Category:Cassell's Family Magazine

From Victorian Literature

Title: Cassell's Family Magazine

Editor: John Cassell; Wilkie Collins (1870 - 1874); George M. Fenn (1870); Manville Fenn (1870 - 1874); H.R. Haweis (1869); H.G. Bonavia Hunt (Rev.) 1874 - 1876); Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu; John Lovell (1868 - 1869); Max Pemberton (Sir) 1896 - 1906); William Moy Thomas (1867 - 1868). ^[1]

Publisher: John Cassell (1853); House of Cassell; Cassell Murray; Petter and Galpin (1858); Cassell, Petter and Galpin (1867); Cassell, Petter, Galpin and Co (1883); Cassell and Co Ltd (1897). ^[2]

According to the Waterloo Directory of Victorian Periodicals, Cassell’s Magazine was a popular monthly magazine that ran from December 1853 until December 1930; in that time period, it underwent four changes in the title. Its original title was Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper, which changed to Cassell’s Magazine in 1867, then to Cassell’s Family Magazine in 1874, and finally, Cassell’s Magazine of Fiction in 1897. The magazine’s namesake, John Cassell, was the principle editor of the work until his death in 1865; his publishing company kept the magazine going after his passing with such editors as Wilkie Collins, Joseph Sheridan La Fanu, and Sir Max Pemberton. The magazine specialized in printing “sensational” entertainment pieces, including a serialization of Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim.

The purpose of the journal was mainly to entertain and give common advice to its middle-class readership. Topics of advice range from month-specific gardening tips to simple medical cures and treatments. There is a section about women’s fashions, as well as a section detailing several technological and scientific ideas, experiments, and the successful products from those experiments. As for entertainment, each issue begins with a section from a serialized novel that takes up several pages. Other serialized novels are also included, though they are not given the same space as the opening novel. In addition, there are various poems scattered throughout the issue, as well as songs, detailed illustrations, and short stories.^[3]

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