Edward Lloyd’s 200th Anniversary – 1815-2015

[1] Publisher Edward Lloyd.

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 TODAY  marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Victorian publisher Edward Lloyd (1815-90). Lloyd’s first publication is generally accepted as Lloyd’s Stenography, published in 1833 when he was eighteen years old. Advertisements for the publication appeared in the Poor Man’s Guardian throughout 1834.

    [2] Poor Man’s Guardian, May 24, 1834.

 ACCORDING  to Joel H. Wiener, author of A Descriptive Finding List of Unstamped British Periodicals 1830-1836, published in London by The Bibliographic Society in 1970, Lloyd’s first publication was The Weekly Penny Comic Magazine; or, Repertory of Wit and Humour, for which he gives the very specific publishing date of August 18, 1832, for the first number. Contents featured were “illustrated satirical ballads, anecdotes, and varieties, some of them written by (Thomas) Prest.”

[3] Ada the Betrayed No. 4, illustration by G.T.R. Bourne, Esq.

 THOMAS PECKETT PREST  began writing and performing comic songs in the 1830’s in the saloons and clubs of working class London and edited The British Pocket Vocalist for George Drake. After plagiarizing several Dickens novels for Lloyd he wrote a best seller called Ela the Outcast; or, the Gipsy of Rosemary Dell (1839) a melodramatic romance which the author’s 1841 Preface claimed was:

“in the course of publication for two years, its sale has never, in the least, flagged; and in proof of the deep interest, as a work of fiction, it has excited, I need only state, that its weekly sale has been thirty thousand copies, and the present is the eighteenth edition!” 

[4] Edward Lloyd’s periodicals, 1847.

 BEST SELLER  Ela the Outcast was a reworking of Hannah Maria Jones popular book The Gipsey Girl; or, The Heir of Hazel Dell published by William Emans in 1836. Prest wrote melodramas for the Royal Pavilion Theatre and Ela the Outcast, starring Miss Adelaide Cooke as Ela, was performed there for one hundred successive nights. Lloyd paid Prest 10s. per week, most of which he was reputed to have spent in the White Swan tavern in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street.

 THOMAS FROST  who in the 1840s wrote penny bloods for publishers Edward Lloyd and George Purkess, said that

“The Salisbury Square school of fiction did a good work in its day. It was the connecting link between the Monmouth Street Ballads and ‘last dying speeches,’ lives of highwaymen, and terrific legends of diabolism which constituted the favourite reading of the masses fifty years ago, and the more wholesome refined literature enjoyed by them at the present day.” — Thomas Frost, 1880

[5] Lloyd’s Weekly London News, 1872.

 LLOYD’S FIRST PERIODICAL  venture was The Penny Sunday Times and Weekly Police Gazette, a miscellany comprised of fiction and faked police reports. Advertisements for The Penny Sunday Times proclaimed the writing was “Sketched with the Humour of a “Boz.” The Penny Weekly Miscellany was edited by James Malcolm Rymer, author of the fictional Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood, and claimed a weekly sale of sixty thousand.

[6] Blanchard Jerrold.

 PENNY FICTION  was eventually abandoned by Edward Lloyd; since 1853 he  concentrated on Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper with Douglas William Jerrold as editor. On Douglas Jerrold’s death in 1857 he was replaced by his son Blanchard Jerrold. The weekly had been launched in 1842 under the title Lloyd’s Illustrated London Newspaper, published without a newspaper stamp. The following year the stamp was paid and the paper retitled Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper. In 1860 the price was dropped from twopence to a penny. The title came to an end in 1960 when it merged with the Sunday Graphic.

[7] Hoe cylinder press of the Chicago Tribune, 1864.

 EDWARD LLOYD  detected a new mechanical advancement in the Parisian office of La Patrie – its state-of-the-art printing press. He swiftly ordered his own six-cylinder Hoe rotary press from the US. This powerful modern machine was erected in his office at Salisbury Square, Fleet Street, London, the following year.

 THE CHICAGO DAILY TRIBUNE  bought a Hoe cylinder press in 1852 and described the steam-driven machine as a real improvement —

“It had a self-inking attachment. It printed direct from a flat form or chase, and the sheets were hand-fed to the impression cylinder, but they were delivered automatically to a sorting table after they had been printed. This was the first power driven Tribune press. Steam to run its engine was drawn from the plant of the Democratic Press, next door. The revolving cylinder which made the impression remained stationary, and the chase, which was set upon the press bed, moved backward and forward beneath the cylinder, in synchronization with its revolutions.” — Chicago Daily Tribune, June 10, 1947

[8] Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper masthead, 1871.

 EDWARD LLOYD  born on February 16, 1815, died on April 8, 1890, at the age of seventy-five years.

See Edward Lloyd’s historical family site HERE.

* The portrait of Edward Lloyd comes from page 190 of: Journalistic London. Being a series of sketches of famous pens and papers of the day. By Joseph Hatton. Profusely illustrated with engravings from drawings by M.W. Ridley; together with many original portraits of distinguished editors, and writers for the press. [Reprinted, with Additions, from Harper’s Magazine.] London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington; Crown Buildings, 188, Fleet Street. 1882.

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