Literary Bonds: Mutual Improvement Society Manuscript

Magazines and Victorian Periodical Culture

Kirstie Blair, Michael Sanders, Lauren Weiss

Victorian Periodicals Review, Volume 54, Number 3, Fall 2021, pp.

463-486 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/vpr.2021.0033

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/851330

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 Literary Bonds: Mutual Improvement
Society Manuscript Magazines and
Victorian Periodical Culture
KIRSTIE BLAIR, MICHAEL SANDERS, AND LAUREN WEISS

In the introduction to Self-Help, one of the Victorian period’s most influ-

ential works, Samuel Smiles recalled the progress of a mutual improvement
society consisting of men “of the humblest rank” who met in a hired room
in a northern town: “Those who knew a little taught those who knew less—
improving themselves while they improved the others; and, at all events,
setting before them a good working example. Thus these youths—and
there were also grown men amongst them—proceeded to teach themselves
and each other, reading and writing, arithmetic and geography; and even
mathematics, chemistry, and some of the modern languages.”1 Smiles’s
book emerged from a lecture delivered to this society, and his introduc-
tion extols mutual improvement societies as foundational to self-help and
advancement in life. The network of mutual improvement societies across
the English-speaking Victorian world remains, however, relatively under-
researched. In terms of periodical studies, mutual improvement societies
read and engaged with periodicals and newspapers and saw their activities
reported in them. But still more importantly, producing magazines was
seen as a core part of the improving activities of these groups and a means
to, as Smiles put it, teach themselves and each other. Critics have exam-
ined communal manuscript magazines, including productions by family
groups or voyagers who created shipboard magazines.2 Mutual improve-
ment society magazines differ from these, however, in that their primary
aim is education rather than entertainment and because enough of them
survive to make it evident that they constitute their own subgenre. Indeed,
by the late nineteenth century, mutual improvement societies had a clear
understanding of what their magazines ought to look like and what they
aimed to achieve.

©2022 The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals

464 Victorian Periodicals Review 54:3 Fall 2021
We launched the Literary Bonds project as an open-access website
to provide bibliographic evidence of and contextualised information on
maga­zines produced predominantly in manuscript by mutual improvement
and literary societies during the long nineteenth century.3 It uncovered a
range of new materials that allows for direct comparisons regionally and
nationally, along with a broad distribution pattern that demonstrates the
widely shared belief that society magazine production was an important
vehicle for members’ improvement. These magazines, which included orig-
inal essays, poetry, artwork, and even music, were commonly mentioned in
society reports published in local and national newspapers, particularly in
the second half of the century, as well as in the minutes of society records.
Surviving magazines can now be found in archives across Scotland and
England (and beyond), owing their preservation to donations by churches,
other religious or secular organizations, individuals, and sometimes sheer
luck. In January 2019, Weiss calculated a total of 652 extant issues pro-
duced by eighty-four groups across Scotland and England between 1823
and 1914. Of these, seventy groups (83 percent) produced their magazine
in manuscript. Subsequent research has added another seventeen groups
to the total of magazine-producing societies during the same period.4
Given the ubiquity of these groups across the UK, these numbers are prob-
ably conservative. To date, these manuscript magazines remain a largely
unknown and thus under-used resource.5
Because mutual improvement society magazines included both substan-
tial reflection on their own purpose and reader responses to their format,
they offer insight into how the producers of these amateur magazines
responded, as readers, to Victorian periodicals. We argue for an under-
standing of these magazines as a dynamic social medium that fostered
debate and discussion as a means of improving contributors and readers
alike. Moreover, we contend that this method of improvement contributed
to upward social mobility by both encouraging and enabling members to
engage more widely with civil society. In order to demonstrate the extent of
our findings, we move from the general to the highly specific: Weiss begins
with a brief overview of these magazines and their functions, then Sanders
explores the run of one Manchester periodical, Odds and Ends (1855–
1914), and Blair concludes with an analysis of one volume of a Glasgow
periodical, the Literary Bond (1864).6 Through these cases, we highlight
some of the ways in which mutual improvement society magazines serve
as cultural barometers, registering the response of aspirational working-
class and emerging middle-class men (and some women) to contemporary
debates in religion, science, politics, and culture.
 Kirstie Blair, Michael Sanders, and Lauren Weiss 465

Mutual Improvement and Literary Societies and Their Magazines

The mutual improvement movement was a distinctive, international phe-

nomenon that reached its height during the second half of the nineteenth
century.7 The roots of these improving societies lie in the earlier literary,
philosophical, and scientific groups of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries.8 Their histories are connected with the history of evangelical-
ism, Chartism, Mechanics’ Institutes, and radicalism, but their develop-
ment was often separate from these religious and politicised movements
and organisations. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
literary societies—or literary and philosophical societies, as they were
chiefly called—were predominantly composed of the middle and upper
classes. However, concurrent with the shift to industrialisation, there was
a rise in the formation of working-class groups, a trend that would flourish
throughout the nineteenth century. Many societies were associated with
churches and some with workplaces, but a society could be founded in any
place that had a large enough group of enthusiastic initiators and potential
members. Toward the end of the century, while working-class groups con-
tinued to be founded, such societies became more middle-class institutions
that allowed women as members as well as office-bearers. Thousands of
people joined them from across Scotland, England, and well beyond, and
they were influential socio-cultural, religious, and political forces in the
communities where they formed.
By the mid- to late nineteenth century, starting up a magazine was
perceived as a standard activity for any ambitious mutual improvement
group. The vast majority of societies with improvement as a stated aim
were organizationally alike, with a constitution, democratically elected
officers, and meetings regulated by a set order. The development of hand-
written magazines within these societies was one aspect of their broader
intent to develop a culture of confident public speaking, reading, and writ-
ing. Indeed, these magazines promoted individual, original expression for
those who were disenfranchised for much of the century. Consider, for
example, the contribution to the initial number of the Glasgow Border
Counties’ Literary Society Manuscript Magazine (produced in December
1885) by a young man who signs himself “A Silent Member.” From his
address at Bachelors Hall in Glasgow, he writes:

Dear Sir,
Having very little Knowledge indeed of the Rules and Regulations by which
Literary Societies are conducted nor of the technical names used in them, one
of the first things in the Syllabus that drew my particular attention was this
word Magazine, the reason of course being that I did not understand what was
466 Victorian Periodicals Review 54:3 Fall 2021
meant. I have now got the term carefully explained to me and find that it will
be a very good and efficient means by which a bashful member like myself may
find Expression to any Small ideas I am possessed of[.] My Experience in this
Society, which I have attended regularly, has gone to show me that there are a
great many like myself in great need of some channel by which to Express their
ideas if they have any, and I am consequently waiting anxiously the advent of
this Magazine Night, that these pent up ideas may for the first time—as far as
we know—see the light of day.9

By encouraging individuals to think, speak, and write not only for them-
selves but also for their fellow members, the mutual improvement society
empowered participants. As this quotation suggests, magazines were impor-
tant because they allowed those who were not confident in self-expression
to experiment in writing rather than in public speech and debate, providing
an alternative and often more anonymous channel for communication.
Societies tended to prefer manuscript format for their magazines, even
later in the century when printing became cheaper and simpler, for several
reasons. Firstly, magazines produced in manuscript saved on costs. Fur-
ther, many societies expressed a wish to provide members with a forum
for practicing their amateur writing skills without exposure (contributors
often choosing to remain anonymous or write under a pseudonym), and an
informal, flexible production that offered blank pages for supportive feed-
back from other group members appealed greatly. Most magazines, like
the one produced by the Glasgow Border Counties Literary Society, were
written by and for their members. However, in some cases, non-members,
including women, were also allowed to contribute. The evidence from lit-
erary groups in Glasgow suggests that members could have learned about
this literary genre from other members, as seen in the case of the Albion
Mutual Improvement Union, but they could just as well have had access
to magazines that circulated beyond an official list of readers, which was
not uncommon.10
The productions were often first read aloud by the editor at special society
meetings called “magazine nights,” and contributions frequently stemmed
from debates or oral talks given at meetings.11 Contributions would usu-
ally be collected and bound together in a single issue (a very small number
of societies produced two copies of their monthly or bi­annual magazine)
then passed amongst the members using a circulation list that could be
included within the magazine. After their first circulation, the magazines
would then be housed in the society’s own library if it had one. In general,
these magazines were formatted similarly, with a cover featuring origi-
nal artwork, a table of contents or index, a circulation list, an editorial,
and original contributions from members and sometimes non-members.
 Kirstie Blair, Michael Sanders, and Lauren Weiss 467

Contributions were highly varied, appropriating and combining elements

from family, children’s, sporting, comic/satiric, social purpose, temperance,
religious, theatre, art, and musical periodicals (to use the taxonomies of
The Routledge Handbook to Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals and
Newspapers). The number of contributions per issue also varied, as some
magazines included a handful of pieces totalling twenty to thirty pages
while others spanned several hundred pages.
Though these magazines were primarily read by society members, there
is considerable evidence that they reached a larger audience. They could
be passed to family and friends and, in some cases, sent across the country.
For example, the Wellpark F. C. Literary Society was based in Glasgow, yet
contributors and readers of its magazine hailed from places such as Alva
and Alloa, about thirty miles east. Another example is the enigmatically
named Dragon, which was produced by a local group of men and women
in Dumfries. While the Wellpark magazines include lists of readers, the
Dragon includes lists of postages, indicating that it was posted rather than
hand-delivered, which appears to have been the most common method of
distribution. To use the December 1872 issue as an example, the list pro-
vides evidence that the Dragon’s circulation was on a truly national scale.
Readers circulated this issue around the Dumfries area before sending it
to “Mr Madden 3 George street Swansea and friends (Welsh contribu-
tors),” then to Manchester, Whithorn and Castle Douglas in Dumfries and
Galloway, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and finally to “Mrs Coope, Staff College,
Farnboro’ Station Hants, England.”12
Regardless of their host community (across Britain at least), these
improvement societies were fairly united in the purpose of their magazines,
even if the contents varied. For example, in the first issue of the Kirkwall
Young Men’s Literary Association’s magazine, the Torch (the title taken
from their motto: “Trust not to other men’s torches; light one of your
own”), the editorial introduction declared: “A manuscript Magazine ought
to be published regularly by the Association; and we are assured that the
‘Torch’ if properly supported will become an excellent means of improve-
ment, for our members, in the various parts of literary excellence, includ-
ing elegance of diction, facility of expression and suitableness of figure and
illustration. And to any member wishing to study, and practice himself in
any department of literary work, who may be deficient in language, or
in readiness of speech, this Magazine will, we hope, be a welcome and
prized means of attaining his end.”13 To this end, like most other societies’
miscellanies, the issue contains a mixture of non-fiction essays on a range
of topics, original poetry, and artwork in the form of the elaborate, hand-
drawn cover. In addition, after each of the contributions, pages were delib-
erately left blank for criticisms or readers’ responses—a common feature
468 Victorian Periodicals Review 54:3 Fall 2021
unique to this genre.14 In total, this issue has fifty-three pages, including the
editorial and readers’ criticisms, a typical length for one monthly issue.
Other societies produced miscellanies in which readers’ written criti-
cisms were not considered appropriate to include. To give another example
from the same period, the 1878 issue of the Aemulus, the magazine of the
Islington (London) Presbyterian Church Young Men’s Association, is 682
pages in total and contains 102 pieces of original poetry and prose col-
lected from a few years prior to its production, with subjects ranging from
self-improvement and mental culture (a topic that was often discussed in
society meetings and magazines) to contemporary politics, society, religion,
and literature—but no criticisms. The contents are indexed alphabetically
at the front, with cross-referencing by title and subject.15 Along with a few
illustrations, photographs of some of the office-bearers are also included.
While this magazine did not include criticisms, it was nonetheless subject
to critiques by society members at meetings designated for the purpose
with their names cited as critics in the minute books.
One final example from a slightly later date comes from a young men’s
literary society that was based at St. Stephen’s Church in Edinburgh. Con-
tributions were initially read aloud by the editor at the group’s magazine
nights. The 1883–84 issue is a total of 187 pages with twenty contributions
by twelve (presumably different) members.16 It begins with three chapters
of a fantastical piece about a mermaiden called “Sylva: A True Story.”
Other pieces include travel accounts and other non-fiction articles, such as
“Witchcraft in Scotland,” “Westminster Abbey,” “Phonography,” “Bal-
loons and Ballooning,” and “One or Two [Figurative] Literary Snobs.”
Original poetry was also included, like the (possibly parodic) love poem
“My Grace” by “G. M.,” who signed himself as “A Member.” After read-
ing it, one member, “J. M.,” wrote in the blank page that followed: “A
purer specimen of doggerel was never found printed on the outside of a
tea-bag.”17 Although intended for the improvement of the group’s skills in
penmanship, spelling, structuring, and writing in different genres, the tone
of this magazine was lighter, and the readers’ criticisms include serious
remarks offering useful suggestions alongside humorous comments made
in jest.
Although mutual improvement society magazines adopted a number
of different formats, these examples (and others available on the Liter-
ary Bonds website) demonstrate that they shared a miscellaneous nature
and a determination to imitate the tone of high-status periodicals. As one
editorial notes, “We look to [the Edinburgh Review] as our own mas-
ter.”18 Readers’ criticisms often situate success or failure in relation to well-
known periodicals and newspapers, as when “Hecla” commented on the
PLAC Magazine: “The maga is, I think, very disappointing this month. The
 Kirstie Blair, Michael Sanders, and Lauren Weiss 469

prose contributions savour too much of ‘Tit Bits’ and ‘Child’s Ad­visor.’”19
Although editors asked readers to be kind, noting that contributions
“ought not to be viewed in the strong light of professional standards,”
comments such as J. M.’s poetic criticism or Hecla’s disappointment show
that readers did have a strong sense of what these professional standards
for magazine journalism ought to be.20 If the defining activities of mutual
improvement societies involved reading, rhetoric, debate, and composition
by men, and increasingly women, who studied a wide range of materials
under the comprehensive term “literature,” the survival of these magazines
shows us how vital periodicals were to all these activities.

Odds and Ends and Mutual Improvement in Manchester

The importance of the mutual improvement society magazine as a means

of encouraging and developing the core activities of reading, debating,
and writing is evidenced by the example of Odds and Ends by As and
Bs (hereafter Odds and Ends), the manuscript magazine of the St. Paul’s
Mutual Improvement Society, which was attached to the Bennett Street
Sunday School in the New Cross/Ancoats area of Manchester. Started at a
time when many manuscript magazines were short-lived, Odds and Ends
provides a rare example of a particularly enduring manuscript magazine.
It survived for over a century, appearing annually from 1855 until 1962.
Indeed, of just over one hundred manuscript magazines identified on the
Literary Bonds website, only the Effort (Edinburgh, 1869–1949) comes
close to Odds and Ends in terms of longevity. This section concentrates
primarily on the first fifteen years of the magazine’s existence. In particular,
it focuses on the origin and aims of the magazine and its parent society, the
increasing sophistication of the magazine in terms of content and presenta-
tion, and its value as a way of charting changing cultural tastes. Situating
this one magazine and its contributors shows us how valuable surviving
magazines are in researching cultures of improvement and upward mobil-
ity, as well as indicating how such magazines contributed to upward mobil-
ity and cultures of reading and writing in the industrial city.
Bennett Street Sunday School had been founded in 1801 by David Stott
(an important manager for Worthington’s, a silk manufacturer) and has
been described by W. R. Ward as the “greatest” Anglican Sunday school in
the country.21 Two aspects of the Sunday school stand out. Firstly, it was
“a self-governing institution . . . run by the laiety” rather than the clergy.22
This was unusual for Anglican Sunday schools, where the incumbent min-
ister generally exercised control. Secondly, its founder and moving spirit,
David Stott, encouraged a broad-minded, tolerant approach in all things
connected with the school. In 1839 Bennett Street began to offer educa-
470 Victorian Periodicals Review 54:3 Fall 2021
tion classes, and in October 1843 the mutual improvement society was
founded.23 The long-term influence of Bennett Street Sunday School on
Manchester is suggested by Thomas Swindells’s verdict, given in his Man-
chester Streets and Manchester Men (1908), that “few institutions in the
city have exerted a greater influence for good during the last century, or are
better known.”24 Swindells also notes that the manuscript magazine Odds
and Ends, “carefully edited and substantially bound, is one of the most
treasured possessions of the school.”25
A brief survey of the careers of some of the figures most closely involved
in the St. Paul’s Mutual Improvement Society and its manuscript maga-
zine gives a sense of the society’s influence in and beyond Manchester. Its
founding members included two figures who would become influential in
the world of Victorian temperance: William Foster, who founded the Man-
chester Band of Hope, and William Hoyle, who founded the Lancashire
and Cheshire Band of Hope Union in 1863. Hoyle also produced many
songbooks for the temperance movement, including Hymns and Songs
for Temperance Societies and Bands of Hope (1869). Another founding
member, John Nesbitt, was an important maker of instruments, such as
weighing scales and yarn balances for the textile industry.26 Although not a
founding member, Charles Rowley (who later in the century would found
the Ancoats Brotherhood) began contributing regularly to Odds and Ends
from its fourth volume (1858).27
The magazine is generally reticent about the social origins and status
of its contributors. However, the “In Memoriam” articles for prominent
members of the society (published later in the century) afford the occasional
clue. Thus we learn, for example, that John Nesbitt was “born of very poor
parents” in Ancoats in 1833 and that he rose from these humble origins
to become a “general mechanic and manager” and ultimately owner of
an ironmonger’s shop.28 Similarly, the obituary for William Foster notes
that at the age of eight he was sent to work as a scavenger, “a laborious
and exhausting occupation as the present writer can testify from personal
experience.”29 The writer in this instance was Thomas Sands, who contrib-
uted thirty-five items to Odds and Ends between 1855 and 1871. A later
obituary for another founding member, Joseph Carter Lockhart, notes that
over a period of some thirty years, “[he] steadily rose from the lowest posi-
tion in [the company] to almost the highest.”30 The Dictionary of National
Biography describes Hoyle as the “fourth child of poor parents.”31 This
admittedly limited evidential base suggests that the mutual improvement
society not only attracted upwardly mobile members of the working class
but may well have contributed to that mobility.
George Milner (1829–1914), the driving force behind the creation of
Odds and Ends, provides another example of the upward social mobility
 Kirstie Blair, Michael Sanders, and Lauren Weiss 471

and extensive cultural reach of the St. Paul’s Mutual Improvement Soci-
ety. From a lowly background, Milner (who was born in Bennett Street,
attended its Sunday school, and worked in the cotton trade) rose to become
an important figure in the literary life of Manchester. A key member of the
Manchester Literary Club, Milner edited the works of both Edwin Waugh
and Samuel Laycock and co-edited A Glossary of the Lancashire Dialect
with J. H. Nodal. Milner subsequently became a magistrate and warden
of the cathedral, as well as chairman of the Manchester City News. M. W.
Lees notes that he was once described as “Bennett Street incarnate . . . con-
nected with the school for eighty-two years as scholar, teacher, manager,
Visitor, trustee, committee man, publicist and chronicler.”32 Milner edited
Odds and Ends for fifty years, as co-editor from 1855 to 1863 and sole
editor from 1864 onwards, highlighting his commitment to the magazine
as central to his aspirations for St. Paul’s.
The society began to produce Odds and Ends in 1855. The magazine
was written directly into a large ledger, and between 1855 and 1871 it
included a supplement, or appendix, containing the society’s prize-winning
essays and poems. However, from 1872 onwards it replaced these with
multi-authored and increasingly elaborate accounts of the society’s “Little-
Go” (holiday tours undertaken by members of the society). The story of
the development of Odds and Ends across its first fifteen years can be
illustrated, literally, by considering the way in which its title page changes
from monochrome to illuminated manuscript format (figures 1 and 2).
Between them, these images tell an unmistakable tale of increasing confi-
dence, sophistication, skill, and (presumably) pride in the creation of the
magazine. A similar story can be told in terms of the magazine’s format,
which increasingly adopts features associated with commercially produced
magazines. For example, while the contents page for the first volume sim-
ply lists the contributor, title of contribution, and page numbers in the
order in which they appear, from volume 4 (1858) onwards the contents
page is arranged by categories. Other embellishments include headers to
indicate page content and the introduction of photographs in volume 2
(1856), followed by illustrations in volume 4.
Odds and Ends depended on a relatively limited pool of contributors:
eight members wrote for the original volume, rising to twelve in 1856 and
fourteen in 1857. Thereafter, contributor numbers ranged from eleven to
twenty-four, with an average of fifteen contributors per year between 1855
and 1871. It is possible to identify forty-one different contributors between
1855 and 1871. Of these just under half (twenty) contributed to three or
fewer volumes, just under a quarter (ten) contributed to between four and
nine volumes, whilst just over a quarter (eleven) contributed to between
ten and seventeen volumes. A measure of the loyalty and commitment
472 Victorian Periodicals Review 54:3 Fall 2021

Figure 1. Title page of Odds and Ends, vol. 1 (1855). Image reproduced by kind
permission of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives.
 Kirstie Blair, Michael Sanders, and Lauren Weiss 473

Figure 2. Title page of Odds and Ends, vol. 9 (1863). Image reproduced by kind
permission of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives.
474 Victorian Periodicals Review 54:3 Fall 2021
generated by the magazine is given by the fact that six contributors had
unbroken runs (that is, they contributed to every volume following their
first contribution) and a further five contributors only failed to contrib-
ute once over a period of at least fifteen volumes. (George Milner and
W. Hindshaw had the distinction of contributing to every one of the first
fifteen volumes.) What this suggests, in line with other magazines we have
investigated, is that such magazines tended to depend on a core of dedi-
cated contributors who represented the society’s efforts to a much larger
group of readers.
Due to the inclusion of library reports in Odds and Ends, we have evi-
dence that the members of the society not only read their magazine but also
continued to read it beyond the immediate moment of its production. Vari-
ous volumes of Odds and Ends appear in the most popular loan lists on
seven occasions. In 1857, the previous year’s Odds and Ends was the single
most popular loan (twenty-one issues), while the inaugural volume was
the second most popular loan (sixteen issues). Similarly, in 1860 and 1869
Odds and Ends was again the most popular loan, while in 1864 and 1871
it was the second most popular loan (the 1866 volume of Odds and Ends
also featured in the most popular loans list in 1871). This makes Odds and
Ends one of the most-read magazines in the library, along with titles such
as Fraser’s Magazine, which was the most-borrowed item of 1856. Odds
and Ends also had a readership that went beyond the society. By the 1870s,
articles from the magazine were appearing in the Manchester City News
and were reprinted in an anthology, Selections from “Odds and Ends”; A
Manuscript Magazine: Issued by the St. Paul’s Literary and Educational
Society, Vol. 1, 1855–1869. A second volume covering the period 1869–74
appeared in 1876, and a third volume covering 1875–88 followed in 1890.
All three volumes were edited by Milner.
In an article entitled “About Odds and Ends,” written to celebrate
the magazine’s twenty-fifth anniversary, Charles H. Dixon attributed the
magazine’s longevity to the “unalloyed pleasure” generated by the “last-
ing friendships of the Brotherhood” that produced the magazine.33 It is
certainly the case that the magazine was produced by a tight-knit group
bound by familial and marital ties. Editor George Milner was married to
Ruth Lockhart, the sister of stalwart contributor Joseph Carter Lockhart,
while another of Joseph’s sisters was married to William Sterling, a fre-
quent contributor to Odds and Ends as well as a long-standing member of
the society’s committee.34
The only time this spirit of brotherhood appears to have been signifi-
cantly threatened was around the time of the Second Reform Act. Electoral
reform was a topic the society was prepared to discuss. The secretary’s
report for 1867 notes that topics discussed that year included support for
 Kirstie Blair, Michael Sanders, and Lauren Weiss 475

the Reform Bill (second meeting of the year), the question of extending
the franchise to women (sixth meeting), and a motion critical of the dem-
onstrations for reform (ninth meeting).35 The following year, the society’s
prize-winning essay was “Our Representative System in Its Present Work-
ing and in Its Capacity of Amendment.” Written by Rowley, this essay
argued: “Let us have then a large extension of the franchise in town and
country, let the great social stigma on the poor man be at once removed
and for ever. Let us all be equally free in practice and theory and then
our laws will have a fair chance of being impartial and just between all
classes.”36 However, the very next year finds Rowley writing, in his capac-
ity of that year’s secretary, “The committee have thought fit during a time
of so much political acrimony to disallow English political party subjects
altogether.”37 The ban appears to have been maintained, as in 1870 the
then secretary T. Derby reports, “It will be seen that the essays have been
confined entirely to subjects of a social or literary character and as a con-
sequence, it has been found that the debates have not been of that lively
animated tone which was wont to characterise the eloqutionary tourna-
ments of [our meetings].”38
The longevity of Odds and Ends testifies to the persistence of the belief
in the conciliatory powers of education and culture amongst a particular
fraction of Manchester’s emerging middle class, a group proudly defining
themselves as predominantly “self-made.”39 The mutual improvement soci-
ety and its magazine enabled these men to develop the skills of debate and
discussion and to acquire the cultural capital that allowed them to assume
key roles in organisations such as the Band of Hope and the Ancoats
Brother­hood, as well as the local press and magistracy. In short, Odds and
Ends shows us how such magazines created literary bonds between like-
minded men, who then used the magazine to promote liberal-bourgeois
ideals of improvement in ways that influenced developments across the
Victorian city. Indeed, the very magazine itself, irrespective of its content,
provides a documentary record of the increasing confidence and sophisti-
cation of this group of upwardly mobile men.

Contemporary Debate and the Literary Bond

In order to demonstrate both the kinds of contemporary topics perceived

as improving and the ways in which manuscript magazines modelled their
content and style on published periodicals, our second short case study
focuses on the November 1864 issue of the Literary Bond, produced by
the Free Anderston Church Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Society of
Glasgow. Unlike Odds and Ends, this magazine cannot be identified as
a factor in individual upward mobility, as contributors are anonymous
476 Victorian Periodicals Review 54:3 Fall 2021
or pseudonymous. A close reading of one issue of one periodical, how-
ever, shows how anonymously authored magazines give us insight into the
response of society members to contemporary topics in science, religion,
politics, and beyond, and also how editors of such magazines helped to
foster and develop a sense of the magazine’s identity and standing in the
world of periodicals. The Literary Bond is significant for several reasons:
like Odds and Ends, its longevity was impressive (Weiss’s research sug-
gests that it may have operated for nearly half a century); its contributions
were varied, lively, and enriched with artwork and other embellishments;
and enough copies have survived in Glasgow’s Mitchell Library to make it
possible to read through a thirteen-year run. Though the handwritten con-
tributions are either unsigned or signed with an untraceable pseudonym,
it is feasible to identify recurring hands and trace debates as they unfold.
The monthly issues considered here, from the magazine’s early years in the
1860s, did not incorporate readers’ criticisms as a feature as other similar
magazines did. Yet they rest on a sense of active debate, within and around
the topics covered by articles.
The Literary Bond was issued monthly between October and April, pre-
serving the usual break over the summer months. According to Weiss’s
study of the Free Anderston Church’s society, there were around twenty
regular attendees at the society meetings in the early decades of its existence
and around fifty members in total.40 Anderston was a working-class area in
the city’s West End, largely containing workshops, factories, and tenement
housing. Located near the Clyde, it was associated first with the weaving
industry and then, by the mid-nineteenth century, with the Clydeside ship-
building and other industries. After the University of Glasgow moved to
the West End in 1870, the Free Anderston Church moved to what became
University Avenue, in a smarter area of town near the relatively new Kel­
vingrove Park. Both the society and the church were therefore located in a
part of Glasgow that was (in our current terms) newly gentrified, but the
name of the society linked it to a part of the city in which churches and the
university regularly conducted missions with the poor.
It is likely that these society members, like others across Britain, were
aspirational young men who might be located somewhere between the
working and middle class. Literary Bond authors tended to distance
themselves from the speech, culture, and problems of those represented
as Glasgow’s poor, yet they also identified with the interests of “Labour,”
supporting the extension of the franchise (to all men at least) and argu-
ing against the divisions between rich and poor.41 In common with other
societies, they saw themselves as engaged with both local and global con-
cerns. So while many articles refer to Glaswegian and Scottish locations,
history, and literature, others are enmeshed in national and international
affairs—perhaps most notably in a December 1864 article on Natal that
 Kirstie Blair, Michael Sanders, and Lauren Weiss 477

was supplied by “a former esteemed member . . . now a member for a Rus-
tic Society rejoicing in the title of ‘the Presbyterian Literary Association in
Durban.’”42
As in each issue from this period, readers of the November 1864 num-
ber first encountered a beautifully illustrated title page featuring seasonally
appropriate flowers, fruit, or pastoral scenes and then the editorial. One of
the most important features of the Literary Bond in the 1860s was its witty
and engaged editorial voice, as the editor reflected on the current state
of the magazine and the society in relation to previous issues and either
praised or condemned members for their contributions. In this particular
issue, the Literary Bond was healthy: “There can be no doubt,” the editor
notes, “that for diversity of matter and style we may on this occasion com-
pare favourably with any of the ‘monthlies.’”43 The term “monthlies” is
significant: magazines such as Good Words, Blackwood’s, and other high-
status monthly periodicals were mentioned by contributors and formed a
model for the Literary Bond. It was emphatically not to be associated with
the new popular newspaper or cheap illustrated press: in a later critique
of a poem that appeared in the November 1864 issue, the writer’s chief
insult is that the poem reminds him of the verse that appears in “ha-penny
’lustrateds” or “country newspapers.”44 Like Blackwood’s, then, the Liter-
ary Bond aimed to cultivate an urbane, educated journalistic style that was
amused, cynical, and detached.
This style was a vital part of the magazine’s improving mission: it set an
aspirational tone, and it indicated which parts of Victorian periodical cul-
ture were considered important for those interested in self-improvement.
This is evident in the first essay of this number, “More Copy Wanted!,”
which offers a humorous survey of the rise of the newspaper and maga-
zine press: “Have we not a deluge of Articles already constantly before
us. Articles in Quarterlies—in Monthlies—in Weeklies—in Dailies, even
our Morning and Afternoon articles—is not even the rest of the Sabbath
invaded by the Articles.”45 This may contain a pun on the Thirty-Nine
Articles of the Church of England, which the Free Church soundly rejected,
and it certainly plays up the irony of producing an article while lament-
ing the prevalence of article reading. It both criticizes and implicitly cele­
brates the rise of the new popular press. As in many similar magazines, the
editor and producers of the Literary Bond seemingly aspired to make it
from manuscript to print: “We hope that one day our Society will be rich
enough, and some of our articles be deemed to be of sufficient merit, to
warrant their being put into the more permanent form of Letterpress.”46
“More Copy Wanted!” also meets the request of the editor from the first
issue of the 1864–65 session, in which he complained about the “descrip-
tive mania” that had overtaken the magazine (largely because writers were
producing essays on their summer travels) and asked authors to instead
478 Victorian Periodicals Review 54:3 Fall 2021
“favor us with . . . remarks upon some of the stirring questions and events
of the day.”47 He suggested:

Surely “the Literary Bond” has not been an uninterested observer of the move-
ments taking place in the political world. What thinks he of the action—or
rather inaction—of this country in connection with the Danish war? What of
the doctrine recently pro-claimed in high quarters that the emperor has given
liberty to France? Or what of the Franco-Italian treaty? Has he read the chief
speeches at the late meetings of the British Association and the Social Science
Congress? And does he think it too late a time of day to discuss the ecclesi-
astical proceedings of the month of May? Has he been reading no books, old
or new, on which a short critique could be offered? Has his Muse entirely
forsaken him; or is she but temporarily prolonging her stay on the banks of
some Highland loch or Lowland stream, on Alpine height or Rhenish valley,
drinking in the inspiration of the scene yet to be immortalized by his pen?48

This list emphasizes the kind of content that the editor thinks appropri-
ate for a good magazine. It is remarkable how immediately the contrib-
utors responded to this plea for contemporaneity. The November issue
contained three articles on controversial and topical subjects: “Geology
and the Bible” and “Gladstone and Radicalism,” discussed below, and
“Modern Spirits” (a sceptical piece on spiritualism). It also included two
essays that—typical of the mutual improvement genre—reflected on the
need for friendship and the value of thinking about others (“Selfishness”)
and the drive to be energetic and useful (“Energy”). Its only descriptive
travel piece, “The Great Eastern,” is topical in that it describes visiting the
world’s largest steamship, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, which
in 1864 was just being repurposed to lay the Atlantic cable. The November
number meets the editor’s complaint about the lack of poetry in the pre-
ceding issue through a long poem, “The Parting,” and it contains only one
further descriptive article on Scottish life and customs, a historical account
of eighteenth-century tinker Billy Marshall. Even these two contributions
might be said to be topical, in that “A Galloway Tinker” emphasizes the
resourcefulness of the poor and their contribution to Scottish identity and
culture, and “The Parting” is about two lovers separated by emigration.
An energetic interest in intellectual development, as recommended
in “Energy,” is most evident in this particular issue in “Gladstone and
Radicalism” and “Geology and the Bible,” two essays that show us how
such magazine pieces engaged society members with highly topical and
contentious debates. Gladstone, who was then chancellor of the exche-
quer, had made a widely reported speech in support of the extension of
the franchise in Parliament in May 1864. The author of “Gladstone and
 Kirstie Blair, Michael Sanders, and Lauren Weiss 479

Radicalism” passionately supports Gladstone’s argument that the onus

is on the (Tory) opposition to demonstrate why the majority of working
men should not have the franchise, given that it is an undeniable “radical
truth” that all mentally able men should have a vote: “The supporters of
the present system of suffrage rarely if ever venture to discuss its merits;
contenting themselves with misrepresenting their opponents and vilifying
their motives—but when they do the basis on which they rest their flimsy
superstructure is expediency. They sedulously ignore the justice. There is
an injustice so palpable in the very idea of asking a man to obey laws,
which he has neither the honor of making, or mending.”49 Because Glad-
stone’s speech was delivered in mid-May 1864 and there were no issues of
the Literary Bond between May and September, this is the second issue for
which members could have produced an essay on Gladstone’s ideas. There
is no editorial or other response to “Gladstone and Radicalism” in later
issues, though the question of reform arises again in a February 1865 essay
on “Labour and Labourers,” and again the writer is supportive: “Of late
we have heard much about Reform and the extension of the franchise—
Well let the franchise be extended—and let the distinction between Rich
and Poor—be made one less.”50 Society members supported radicalism in
the broad sense, and some at least were evidently very pro-reform.
There was far less consensus about “Geology and the Bible.” Though
Free Church Presbyterianism enabled debate on biblical and religious mat-
ters more than other denominations because it emphasized independence
of interpretation, this essay evidently caused some concern. Unusually, the
editor specifically critiqued it in his introductory remarks, challenging the
author’s claim that the world was created not in six days but “in six periods
of incalculable length” as being “a comparatively old conjecture magnified
into a new fact.”51 The underlining indicates some agitation. Clearly this
piece was felt to be more controversial than was acceptable for a society
linked to a church and likely overseen by the minister. “Geology and the
Bible” is indeed, relatively speaking, at the cutting edge of 1860s debate. It
compares contemporary scientists to Galileo and Copernicus, attempting
to disseminate new truths to those who “hold on literally and dogmatically
to the scripture’s account of the matter in dispute,” and with a rhetorical
flourish, it states that scientific truth “cannot be buried or extinguished, it
forces its way against every opposition—the anathema of the church and
the deep-rooted prejudice of ignorant minds.”52 This is strong language.
The author goes on to highlight the issues that “Professor Darwin”—the
only named Victorian scientist in the article—and geologists have raised:
“The creation of the material world and the lower animals has been dealt
with and to a certain extent disposed of, and now Geologists step forward
and say that man must have been created at a period far anterior to the
480 Victorian Periodicals Review 54:3 Fall 2021
6000 years ago commonly received as the period of the creation of Adam
or that Adam was not the first man, that there must have existed a race
of beings long before him.”53 The phrase “to a certain extent” is doing
considerable work here since many Victorians would certainly not have
considered geological and scientific theories of creation as accepted facts.
The author notes that the new theory of the descent of man is a “grave
question” that “runs in direct opposition to the bible,” but he argues that
all can be resolved by taking the biblical account of creation less literally:
“We are not told by what process this was accomplished, how long it occu-
pied, nor whether it was all at once or by degrees; nay after all there may
be some truth in Professor Darwin’s theory of the origin of species, and if
man did not originally spring from an oyster he may have been some thing
else before he was man. ‘The dust of the earth’ is a wide term and does not
always mean the ground we tread on.”54 Here the author even ventures
into his own tentative biblical interpretation, and he winds up his essay
with the bold claim that geology might, after all, not contradict but explain
“the dark passages in scripture.”55
It is not surprising that mutual improvement societies were discussing
Darwin and Darwinism in November 1864, since controversy was raging
over the presentation of the Royal Society’s highest honour, the Copley
Medal, to Darwin (it was awarded on November 30). There are two more
essays concerned with Darwin in the January 1865 issue (possibly respon-
dents to “Geology and the Bible” lacked enough time to produce some-
thing for the December 1864 issue). Both essays acknowledge the same
debates in contemporary science, and to some extent accept their conclu-
sions, while questioning their ultimate validity. Evidently debates on con-
temporary science were rife within this society, at least in these particular
years, and caused more dissent among this constituency of young men than
any other topic, including party politics.
These examples show that improvement involved an awareness of and
willingness to engage with controversial topics and that society-sponsored
magazines provided a venue for debate. Moreover, they provide evidence
about the reading patterns of young men who were not affluent, though
unlikely to consider themselves poor. In the first four years of the 1860s,
for instance, the Literary Bond editor and readers assume that Gladstone’s
and Darwin’s ideas are familiar; that everyone knows Tennyson, Dickens,
Carlyle, and Ruskin and is likely to be interested in their latest publica-
tions; and that working-class author and editor Hugh Miller is a house-
hold name and celebrity. Other authors producing well-known works at
this time (such as George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, Robert Browning, John
Tyndall, and T. H. Huxley) do not feature.
 Kirstie Blair, Michael Sanders, and Lauren Weiss 481

Mutual improvement and literary society magazine production was

part of an international trend for founding local, internally motivated
magazines, predominantly though not always in manuscript format. These
magazines fostered a communal identity formed around a combination of
religion, class, gender, and locale. Within these communities, such maga-
zines give an extraordinarily rich sense of live debate and discussion and
reveal where agreements or disagreements lay. Mutual improvement soci-
ety magazines have not been identified as a significant part of periodical
culture, yet the recovery of this archive by Weiss gives scope for scholars
to explore both what these magazines contribute to our understanding
of Victorian periodicals and how they represent contemporary opinions.
They vividly underscore Brian Maidment’s claim that “print culture was
central to the wider aspirations of emergent artisans and workmen” and
that periodicals in particular “formed a central site for the negotiation of
the politics of the march of intellect.”56 These productions were created by
a community of critical readers and writers who saw their participation as
central to self- and mutual improvement, and they served to hone society
members’ sense of themselves as contributors to contemporary literary and
periodical cultures.
University of Strathclyde
University of Manchester

NOTES

We would like to thank the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals for
funding assistance through the Curran Fellowship and their generous sup-
port through their Field Development Grant, which allowed us to develop
the Literary Bonds Project (http://www.literarybonds.org). We would also
like to thank Manchester Libraries and Archives for permission to quote
from the Odds and Ends magazine. Thanks also to the very helpful com-
ments of the peer reviewers for this article.
1. Smiles, Self-Help, ii, iii.
2. For example, see Rudy, “Floating Worlds,” on shipboard magazines, and
Alexander, “Playful ‘Assumption,’” on children’s magazines.
3. See the Literary Bonds website, https://www.literarybonds.org. Subsequent
archival research continues to add to this resource, and its findings contrib-
ute to and inform the forthcoming database Piston, Pen & Press.
4. Additional research conducted as part of the Piston, Pen & Press project
(https://www.pistonpenandpress.org), whose remit includes industrial
mutual improvement groups, has uncovered evidence for seventeen volun-
tary improving groups that produced magazines by and for their members.
482 Victorian Periodicals Review 54:3 Fall 2021
5. In 2016, King, Easley, and Morton published The Routledge Handbook
to Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals and Newspapers, which was
followed up in 2017 by a companion book entitled Researching the
Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press: Case Studies. Both of these vol-
umes provide important new resources for the study of the field. Among
the resources that act as “maps of the field by directing scholars to paper
periodicals and archives,” the editors highlight The Waterloo Directory of
English Periodicals and Newspapers, 1800–1900 as “that essential map of
the nineteenth-century British press” (King, Easley, and Morton, Routledge
Handbook, 3, 1). This is particularly true now as series 3 (2009) includes a
list of manuscript publications. The same could also be said of The Water-
loo Directory of Scottish Newspapers and Periodicals, as it offers the most
comprehensive reference guide we have to date. The Scottish directory,
however, is incomplete in relation to mutual improvement society maga-
zines. Brake and Demoor’s Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism
(2009) also currently omits manuscript magazines in its entries.
6. This group continued to produce society magazines until 1962. As this
study has confined itself to magazines produced up until the start of the
First World War, only sixty issues from the St. Paul’s group were included in
this project.
7. For an overview of the nineteenth-century mutual improvement movement
and further information about other studies on literary societies conducted
internationally, see Weiss, “Literary Clubs and Societies.”
8. For work on eighteenth-century book groups, reading circles, and literary
clubs and societies, see Andrews, Literary Nationalism; Clark, British Clubs
and Societies; McElroy, Scotland’s Age of Improvement; and Mee, Convers-
able Worlds. A special issue of the Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies,
“Networks of Improvement,” was devoted to this topic (38 [December
2015]).
9. Glasgow Border Counties’ Literary Society’s Manuscript Magazine 1
(December 1885), 15. No evidence has been found for a residence with
this name in Glasgow during this period. The author here seems to want to
point up his status as a young, single man, thus associating himself with the
majority of the other society members.
10. For more on the Albion Mutual Improvement Union, see Weiss, “Literary
Clubs and Societies,” 57–58.
11. “Magazine night” was a term commonly used by societies to refer to meet-
ings designated for the reading of the magazine pieces submitted by mem-
bers. These could be read aloud by the contributors themselves but more
commonly were read by the editor.
12. Dragon, December 1872, 335.
13. Torch, no. 1 (March 1875), 2.
 Kirstie Blair, Michael Sanders, and Lauren Weiss 483

14. For a more detailed analysis of one group’s use of criticisms within its
maga­zine, see Weiss, “Manuscript Magazines.”
15. Aemulus 3 (1878).
16. This issue has been digitised and is available on the Literary Bonds website
at http://www.literarybonds.org/digitised-magazine.
17. St. Stephen’s Literary Society Magazine, 1883–84, 28.
18. Preface to Essayist: A MS Magazine, 1883, no. 2. Produced by the Pollok-
shields Free Church Literary Institute.
19. “Suggestions,” PLAC Magazine of Literature and Art, 1890, 106.
20. Preface to Sandyford Church Literary Association Magazine, December
1883.
21. Lees, Bennett Street Sunday School, 3, 49–51.
22. Ibid., 32. Indeed, Lees notes that between 1817 and 1824 the laity fought
against attempts by a newly appointed minister to assume overall direction
of the school (32–37).
23. Ibid., 32–34, 44.
24. Swindells, Manchester Streets and Manchester Men, 206.
25. Ibid., 211.
26. John Nesbitt’s son would later become conductor of the Manchester
Orpheus Musical Society. Swindells, Manchester Streets and Manchester
Men, 214.
27. For a brief overview of Rowley’s work with the Ancoats Brotherhood, see
Waters, British Socialists, 78–80.
28. Odds and Ends 25 (1879), 123–24.
29. Ibid., 347.
30. Odds and Ends 36 (1890), 145.
31. Bayne, “Hoyle, William.”
32. Lees, Bennett Street Sunday School, 128.
33. Odds and Ends 25 (1879), 151.
34. Odds and Ends 42 (1896), 264.
35. Odds and Ends 13 (1867), 396.
36. Odds and Ends 14 (1868), 365.
37. Odds and Ends 15 (1869), 295.
38. Odds and Ends 16 (1870), 384.
39. Odds and Ends 17 (1871), 281–82.
40. See Weiss, “Literary Clubs and Societies,” and the entry for this society on
Glasgow’s Literary Bonds, www.glasgowsliterarybonds.org.
41. See, for example, “Labour and Labourers,” Literary Bond 4, no. 5 (Febru-
ary 1865).
42. Editorial, Literary Bond 4, no. 3 (December 1864).
43. Editorial, Literary Bond 4, no. 2 (November 1864).
44. Review of “The Parting,” Literary Bond 4, no. 6 (March 1865).
484 Victorian Periodicals Review 54:3 Fall 2021
45. “More Copy Wanted!,” Literary Bond 4, no. 2 (November 1864).
46. Editorial, Literary Bond 2, no. 2 (October 1862).
47. Editorial, Literary Bond 4, no. 1 (October 1864).
48. Ibid.
49. “Gladstone and Radicalism,” Literary Bond 4, no. 2 (November 1864).
50. “Labour and Labourers,” Literary Bond 4, no. 5 (February 1865).
51. Editorial, Literary Bond 4, no. 2 (November 1864).
52. “Geology and the Bible,” Literary Bond 4, no. 2 (November 1864).
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Maidment, Comedy, Caricature and the Social Order, 198, 204.

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