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 PartyMember 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.
In 1867 he entered commerce in the "fancy goods" trade, working in London and Manchester.[1][2]
He began his career in publishing in 1881 when he founded Tit-Bits[5] 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.[6]
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. He funded the magazine by opening a vegetarian restaurant in Manchester.[7] The addition of competitions increased the readership of the periodical, and in 1884 Newnes moved publication to London.[1] He began to work with W. T. Stead, with whom he founded the Review of Reviews in 1890.[1]Tit-Bits reached a circulation of 700,000 by the end of the 19th century.[7] 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.[7]
In 1895 he was created a baronet "of Wildcroft, in the parish of Putney, in the county of London; of Hollerday Hill, in the parish of Lynton, and Hesketh House, in the borough of Torquay, both in the county of Devon."[8] 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 provided a silver cup for the Newnes Trophy series of chess matches between Great Britain and the United States, conducted over transatlantic cable from 1896 to 1911.[10]
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.[11]
He was chairman of the board of directors of Commonwealth Oil Corporation,[12] 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.[1] He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his son, Frank Newnes, who had served as MP for Bassetlaw, Nottinghamshire from 1906 to 1910.[1]
In 1891 his publishing business was formed into a company that bore his name, George Newnes Ltd. The company was reconstructed in 1897 with a capital of 1,000,000 pounds, and began the publication of books.[1] In 1896 Newnes founded the book series, The Penny Library of Famous Books.[13]
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.
