Penny Illustrated Paper

The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times was a cheap (1d.) illustrated London weekly newspaper that ran from 1861 to 1913.

Illustrated weekly newspapers had been pioneered by the Illustrated London News (published from 1842, costing fivepence): its imitators included the Pictorial Times (1843–48), and – after the 1855 repeal of the Stamp Act – the Illustrated Times.

With the abolition of paper duty in 1861 it was possible to envisage an even cheaper mass-circulation illustrated weekly.

The first issue, 12 October 1861, announced itself confidently under the masthead "PENNY ILLUSTRATED PAPER: With All the News of the Week": "A new era opens upon the people. In producing a paper for the million, let us plainly say, we want be esteemed the friend of the people ... A new era is opened to us by the Repeal of the Paper Duties"[1]

The paper was apparently initially the charge of Ebenezer Farrington,[2] but the wife and sons of the recently deceased Herbert Ingram, proprietors of the Illustrated London News, also seem to have been behind the venture.^[1]

A well-known work by Harry B. Neilson, Mr Fox's Hunt Breakfast on Xmas Day, was created for issuing as a chromolithograph with the Christmas edition of the Penny Illustrated Paper in December 1897.^[2]

The weekly newspaper ceased publication in 1913.

• Searchable online text, 1861–1913 at British Newspapers

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