Who published the first magazine?
The first MAGAZINE
The first MAGAZINE in the sense of a general-interest miscellany was the Met-cure Galant, established by Jean Donneau de Vise, and first published in Paris in March 1672. Concerned principally with the gossip of the town, it enjoyed a considerable success in fashionable circles. The Gentleman’s Journal or the Monthly Miscellany, by, way of a letter to a gentleman in the Country, consisting of News, History Philosophy, Poetry, Musick, Translations, Etc. was an octavo, published monthly for the first time in January 1692 by R. Baldwin ‘near the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane’. The editor was Peter Anthony Motteux, a Huguenot refugee, who seems to have written most of each 64-page issue himself, though there were verses contributed by, Matthew Prior, Sir Charles Sedley and other poets of repute. Perhaps the most notable feature was an original composition by Henry Purcell every month. Another interesting innovation was the magazine short story, which made its first appearance in the issue for March 1692. The Gentleman’s Journal continued for 33 numbers, ceasing publication in 1694.
The term ‘magazine’ was first employed to signify a periodical miscellany by Edward Cave, who, as `Sylvanus Urban, Gent’, started the Gentleman’s Magazine—the first to use the word in its title—in January 1731. The word rapidly entered general currency, and was used in the title of the first magazine to be published in North America, Andrew Bradford’s The American Magazine, which made its appearance on 13 February 1741 in Philadelphia, Pa.
The first ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE was Memoirs for the Curious; or an account of what occurs that’s rare, secret, extraodinary, prodigious and miraculous through the world, whether in Nature, Art, Learning an undated monthly printed by R. Janeway for A. Baldwin, London, 1701. Although 18th century miscellanies carried occasional plates, illustrations in the text remained exceptional until the advent of The Penny Magazine in 1832.
The first magazine to publish a photograph was the Art Union for June 1846. Some 7,000 Calotype positive prints were supplied by William Henry Fox Talbot the specimens being used to illustrate an article on the Calotype process. The photographic historian Helmut Gemsheim says that of the eight copies of this issue of the Art Union in his collection, each accompanying photograph depicts a different subject.
The first magazine to be regularly illustrated with photographs was the Stereoscopic Magazine, monthly, 1 July 1858-February 1865. Each number contained three stereoscopic studies.
