The Cornhill Magazine

History

The Cornhill was founded by George Murray Smith in 1859, Dickens's great literary rival at the time. Subsequent editors included G. H. Lewes, Leslie Stephen, Ronald Gorell Barnes, James Payn, Peter Quennell and Leonard Huxley.

The magazine was initially successful, selling more issues than expected, but within a few years circulation dropped rapidly as it failed to keep pace with changes in popular taste. It also gained a reputation for rather safe, inoffensive content in the late Victorian era. A mark of the high regard in which it had been held was its publication of Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands by Queen Victoria. Stories were often illustrated by pre-eminent artists of the time, including George du Maurier, Edwin Landseer, Frederic Leighton and John Everett Millais.

From 1917 the magazine was published by John Murray of Albemarle Street, London. Contributors to The Cornhill in the 1930s and 1940s included Elizabeth Bowen, Rose Macaulay, Mary Webb, D. K. Broster and Nugent Barker.

Notable works published

Important works serialised in the magazine include the following:

• Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope
• Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The White Company and J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement by Arthur Conan Doyle
• Tithonus by Alfred Tennyson
• Washington Square by Henry James
• Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold
• Romola by George Eliot
• "The Lagoon" by Joseph Conrad
• Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
• Unto This Last by John Ruskin
• Armadale by Wilkie Collins
• Emma (Posthumous Fragment) by Charlotte Brontë
• Daisy Miller by Henry James

Archives

A list of issues of the magazine available for viewing online is provided by John Mark Ockerbloom through a webserver of the University of Pennsylvania: https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=cornhill

There are transcriptions of many issues available on Project Gutenberg.

References

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References

1. "The Cornhill Magazine—The John Murray Archive—National Library of Scotland".
2. Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor, ''Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland''. Ghent: Academia Press and London: British Library, 2009. {{ISBN. 071235039X (p. 145).
3. (Fall 1999). "Introduction: ''The Cornhill Magazine'': Celebrating Success". Victorian Periodicals Review.
4. Eddy, Spencer L.. (1970). "The Founding of The Cornhill Magazine".
5. Jack Adrian, "Introduction" to ''The Ash-Tree Press Annual Macabre 2003: Ghosts at 'The Cornhill' 1931–1939'' [[Ash-Tree Press]], 2003, {{ISBN. 978-1-55310-060-7.