Grub Street

The Origins Of The British Press Ruth Herman

Amberley, 288 pages, £20

More than half of men in southeast England were literate by 1800. Ordinary people would often collect newspaper cuttings or scrapbooks relating to their family or area. Newspapers are a valuable resource for a family historian, so it is wise to note that newspapers have a history too, and their own political or moral standpoints.

Ruth Herman starts her history with the Civil War, in which Royalists and Parliamentarians vied in circulating prints of obscene tales about each other. She covers the Restoration and the 18th century, which saw the birth of what we would recognise as a news industry with such publications as the Tory Examiner and the Whig Medley. It was also the start of articles by and

for women, from householdinstruction columns to radical condemnations of “the grand inconvenience of marriage”.

Herman covers government attempts at repression of the press, when journalists were subject to painful and brutal treatment for criticising the powerful. She moves beyond journalists alone, however, and also writes of advertising and the provincial press, both of which are important resources for anyone researching their family history.

Herman has clearly read a vast number of newspapers, and her enthusiasm is apparent throughout. It’s just a shame that a lack of footnotes limits the book’s value to historians.