magazine

Publication brought out periodically, typically containing articles, essays, short stories, reviews, and illustrations. It is thought that the first magazine was Le Journal des savants, published in France in 1665. The first magazine in the UK was a penny weekly, the Athenian Gazette, better known later as the Athenian Mercury (1690–97). This was produced by a London publisher, John Dunton, to resolve ‘all the most Nice and Curious Questions’. The US Reader's Digest, first published in 1922, with editions in many different countries and languages, was the world's best-selling magazine until overtaken by a Soviet journal in the mid-1980s.

The earliest illustrations were wood engravings; the half-tone process was invented in 1882 and photogravure was used commercially from 1895. Printing and paper-manufacturing techniques improved during the 19th century, making larger print runs possible. Advertising began to appear in magazines around 1800; it was an important factor by 1850 and crucial to most magazines' finances by 1880. Specialist magazines for different interests and hobbies, and comic books, appeared in the 20th century.

In the USA, subscriptions account for the majority of magazine sales. In Europe, distribution and sales are largely through newsdealers' shops and stands.

History Among the first magazines in the USA were Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac (1732–57) and the short-lived The American Magazine (1741) and General Magazine (1741). By the 1800s the magazine industry was flourishing. North American Review began in 1815. Around the time of the Civil War, such magazines as Harper's Weekly, Harper's Monthly Magazine, and The Atlantic Monthly were published for the first time. At the beginning of the 1900s The Nation and Illustrated Newspaper began publication, and soon The Ladies' Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post followed. McClure's, Collier's, and Cosmopolitan began as messengers of social reform, attacking government and business policies. The Reader's Digest was founded in 1921, Time in 1923, The New Yorker in 1925, Fortune in 1930, and Life in 1936. The 1930s saw the rise of the photojournalism magazine and the introduction of color printing. The US pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, specializing in crime fiction and science fiction, were breeding grounds for writers. The development of cheap offset litho printing made possible the flourishing of the underground press in much of the Western world in the 1960s, although it was limited by unorthodox distribution methods, such as street sales. Prosecutions and economic recession largely killed the underground press; the main survivor in the USA is the rock-music magazine Rolling Stone (1968).

TV Guide is the best-selling magazine in the USA. The Ladies' Home Journal, first published in the late 1800s, led the way for women's magazines in the USA. With magazines such as McCall's, Women's Day, Ms, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, Vogue, and Family Circle, women's magazines constitute the largest group.

Comic books are usually aimed at children, although in Japan, Latin America, and Europe millions of adults read them. Artistically sophisticated adult comics are produced in the USA and several European countries, notably France. They developed from comic strips in newspapers or, like those of Walt Disney, as spinoffs from animated cartoon films. The first superhero, Superman, created in 1938 by Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster, soon had his own monthly periodical, and others followed; the Marvel Comics group, formed in 1961, was selling 50 million copies a year worldwide by the end of the 1960s and found a cult readership among college students for titles such as Spiderman and The Incredible Hulk.