The Market Expands

During the 1890s, the new populist frameworks that had been established during the previous decade became more stable and widespread. In 1892 The Elector’s Picture Book collected together more than 300 of F.C Gould’s cartoons, foreshadowing how both newspaper cartoons and comic strips of the following century would establish secondary markets through reprinted collections. Following the establishment of Answers in 1888, the 1890s also saw Alfred Harmsworth come to prominence within British publishing, initially through the establishment of a raft of successful periodicals and then, from 1894, through an extension into newspapers. This chapter examines Harmsworth’s reworking, with Kennedy Jones, of the ailing Evening News, which included the widespread adoption of illustration and which helped to further entrench cartoons and entertainment as integral aspects of the evening newspaper market. Finally, it will examine Harmsworth and Jones’ launching of the Daily Mail in 1896, noting that its bifurcated address sought to blend some of the lightness of the evening newspaper market with the staid respectability of the morning newspapers.