was to create a penny weekly composed of short humorous, anecdotal, and
informative excerpts from other published sources; or, as his full tide put i t,
Tit-Bits from All the Most Interesting Books, Periodicals and Newspapers in the World.'"
His aim was to appropriate available material and to repackage i t in a more
accessible format. The first issue, which appeared on Saturday, 22 October
1881, contained sbcteen closely printed pages including a front page o f two-line
jokes, some longer anecdotes i n the inside pages, and a section entided ' T i t -
Bits o f Information'. This rudimentary format, which none the less remained
part of the paper's standard repertoire throughout its long history, constituted
the essence o f his editorial innovation and went some way towards making the
paper, as Keating remarks, a 'pioneering late Victorian periodical'."® Within
months there were eleven imitations on the market, and by 1891 Newnes's
venture had given rise to a new class o f popular weekly which included such
tides as Rare-Bits (1881), Scraps (1883), Great Thoughts (1884), Wit and Wisdom
(1886), Spare Moments (1888), Snacks (1889), and, most importandy. Answers
(1888) and Pearson's Weekly (1890).'" The last two, the most successful
imitations, were founded by Alfred Harmsworth and C. A. Pearson, respectively,
both of whom started out on the Tit-Bits staff in the mid-1880s.'®°
After the first issue, which sold 12,000 copies (5,000 were taken in
Manchester alone), Newnes immediately started to refine his initial policy.'®'
Starting on 6 May 1882, he added a series of excerpts from selected writers
including Bulwer Lytton, Thackeray, George Eliot, Scott, Trollope, Macaulay,
Carlyle, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Poe, Emerson, Ruskin, and Lamb. He also
began to introduce features, such as 'Tit-Bits of Legal Information' (19
November 1881), an 'Answers to Correspondents' column (10 December 1881),
and a 'Tit-Bits Enquiry Column' (25 February 1882), that had been staples of
the penny weeklies at least since Wilkie Collins explored the reading of die
'Unknown Public' in 1858.'®2 Newnes added serial fiction, another staple of
die established penny papers, only i n 1889. T o this extent, despite the novelty
of his original editorial idea, the new-style penny weekly, as i t developed into
its standard format, retained some measure o f continuity widi the traditions of
the popular mid-Victorian penny press, not only i n terms of its contents, but
also, as Collins's essay again suggests, in its underlying editorial ideals.
Collins's five selected 'penny-novel Journals' displayed 'an intense in-dwelling
respectability i n their dullness'; and, as Newnes noted i n an interview for die
Idler i n March 1893, his own aim was to create a popular paper that was less
dull but as respectable:
When I came out with Tit-Bits there was not a single popular paper containing fun or
jokes or anything of die kmd - except the illustrated ones [such as Judy (1867), Fun
(i860. Tie British Working Man (1875), and Moonshine (1879)] - but what relied more or
less upon prurient matter to tickle the fancies of prurient minds.'®*
Though, as Collins's remarks indicate, there clearly were some eminendy
respectable, albeit not especially humorous, penny weeklies available at die
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