LITERARY JUBILEES AND CELEBRATIONS
(January 21st, 1896.)
1896, Jan.
Jubilee of The
Daily News.The first number of The Daily News was published on the 21st of January, 1846, and in its Jubilee issue Mr. Justin McCarthy, M.P., and Sir John Robinson give an interesting account of the
paper's rise and progress, together with portraits of Charles Dickens (its first editor), Charles Wentworth Dilke, Douglas Jerrold, Father Prout, Harriet Martineau, and others who have been connected with the journal. From this history it appears that Dickens brought a powerful staff with him. This included William Johnson Fox, the eloquent orator of the Corn Law League, who wrote the first leading article, Douglas Jerrold, and John Forster, while the first musical and dramatic critic was George Hogarth.
Mr. Dickens was editor for only four months, being succeeded by his friend and biographer John Forster.
Charles
Wentworth
Dilke
as Manager.In April, 1846, Charles Wentworth Dilke and his son took the management for three years. They at once reduced the price,
thus adopting the plan which had been so successful with The Athenæum. In this way The Daily News became the forerunner
of the cheap daily press.[1] While Mr. Dilke had control every effort
was made to obtain the earliest intelligence, and The Daily News
was the first paper to spread in the provinces the tidings of the
revolutionary struggles of 1848.
Editors and
contributors.The editors of The Daily News have been Charles Dickens, John Forster, Eyre Evans Crowe, Frederick Knight Hunt, William Weir, Thomas Walker (who resigned in 1869, having been appointed by Mr. Gladstone to the editorship of The London Gazette), Edward Dicey, Frank Harrison Hill, H. W. Lucy, and Sir John Robinson; while among its contributors have been Father Prout (its first correspondent at Rome), Harriet Martineau (who for some time wrote daily for its columns), Sir James Stephen, William Black, Archibald Forbes, Edmund Yates, Frances Power Cobbe, Prof. Masson, Henry Labouchere, W. Fraser Rae, George R. Sims, and many others.
It is now almost forgotten that on September 1st, 1846, the proprietors of The Daily News started an evening paper, The Express. Mr. Thomas Britton, the publisher of The Daily News, who had
- ↑ The price is now reduced to a halfpenny.
