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Find Out More About Our   Victorian Magazine Collection

VictorianVoices.net has made over 250 of our magazine sources available for free download from Archive.org. Visit our individual magazine pages for download links, or see our magazine download page for a complete list! Magazines archived on this site range from as early as 1834 to as late as 1913. The majority, however, are from the 1880's and 1890's - the hey-day of Victorian magazine publishing. Advances in printing, and in particular the ability to print illustrations and photographs, led to a huge surge in magazine and newspaper production. Indeed, it's not necessarily correct to refer to all of the publications on this site as "magazines." Many were actually considered "papers" rather than "magazines." Magazines, like The Strand or Century, were generally published monthly and printed on high-quality stock, with glossy covers that were often printed in color. "Papers," such as The Girl's Own Paper, were usually published weekly, on poorer quality stock, with no separate cover. However, today one is most likely to find either type of publication in its annual or semi-annual format - that is, with all the editions for the past six or twelve months bound into a hard-cover volume. Generally, the advertising sections were removed in these bound volumes, and in some cases color prints were added that weren't part of the original editions. Most publishers issued their own annuals or semi-annuals, but readers often bound their own collections. Obviously, the collections archived on this site represent only a tiny fraction of the magazines (and papers) published in the latter part of the Victorian era. They are my personal collection - the magazines I've found most interesting in terms of illustrating the Victorian way of life in Britain and America. I've also chosen to scan and archive only those publications that aren't readily available elsewhere in digital format. (Archive.org is definitely the best source of free electronic copies of Victorian magazines!) Many British magazines are still hard to find online - and, surprisingly, so is America's classic publication, Century Magazine. This site brings you the complete collection of the Victorian years of The Girl's Own Paper, The Strand, Cassell's Family Magazine, and, on the American side, Century Magazine. Many of these magazines continued on well past the Victorian era, but the focus here is on the Victorian world and way of life. Other publications are a bit more random, ranging from incomplete collections (e.g., Harper's, English Illustrated Magazine, etc.) to one-offs that I've chanced upon in some obscure bookstore. On this site, you'll find most of the nonfiction articles from each publication. That's still perhaps only 50% of the actual content of each volume, as I haven't posted the majority of the fiction, poetry, editorial pages, "lighter side" columns, etc. from the various volumes. So there's still much to be explored in the volumes themselves! Happy reading! Collections   The Atlantic Monthly   Cassell's Family Magazine   The Century Magazine   Demorest's Monthly Magazine   English Illustrated Magazine   The Girl's Own Paper   Godey's Lady's Book   Harper's New Monthly Magazine   Illustrated London Almanack   Peterson's Magazine   The Strand   St. Nicholas   Windsor Magazine Individual Volumes or Issues   Archaeological Journal - 1852   Argosy - 1881, 1882, 1893   The Art Journal - 1853, 1858, 1859   Chambers's Miscellany - 1845   Chums - 1895   Collier's Cyclopedia - 1882   Court Magazine - 1834   Draper's Self-Culture, Vol. 6 - Sports, Pastimes, and Physical Culture - 1913   English Annual - 1838   Floral World - 1873   Gentleman's Magazine - 1859   Goodwords - 1902 (special Coronation issue)   Home Magazine - 1898   Ingalls' Home Magazine - 1888, 1889   Lady's Realm - 1901   Leisure Hour - 1860 and 1868   Little Folks - 1878 and 1883   McClure's Magazine - April 1897, August 1898   The Monthly Chronicle of North Country Lore and Legend - 1890   Needle & Brush - 1889   New Illustrated Magazine - February 1900   Quiver - 1889   Pennsylvania Board of Agriculture Annual - 1886   Pictorial Museum of Sport & Adventure - 1890   Stories of History - 1891   The Sunday Strand - 1902   The Young Ladies' Journal - 1882