Cornhill Magazine

Cornhill Magazine
Cornhill Magazine

Issue for January 1862
Editor George Murray Smith
Categories Literary magazine
First issue 1860
Final issue 1975
Country United Kingdom
Language English
John Everett Millais's wife Effie Gray holding a copy of the Cornhill Magazine.

The Cornhill Magazine was a Victorian magazine and literary journal named after Cornhill Street in London.

Cornhill was founded by George Murray Smith in 1860 and was published until 1975. It was a literary journal with a selection of articles on diverse subjects and serialisations of new novels. Smith hoped to gain some of the same readership enjoyed by All the Year Round, a similar magazine owned by Charles Dickens, and he employed as editor William Thackeray, Dickens' great literary rival at the time.

The magazine was phenomenally successful, selling many more issues than anyone had thought likely, but within a few years circulation dropped rapidly. It also gained a reputation for rather safe, inoffensive content in the late Victorian era. A mark of the high regard in which it was held was its publication of Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands by Queen Victoria. The stories were often illustrated and it contained works from some of the foremost artists of the time including: George du Maurier, Edwin Landseer, Frederic Leighton, and John Everett Millais. Some of its subsequent editors included G. H. Lewes, Leslie Stephen, Ronald Gorell Barnes, James Payn, Peter Quennell and Leonard Huxley.

Detail from issue for January 1862

Important works serialised in the journal include:


Further reading

Stub icon This article about a literary magazine published in the United Kingdom is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.