 | About Boys of England 1866
See below for the history of this magazine
Boys of England was a British boys' periodical issued weekly from 1866 to 1899, and has been called "the leading boys' periodical of the nineteenth century".The magazine was based in London.Boys of England was edited by the publisher and former Chartist Edwin John Brett. By the 1870s it had a circulation of 250,000, and a mainly working-class readership. By comparison to middle-class competitors such as The Boy's Own Paper,
Edwin John Brett (1828-1895) was apprenticed at the age of fourteen to a watchmaker, but soon moved to London, where he worked as an artist-engraver. By the age of sixteen he was engraving for Henry Vizetelly's Pictorial Times.
Brett joined a radical Chartist circle that included Feargus O'Connor and George Augustus Sala, the latter friendship continuing until his death (see above). He was present at the Kennington Common Chartist demonstration on 10 April 1848, and later claimed that its failure was decisive in his later shift towards mainstream politics.
Brett gained his first editorship in 1864, presiding over Edward Harrison's English Girl's Journal and Ladies' Magazine with William Emmett. When it folded the following year they parted acrimoniously, and went into competition with each other in the expanding market for boys' periodicals. Brett then joined the Newsagents' Publishing Company at 147 Fleet Street, and inaugurated an era of astonishing success with a series of best-selling periodicals including a new sub-genre in 'penny-dreadful' fiction which placed juvenile heroes in tales of sensational brutality.By 1866 this success had allowed Brett to found Boys of England, a weekly whose blend of thrilling fiction and factual articles enjoyed popularity until its closure in 1899. By January 1868 the periodical had proved popular enough for him to target a slightly older readership with Young Men of Great Britain (1868–72), a 'healthy, moral, instructive and amusing companion for every age'.
As 173 Fleet Street became 'The Boys of England Office', Brett nurtured a new respectability. He found homes for several street orphans, helping them to honest careers. The prestige of his papers was further enhanced when he took advantage of the bankruptcy of the adventure novelist Captain Mayne Reid, signing him as a regular contributor and saving the author from ruin. During the 1870s Brett expanded into other markets, overseeing the production of popular romantic fictions. His English Ladies' Novelettes (1891–2) became the Princesses' Novelettes, which survived until 1904. By this time Brett was dividing his time between two residences, Burleigh House, at 342 Camden Road, and Oaklands, on the Isle of Thanet. Financial success allowed him to indulge his passion for arms and armour, and over thirty years he acquired nearly a thousand items. Following the death of his wife in 1893, he occupied himself with the collection, for which he published a lavishly illustrated catalogue in 1894. This formed the basis of the Christie's sale catalogue of his collection offered at auction between 18-25 March 1895. After a long illness Brett died at Burleigh House on 15 December 1895, leaving an estate worth £76,538
Above biography from https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21639/lot/254/
About The Boys of England 1866 .
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