Hot Off The Press – New Titles This Week

This week at The Archive we’re on our bikes as we welcome the Bicycling News to our collection, and explore cycling smash hit ‘Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two’). That’s not all, as we’ve also added four other brand new titles to our collection, with updates to 15 of our existing titles from across the United Kingdom and Ireland, and a total of 207,731 brand new pages joining us in all.

So read on to discover more about the hit song ‘Daisy Bell’ and how its popularity boosted the profile of cycling back in the 1890s, and also to learn about all of our new and updated titles of the week.

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The Bicycling News

With our sensational cycling song ‘Daisy Bell’ to still explore, it’s only right that we first introduce you to the Bicycling News, the first of our new titles this week. Published in Birmingham with the full name of the Bicycling News and Tricycling Gazette, this special sporting title was established in 1876.

Bicycling News | 18 June 1886

The ‘only illustrated cycling journal,’ the Bicycling News appeared every Wednesday priced at 1d. It went on to incorporate fellow bicycle publications The Tricyclist and Wheel Life.

Filling an impressive 30 pages, the Bicycling News featured a large range of ads for bikes, alongside reports and notices from cycling clubs across the country. Meanwhile, through its ‘Hum of the Wheel’ section, the publication printed short news bulletins. Furthermore, the Bicycling News printed a ‘Ladies’ Column,’ stories from cycling tours, and a buy, sell and exchange section.

The Bicycling News also published cartoons, like this one, as featured in the 4 December 1886 edition

By 1900 the title became known as the Bicycling News and Motor Review, and the publication was still running by 1935, when national paper the Daily Herald dubbed it as the ‘old cycle-trade paper.’

The Croydon Review and Railway Time Table

Our next new title of the week is a curious fusion of Conservative politics and railway information. Established in 1877, with a guaranteed circulation of 2,000 copies, the Croydon Review and Railway Timetable appeared on the first of every month.

Costing just 1d, the Croydon Review and Railway Timetable filled 30 pages with political articles. These articles had such titles as ‘Conservatism vs Liberalism’ and ‘Polling Day: Which Party Makes Most Wars?,’ although the paper’s main focus was on the Conservative cause.

Croydon Review and Railway Time Table | 1 June 1880

True to the paper’s political alignment, the Croydon Review and Railway Timetable printed the latest news from the Conservative party in the Croydon area, reporting on Conservative meetings in Croydon. It detailed Conservative candidates’ addresses, whilst also pausing to report on some Liberal meetings in the Croydon vicinity.

Cheek by jowl with this political reporting sat railway timetables covering the Croydon area. For example, you can find the times of the London Bridge, Croydon and Dorking route, and the Victoria, Crystal Palace and Croydon route within the pages of the Croydon Review and Railway Timetable.

The English Gentleman

With the decidedly dapper name of the English Gentleman comes our next new title of the week. First published on 19 December 1824 by Edward Dixon Pouchée, who published other titles like the News of Literature and Fashion and The European Review, and was the brother of printing entrepreneur Louis Pouchée, the English Gentleman appeared weekly on a Sunday.

English Gentleman | 17 September 1826

With the motto of ‘in manner courteous, and in action firm,’ the English Gentleman filled eight pages with news from parliament, police news, updates from both the army and the navy, sporting intelligence, and the theatres. Costing some 7d, the paper also published the latest from the insolvent debtors’ court, providing a list of those debtors for its readers.

The Highland News and Football Times

Our penultimate new title of the week hails from the Highlands and it is Inverness’s Highland News and Football Times. The Saturday edition of the Highland News, itself established in 1883, the Highland News and Football Times cost 1d and filled eight pages.

Highland News and Football Times | 18 January 1947

Despite its sporting name, usually only about a page of this publication reported on football news. The football news came locally from the sport in the Highlands, with reports from the wider Scottish and also English leagues. The Highland News and Football Times would detail ‘Today’s football’ matches.

Meanwhile, the Highland News and Football Times reported on a range of subjects, from local to national news, even featuring some columns in Scottish Gaelic.

The Voice of the People (Glasgow)

We remain in Scotland for our final new title of the week, which is Glasgow’s the Voice of the People. First published on 13 October 1883 at the price of 1d, the publication’s introductory statement declared how:

Like the forces of steam and electricity, the power of the people lay long in abeyance, but its discovery has been followed by a development even more rapid and irresistible than theirs. It is daily becoming clearer that ere long, as the result of their increase in education and knowledge, the great body of people will wrest from the few all real political and social power.

Voice of the People (Glasgow) | 27 October 1883

A politically radical title, with a particularly impressive masthead, the Voice of the People promised that ‘from every source we will draw amusement and instruction for our readers; and social advancement of the people.’ Indeed, the paper’s introduction promised how it would be its ‘ceaseless endeavour to make this journal the Voice of the People in fact as well as name.’

So what did the eight pages of the Voice of the People contain? Alongside short paragraphs of news, this paper printed the latest from trade unions, a column entitled ‘The Radical Outlook,’ and another named ‘Our Literary Radical.’ Meanwhile, the Voice of the People published stories, letters to the editor, and poetry, the latter having such titles like ‘Song of the Lower Classes.’ A particularly innovative feature of the Voice of the People was its ‘People’s Draughts-Board’ section, with diagrams of the game, which even gained coverage in the press at the time.

Voice of the People | 13 October 1883

Our updated titles

Moving away from our new titles of the week we have a feast of updated titles for you to enjoy in this the week before Christmas. With over 43,000 brand new pages added to its ranks this week we have the Peterborough Evening Telegraph, whilst over 35,000 brand new pages have joined the Yorkshire Evening Post. An honourable mention too goes to the Lincolnshire Free Press, to which we have added over 26,000 pages, spanning the years 1851 to 1942.

Meanwhile, hopping across the Irish Sea, we’ve updated Armagh’s Ulster Gazette and Dublin’s Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette. Furthermore, continuing with this week’s sporting theme, we’ve added new pages to the Midland Athlete, the Athletic News and the Football Echo (Sunderland). Finally, we’ve added new pages to one of our Scottish titles, the Montrose Review.

‘Daisy Bell’ – a bicycle built for two

Penned by British songwriter Harry Dacre (1857-1922), and performed in a London music hall by singer Katie Lawrence (1858-1913), the song ‘Daisy Bell’ captured the fancy of a nation when it was first performed in 1892. A year later, in 1893, and our new cycling title the Bicycling News was still abuzz with tidings of ‘Daisy Bell,’ and popularity that the song, which famously cites ‘a bicycle built for two,’ was bringing to the world of cycling.

Penny Illustrated Paper | 19 August 1893

On 26 August 1894 the Bicycling News reported how:

Since that classic ditty ‘Daisy Bell’ gave cycling such a lift in popular estimation, the ‘profession’ have taken up the bicycle. The latest song is entitled ‘Does anybody want to buy a bicycle?’ and retails the troubles of a father, whose daughter was continually getting into trouble running people down on her safety.

Penny Illustrated Paper | 29 December 1894

The ‘profession’ in this instance is of the entertainment variety, and the Bicycling News provides the chorus of the new cycling-themed song, which was designed to capitalise on the success of ‘Daisy Bell:’

Does anybody want to buy a bicycle,
It belongs to our Lucinda;
She had an awful spill, she was coming down a hill,
When she tumbled in a pawnshop window.
You can have it very cheap, you can pay so much a week,
I don’t care where it goes;
She’ll never shine in the record-breaking line,
The silly thing she’s gone and broke her nose.

Meanwhile, apropos of other trends in the August of 1893, the Bicycling News noted on 3 August 1893 how ‘the straw hat epidemic is raging amongst Newcastle cyclists just now.’ However, those ‘happy Northerners’ were ‘as yet free from the terrors of ‘Daisy Bell,” the popular song having not yet made its way north.

Dorothy Dickson and Captain Larkin on their ‘bicycle built for two’ | The Sphere | 26 May 1928

But further evidence of the permeation of ‘Daisy Bell’ into everyday culture can be found within the pages of the Bicycling News. On 9 September 1893, in a section entitled ‘Road Racing and Pacing,’ the Bicycling News observed how:

Happily, the remedy is to hand; tandem pacing is obviously the coming thing, and, seeing what a veritable speed machine ‘the bicycle made for two’ has proved itself to be, there can be no doubt it will be more and more used in this connection.

Penny Illustrated Paper | 28 July 1894

The lyrics of ‘Daisy Bell’ had seeped from a popular music hall song into the pages of a serious cycling magazine. And here we have a wonderful point in time, with cycling moving into the mainstream, and an enduring song which captures the excited essence of cycling in the early 1890s.

A scene from film ‘The Gay ‘Nineties,’ which shows a bicycle club’s day in the country | The Graphic | 2 August 1930

Discover more about ‘Daisy Bell,’ the history of both cycling and the music hall, and much more besides, in the pages of our Archive today.

New Titles

Updated Titles

This week we have updated fifteen of our existing titles.

You can learn more about each of the titles we add to every week by clicking on their names. On each paper’s title page, you can read a free sample issue, learn more about our current holdings, and our plans for digitisation.

You can keep up to date with all the latest additions by visiting the recently added page.  You can even look ahead to see what we’re going to add tomorrow.