George Newnes

Sir George Newnes, 1st Baronet (13 March 1851 – 9 June 1910) was a British publisher and editor and a founding figure in popular journalism. Newnes also served as a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for two decades. His company, George Newnes Ltd, was known for such periodicals as Tit-Bits and The Strand Magazine; it continued publishing consumer magazines such as Nova long after his death.

Background and education His father, Thomas Mold Newnes, was a Congregational church minister at the Glenorchy Chapel, Matlock Bath. George Newnes was born in Matlock Bath, Derbyshire, and educated at Silcoates School and then at Shireland Hall, Warwickshire, and the City of London School. and Frank Newnes (born 1876).

Career

In 1867 he entered commerce in the "fancy goods" trade, working in London and Manchester.

Vegetarian Company's Saloon Newnes funded the magazine by opening a vegetarian restaurant in Manchester. as a direct response to the Elementary Education Act 1870 which introduced education for children aged 5–12 and hence produced a new young generation able to read.

The magazine was initially published in Manchester like a mini-encyclopedia, containing extracts from books and other publications, but principally a diverse range of tit-bits of information presented in an easy-to-read format.

The addition of competitions increased the readership of the periodical, and in 1884 Newnes moved publication to London. It paved the way for popular journalism – most significantly, the Daily Mail was founded by Alfred Harmsworth, a contributor to Tit-Bits, and the Daily Express was launched by Arthur Pearson, who worked at Tit-Bits for five years after winning a competition to get a job on the magazine. He paid for the new Putney Library, built in 1899. Around this time he became the main sponsor of the Southern Cross Expedition to Antarctica; part of his contribution was the purchase of a movie camera from Arthur S. Newman, who would later supply similar cameras to Herbert Ponting of Captain Scott's 1910-3 Terra Nova Expedition and John Baptist Lucius Noel, photographer on the 1924 Mount Everest expedition.

Newnes built a large home called Hollerday House in Lynton, North Devon. He played a major part in the development of the twin towns of Lynton and Lynmouth. He built an innovative cliff railway — the Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway — to join the two towns, and also provided the town hall and other amenities.

Newnes was involved in the creation of The Inambari Para-Rubber Estates, Limited and held 100,000 shares valued at £1 each. His son Frank became a director in the company, which exported rubber collected near the Inambari River in Peru.

He was chairman of the board of directors of Commonwealth Oil Corporation, and the abandoned oil shale mining site of Newnes, in Australia, was named after him.

Sir George Newnes died at his Lynton home in June 1910 aged 59, having suffered ill health from diabetes for some time.

After Newnes' death in 1910, his son Frank Newnes succeeded him as president of George Newnes Ltd. Decades after the proprietor's death, George Newnes Ltd (and its imprint C. Arthur Pearson Ltd) continued into the 1960s as one of London's three leading magazine publishers – along with Odhams Press and the Hulton Press – producing a diverse range of titles from Lady's Companion, Woman's Own, Nova, Rave and Flair, to Practical Mechanics and Practical Television.

In 1959, the company was purchased by Odhams, and in 1961, the company became part of the International Publishing Corporation.

Today, books under the Newnes imprint continue to be published by Elsevier.