniel Defoe
1709 - The Tatler by Richard Steele
1711 - The Spectator by Addison and Steele

Newspaper Content
Number of advertisements increased dramatically
during the mid 1700s
o Became an important source of profit
Content shifted towards non-political matters, aka
tabloids
Items devoted to social questions, habits and fashions
became important
Theatrical news, economic news, and activities of
criminals became regular features with their own
sections and columns
Sporting news, which was absent in 1720s became
popular in 1780s
o News of horse racing, boxing and cricket matches

Censorship / Hindrances
1632-1638 : The Star Chamber Was a court of law in which sessions of the
court were conducted in secret with no witnesses, and they banned all news
books due to complaints that the Thirty Years War was being misreported
1662 : Licensing of the Press Act You must have a license to print and
send notice to the stationers company. This law was later repealed in 1695
and Britain enjoyed an increase in freedom of press
1712 The Stamp Act is passed. It places a tax on special papers.
Newspapers are included in this group, however it is based on the number of
pages, so printers make their pages bigger, evolving into the broadsheet we
know today. And even as the tax on newspapers steadily increased, the
number of publications continued to rise

Economic Impact
Successful early 18th century papers include
Craftsman and Mists Weekly Journal (sold more than
10,000 copies per issue)
Towns like Bristol, Exeter, Newcastle and Norwich
were significant centers of newspaper production
o By 1720s several were producing more than one
newspaper
Major towns like Birmingham, Cambridge, Hull,
Liverpool and Oxford took longer to develop
economically successful papers
Most papers were owned and produced by printers or
combination of booksellers and published for profit
Price of newspapers rose faster than the rate of
inflation, showing the rising demand for newspapers

Coffeehouses
English coffeehouses were the center of
communication for news and were an important
venue for the reading and distribution of newspapers
Richard Steele and Joseph Addisons news publications, The
Spectator and The Tatler, were considered the most influential
papers that went through English coffeehouses
o They were the most widely distributed sources and news
and gossip and worked to reform the manners and morals
by critiquing English society
o From their publications, readers were persuaded, not
forced, to freely accept these standards of behavior as their
own

The Spectator
Major daily newspaper that began in 1711 but ended abruptly
in 1712
The format revolved around a character named Mr. Spectator
and his group of diverse friends, including one of Queen
Annes squires along with a contemporary rake
It reported on news through these characters while also
running a soap opera style, developing character relationships
The characters allowed Addison and Steele to discuss stories
with different biases, mixing advice and news with
entertainment
Although only having 555 issues, the paper was projected to
have reached 1/10th of London, or 60,000 people