Introduction
The Broadway Annual: A Miscellany of Original
Literature in Poetry and Prose
. London and New York: George Routledge
& Sons, September 1867-August 1868.
The Broadway: A London Magazine
. New series. September 1868-July 1870.
The Broadway: A London Magazine of Society and
Politics
. Second new series. August 1870-December
1872.
The Broadway Annual
was, as its first subtitle suggests, “a miscellany of
original literature in poetry and prose” founded and edited by Edmund
Routledge (1844–1899). Modeling itself upon the
Cornhill
,
Macmillan's
, and
the
Belgravia
, the
Broadway
tried to capitalize on the popularity during the
1860s of monthly periodicals, which, as Thackeray claimed, “afford to the
reading public the greatest part of the modern literature which it demands”
(2). Debuting along with Thackeray's
Saint Pauls
Magazine in 1867,
The
Broadway
predominantly published serial fiction along with literary essays,
poetry, and illustrations. It drew contributors from the stable of writers
already publishing with George Routledge & Sons and the young
Edmund Routledge vigorously pursued many more, including William Michael
Rossetti and Algernon Swinburne. (WMR, in a letter to Swinburne, called
The
Broadway
“[t]he most groveling of publications” [Peattie 181].) Other
notable contributors included Henry Kingsley, W.S. Gilbert, Tom Hood, and
Annie Thomas (a.k.a. Pendler Cudlip).
Having become a partner in his father's business in 1865, Edmund Routledge
likely developed
The Broadway
to expand his editorial work beyond the
company's successful reprints and magazines for children (Mumby).
The
Broadway
—named for the address of its office on Ludgate-Hill—was published
in London and New York, as George Routledge & Sons had a Manhattan
office (416 Broome Street) for distribution and access to American writers
(Sutherland 84; Barnes). The plan to include trans-Atlantic contents aimed
to appeal to both markets. As the
The Broadway
claimed in a full-page advertisement in
The Atheneaum
(10 August 1867) just before its own debut, “It is our earnest desire
that Britannia should shake hands with Columbia intellectually, and that
both should shake hands with us financially” (189).
The advertisement plays on the name Broadway, claiming itself as an
“International magazine” that bows to the international spirit of the age.
But Gohdes suggests that
The Broadway
remained “merely a London journal which
devoted more than the average amount of space to American topics and which
included a few [American] contributions” (60-61).
The pre-launch advertisement also hints at the magazine's perhaps unfocused
editorial direction: “‘THE BROADWAY’ is our Title, and our Scheme is as
broad as our Name”. Routledge wanted his magazine to be widely popular and
made sure his prospectus had few sharp edges: “The tone of our
periodical will be decidedly entertaining, recreative, and light: that
is to say, we shall endeavour to be sociable without being frivolous;
and if we occasionally aim at being instructive, we shall most
scrupulously avoid being indigestible. Politics we shall eschew:
politics being dull things, which few understand, and fewer still are
any better for understanding” (189).
With its “light” tone,
Routledge's magazine casually dismisses the vogue for rational recreation
and offers instead the polite but knowing pleasures of a cosmopolitan
literary miscellany. Ellegård claims that the magazine's readership was
“predominantly feminine” and middle class (33). The frontispiece of a bound
copy of the magazine seems to illustrate this: a pair of well-dressed young
women in a rose bower sharing an issue of
The Broadway
.
The Broadway
demonstrated no particular affiliation with an aesthetic
movement, but it did publish WMR's interesting exercise in applied
Pre-Raphaelite poetics, “
Mrs. Holmes Grey
”. Routledge contacted WMR twice in
1867 to ask for his contributions, interested mostly in WMR's fame
rather than in any of his particular works. However, unimpressed by the magazine's
“broad scheme”, WMR declined Routledge's first offer, “instancing their
prospectus as of itself enough to warn off any human writer”, as he wrote to
Swinburne (Peattie 181). Routledge decided to shift his editorial policy and
promised WMR in a second letter that
The Broadway
would seek out
increasingly distinguished contributors. WMR consented, offering his long
narrative poem “Mrs. Holmes Grey” and an article on John Ruskin (printed as
“Ruskin as a Writer on Art” in March 1868). But WMR severed ties with the
magazine in December 1867, annoyed by Routledge's irreverent treatment of
Swinburne (Peattie 189).
Bibliographic
Altick, Richard D.
The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800-1900
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.
Ives, Maura C. “Descriptive Bibliography and the Victorian Periodical.”
Studies in Bibliography
49 (1996): 61-94.
Barnes, James J., and Patience P. Barnes. “Routledge, George.”
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
. Oxford UP, 2004-2007.
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/articleHL/24184
Ellegård, Alvar.
The Readership of the Periodical Press in Mid-Victorian Britain
. Göteborg: Göteborgs Universitets Arsskrift, 63:3. 1957.
Mumby, F. A.
The House of Routledge 1834-1934
. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1934.
North, John, ed. “The Broadway Annual.”
The Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals: 1800-1900
. North Waterloo Academic Press. http://www.victorianperiodicals.com
Peattie, Roger W., ed.
Selected Letters of William Michael Rossetti
. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1990.
Sutherland, John.
The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction
. Burnt Hill, Engl.: Longman, 1988.
Trollope, Anthony. “Introduction.”
Saint Pauls
1 (1867-68): 1-7.