About the Book
Revolutions from Grub Street charts the evolution of Britain's
popular magazine industry from its seventeenth century origins through
to the modern digital age. Following the reforms engendered by the
Glorious Revolution of 1688 the Grub Street area of London, which later
transmuted into the cluster of venerable publishing houses centred on
Fleet Street, spawned a vibrant culture of commercial writers and
small-scale printing houses. Exploiting the commercial potential offered
by improvements to the system of letterpress printing, and allied to a
growing demand for popular forms of reading matter,
during the course of the eighteenth century one of Britain's pioneering
cultural industries began to take meaningful shape. Publishers of penny
weeklies and sixpenny monthlies sought to capitalise on the
opportunities that magazines, combining lively text with appealing
illustrations, offered for the turning of a profit. The technological
revolutions of the nineteenth century facilitated the emergence of a
host of small and medium-sized printer-publishers whose magazine titles
found a willing and growing audience ranging from Britain's
semi-literate working classes through to its fashion-conscious ladies.In 1881, the launch of George Newnes' highly innovative Tit-Bits
magazine created a publishing sensation, ushering in the era of the
modern, million-selling popular
weekly. Newnes and his early collaborators Arthur Pearson and Alfred
Harmsworth, went on to create a group of competing business enterprises
that, during the twentieth century, emerged as colossal publishing
houses employing thousands of mainly trade union-regulated workers. In
the early 1960s these firms, together with Odhams Press, merged to
create the basis of the modern magazine giant IPC. Practically a
monopoly producer until the 1980s, IPC was convulsed thereafter by the
dual revolutions of globalization and digitization, finding its
magazines under commercial attack from all directions. Challenged first
by EMAP, Natmags, and Condé Nast, by the 1990s IPC faced competition
both from expanding European rivals, such as H. Bauer, and a variety of
newly-formed agile domestic competitors
who were able to successfully exploit the opportunities presented by
desktop publishing and the world wide web. In a narrative
spanning over 300 years, Revolutions from Grub Street draws together a
wide range of new and existing sources to provide the first
comprehensive business history of magazine-making in Britain.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
1: A Small but Expanding Market
2: Feeding the Popular Demand
3: From Mass Periodicals to Mass Production
4: The Dominant Female
5: Monopoly, Power, and Politics
6: The Ministry of Magazines
7: Breaking into the IPC Citadel
8: The Global Magazine in the Digital Age
About the Author :
Howard Cox is Professor of International Business History at the University of Worcester, UK, where he has taught since 2004, During an academic career spanning over thirty years he has published widely in the fields of business history, international business, and corporate strategy. His well received account of the international tobacco industry The Global Cigarette was also published by Oxford University Press in 2000.
Simon Mowatt is Head of International Business at Auckland University of Technology Business School, New Zealand, where he is Associate Professor of Management and Leader of the Business and Labour History Group. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Business History, Henley Business School, UK, and held positions in Business Schools in the UK and Europe. Simon has published widely in the areas of business history, strategy, and innovation.
Review :
The authors combine their extensive research into business archives with an impressive knowledge of company reports, trade journals, and the fragmented academic literature to produce a history full of facts, figures, and rich detail. This volume will surely be a much-consulted reference work for scholars in the area for years to come the first proper history of the UKs magazine sector. Anyone interested in the history of publishing, print culture, or the media will find much of value here.
Cox and Mowatt explore compellingly the perspective of of publishing houses and their leadership personalities.
Media histories often barely acknowledge magazines...Cox and Mowatt's book fills the aching gap.
A fine book. Broad in its coverage and rich in detail. This impressive mapping of the complicated dynamics of a plurality of titles across the industry complements previous studies of magazines themselves.
Cox and Mowatt present an excellent history of the business of magazine publishing in this monograph, which fills a significant gap in the existing literature on publishing in Britain...The history of magazine publishing in Britain is a fascinating tale that is captured very well in this text: not only is this an interesting history in itself but this is crucial reading for any historian who might turn to contemporary magazines as a source.
The strength of Cox and Mowatt's book is that it tells the story of magazine publishing in Britain from a business point of view ... It traces how the various British publishing companies' fortunes rose and fell, how they were established, taken over and altered on the back of a handful of phenomenally successful titles, how their eventual fates were sealed by money, technology, squabbles in the boardroom and on the factory floor, too-rapid expansion and, more often than not, by ending up with so much invested in the status quo that they were no longer able to see how that status quo might change. The fact that it focuses on magazines as a business does not mean that it's lacking in characters
The authors of this essential text for anyone interested in publishing tell the story of Grub Street and the emergence of the magazine industry in a manner that is both entertaining and scholarly and recount the history that revolves around some of the great names of magazine publishing.
Grub Street will at last enable course leaders on magazine journalism and publishing courses to address a gaping hole in their syllabuses.
From Tit-Bits in the 19th century to OK! In the 21st, mass-circulation consumer magazines have been a remarkably durable feature of the publishing scene, surviving far better than newspapers the periodic upheavals in technology and in distribution methods. Yet as new entry has become easier the structure of the industry, and the identity of the leading players, has been anything but stable. By describing in interesting detail how competitive forces have played out in this market, and providing a lively account of the role played by individual entrepreneurs, Cox and Mowatt have made a notable contribution to an under-researched aspect of British publishing history.
This compelling study of the evolution of consumer magazine publishing is a milestone in business and economic history. Charting the evolution of the industry in Britain from its 17th century origins through to the digital age, this well-researched book provides new perspectives on the links between the strategies of leading publishing firms and the imperatives of technological progress and social change. By focusing on the business dynamics and structures, the authors should be congratulated on providing a refreshingly new perspective on an industry which has shaped markets and cultural attitudes.
An especially interesting part of the book deals with a major innovation in the use of advertising as a source of revenue. The authors show how Condé Nast, the famous publisher of Vogue, succeeded in making target advertising the main source of revenue for his magazines. Two important arguments of the book, the drive for profit and the importance of female readers, eloquently blend together here.
A fascinating and long overdue account of the behind-the-scenes dynamics and changing business models of the UK magazine industry over the last 300 years. Any serious student of this key sector in the UK creative economy should read this book.
This monograph is the first comprehensive corporate and economic history of British magazine publishers with an emphasis on those publishers for consumer magazines. The concisely and articulately written survey spans the period from the local origins of British magazine publishing in London's Grub Street of the 17th century right into the globalised and digitised 21st century.
Covering magazine publishing from Grub Street until the recent past, Howard Cox and Simon Mowatt have produced a magisterial account of the industry This book is pioneering stuff perhaps even paradigm-shiftingcontribution to the field.
Even those who rarely pick up a magazine will find this new work a fascinating read. It has clearly been painstakingly researched, yet avoids the trap of providing so much detail that the narrative gets bogged down or becomes dull It would appeal to academics across a broad range of disciplines, including economic history, management, human resources management, and media/communication studies. Revolutions from Grub Street adds to the body of knowledge on business history, particularly from a publishing perspective, and makes an important contribution to our understanding of economic and social history
Revolutions from Grub Street is a thoroughly researched history of the British consumer magazine industry that is also highly readable...a useful resource for undergraduate or graduate classes in magazine journalism, media management, and media history. But it is also a worthwhile read for anyone interested in business history in general, or in an entertaining overview of a fascinating industry.
