First page of the first edition

The Illustrated London News is a magazine founded by Herbert Ingram and his friend Mark Lemon, the editor of the magazine Punch. With Lemon as his chief adviser, the first edition of the Illustrated London News appeared on 14 May, 1842. Costing sixpence, the magazine had sixteen pages and thirty-two woodcuts. The first edition included pictures of the war in Afghanistan, a train crash in France, a steamboat explosion in Canada and a fancy dress ball at Buckingham Palace.

Although 26,000 copies of the first number were disposed of, there was a great falling off in the sale of the second and subsequent numbers. Herbert Ingram, however, was determined to make his property a success. He sent to every clergyman in the country a copy of the number containing illustrations of the installation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and by this means secured many new subscribers. The publication was later a source of early informal artistic education for the post-impressionist Vincent van Gogh.

The magazine was published weekly until 1971, when it became a monthly. From 1989, it was published bi-monthly, then quarterly. The magazine is no longer being published, but the Illustrated London News Group still exists. It is a "customer communications" agency that produces in-house magazines for clients and provides related consultancy services. It also controls the archive of the Illustrated London News.

External links

• The Illustrated London News Group
• My Illustrated London News
• Japan and the Illustrated London News - lecture to the Japan Society by Terry Bennett in 2003

Further reading

• Law, Graham. Indexes to Fiction in the Illustrated London News (1842-1901) and the Graphic, (1869-1901). Victorian Fiction Research Guides 29, Victorian Fiction Research Unit, Department of English, University of Queensland, 2001.
• Sinnema, Peter. Dynamics of the Pictured Page: Representing the Nation in the Illustrated London News. Aldershot: Ashgate. 1998.

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