page_title: British boys' magazines
section_title: Victorian period
hierarchical_section_title: British boys' magazines / History / Victorian period
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover of the weekly British magazine "Boy's Own Magazine", dated February 1855
context_page_description: Magazines intended for boys fall into one of three classifications. These are comics which tell the story by means of strip cartoons; story papers which have several short stories; and pulp magazines which have a single, but complete, novella in them. The latter were not for the younger child and were often detective or western in content and were generally greater in cost. Several titles were published monthly whereas the other two categories were more frequent.
context_section_description: With the growth of education in the later part of the 19th century (universal education started in England in 1871), demand was growing for reading material aimed at the juvenile market. The first known edition of what would later become known as a "story paper" had been the unsuccessful monthly Young Gentleman's Magazine, published in 1777 and discontinued after six editions. The first story paper to make an impact was The Boys' and Girls' Penny Magazine, first published in September 1832.
  The first successful serial publication aimed at boys alone, and one of the most influential, was Samuel Beeton's weekly Boy's Own Magazine, published from 1855 to 1890. Between 1855 and 1920, over a dozen weekly serials by various publishers were created with the copycat title Boys' Own.
  Other story papers begun midcentury included Every Boy's Magazine in 1862, edited by Edmund Routledge, in 1862 and Boys of England in 1866. Numerous competitors quickly followed, including Boy’s Leisure Hour, Boys Standard, Young Men of Great Britain, etc. As the price and quality of fiction was the same, many of these storypapers also fell under the general definition of penny dreadfuls (also known as "penny bloods" or "blood and thunders" in their early days). 
  Few of these publications lasted more than a few years. Some did last; Boy's Own Paper was  published from 1879 to 1967 and Boys' Friend from 1895 to 1927. 
  Another magazine with a comparatively long life was Chums, which started in 1892 and survived until 1934. It had stories about animals and sports as well as many about young people. In 1908 Chums sought to gain Baden Powell's support, and create its own brand of Scouts supporting the Chums paper. Baden-Powell was committed by contract to support the Pearson periodical The Scout, and gave no support to Chums, which became derisive about the Boy Scouts. In 1909 however it became the official journal for the British Boy Scouts, a break-away group from Baden Powell's Scout movement.
caption: Beeton's Boy's Own Magazine, published in the UK from 1855 to 1890, was the first and most influential boys' magazine.[3]
exif: {}