The Oldest Magazine in the World: First Titles, History and Etymology

On Monday 5 January 1665 a twelve-page pamphlet went on sale in Paris: obituaries of famous men, some church history, a few scientific findings and a handful of legal reports. Two months later, in London, a second periodical followed. Anyone asking which is the oldest magazine in the world is really asking which of these early sheets deserves the word, and the honest answer changes with the definition. Readers who only want the quick version should keep four dates in mind: 1663, 1665, 1731 and 1739.

Which is the oldest magazine? Four answers

Four different claims are in circulation, and each is correct for a different question.

The first is the earliest periodical of any kind that resembles a modern magazine. Here the usual candidate is Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen, a German monthly begun in 1663 by the poet and clergyman Johann Rist, who filled it largely with his own verse and thoughts, month by month. The journalist John Morrish has called it the first magazine by modern standards, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica also places it among the earliest. It was a small affair. It ended in 1668, the last six months under Erasmus Finx after Rist died in August 1667.

The second is the earliest learned periodical that still exists. The Journal des sçavans comes first, on 5 January 1665, edited by Denis de Sallo. Philosophical Transactions followed on 6 March 1665, put together by Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society. The French title has had its interruptions (it stopped in 1792, flickered back in 1797 and settled again in 1816). Oldenburg ran the English title as a private venture, and the Royal Society took official control only in 1752. It split into two series in 1887, A for the physical sciences and B for biology, and it has been online since 1997. The English one is generally described as the longest-running scientific journal in continuous publication. Neither is what most people mean by a magazine, and the distinction is taken up in the guide to types of journals.

The third is the first periodical to use the word. That is The Gentleman’s Magazine, which began in London in January 1731.

The fourth is the oldest magazine still in print under a single title. The strongest claim comes from Scotland, where The Scots Magazine dates from 1739. It is a claim, not a settled fact, and the details are further down. A table of the main candidates sits just below.

For a reader who wants one answer: the first magazine in the modern sense is Rist’s monthly, the first magazine by name is Cave’s, and the oldest one you can still buy is The Scots Magazine, with the footnote that it was not always on sale. That is the answer to the question as most people ask it.

Magazine etymology: from storehouse to periodical

The word came from a long way off. The standard account of magazine etymology starts with Arabic makhazin, the plural of makhzan, meaning a storehouse. It reached Italian as magazzino and French as magasin, and by the 1580s it was in English meaning a place where goods are kept, above all military supplies such as gunpowder and arms. A ship’s magazine, an arsenal, a warehouse: nothing printed.

The figurative sense, a storehouse of information, was ready for use when Edward Cave needed a name. Cave, a printer, issued the first number of The Gentleman’s Magazine in January 1731 under the pen name Sylvanus Urban. His idea was a monthly digest of what the London papers and pamphlets had printed, with essays, poems, news and lists of prices bundled in. He called it a magazine because it stored matter from many places. The periodical sense of the word dates from that year, which is why every account of magazine etymology ends up at his desk.

There is a side path worth walking. In 1868 the same word was applied to the cartridge chamber of a repeating rifle, and by 1892 to a case carrying a supply of cartridges. So the rifle and the monthly share a root, and both are, strictly speaking, places where a supply is kept until it is needed. The Gentleman’s contributors, among them the young Samuel Johnson, who wrote up parliamentary debates under the cover name “Debates of the Senate of Magna Lilliputia”, at a time when reporting Parliament was forbidden, would probably have enjoyed the coincidence.

A second word has its own history. Journal is from Late Latin diurnalis, daily, and passed through Old French jornel. In the fifteenth century it meant a book of daily accounts, around 1600 a personal diary, and from 1728 a daily publication. A journal was therefore something kept day by day long before it became something printed.

1. 1580
   The name

   Magazine enters English as a storehouse

   The word arrives in the 1580s from French magasin and Italian magazzino, themselves from Arabic makhazin, the plural of makhzan, a storehouse. It means a place for goods, above all military supplies. Nothing to do with reading yet.

2. 1663
   First

   Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen

   Johann Rist starts a monthly in German, mostly his own verse and reflections, and it runs until 1668. Some historians treat it as the first magazine in the modern sense.

3. 1665
   First

   Journal des sçavans

   Denis de Sallo issues a twelve-page quarto pamphlet in Paris on 5 January: obituaries, church history, science and legal reports. It is generally counted as the first academic journal in Europe and still appears.

4. 1665
   First

   Philosophical Transactions

   Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society, publishes the first issue on 6 March. It is regarded as the longest-running scientific journal in continuous publication.

5. 1691
   Format

   The Athenian Mercury

   John Dunton's twice-weekly London paper invites readers to send in questions by penny post and answers them in print. It is credited with the first advice column.

6. 1693
   Format

   The Ladies' Mercury

   A spin-off from Dunton's circle, often described as the first periodical written for women.

7. 1709
   Format

   The Tatler

   Richard Steele, writing as Isaac Bickerstaff, starts a thrice-weekly sheet of essays on manners on 12 April. It ends on 2 January 1711.

8. 1711
   Format

   The Spectator

   Joseph Addison and Richard Steele launch a daily essay paper on 1 March. The first run reaches 555 issues and stops in December 1712.

9. 1731
   The name

   The Gentleman's Magazine

   Edward Cave, writing as Sylvanus Urban, begins a monthly digest in January. It is the first periodical to call itself a magazine, borrowing the idea of a storehouse of varied matter.

10. 1734
    Landmark

    Lloyd's List

    Started at Lloyd's Coffee House in London as shipping intelligence. The last printed issue, number 60,850, appeared in 2013, and it is now digital only.

11. 1739
    Landmark

    The Scots Magazine

    First issue in 1739. The title claims to be the oldest magazine still in print, a claim complicated by gaps in publication in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

12. 1828
    Landmark

    The Spectator revived

    Robert Stephen Rintoul founds a new weekly under the old title on 6 July. It is widely called the oldest weekly magazine still published, though it is a different paper from the 1711 daily.

13. 1841
    Format

    Punch

    Founded by Henry Mayhew and Ebenezer Landells on 17 July. Its 1843 joke about political drawings helped fix the modern meaning of the word cartoon.

14. 1842
    Format

    The Illustrated London News

    Herbert Ingram's weekly of 14 May runs to 16 pages with 32 wood engravings and sells 26,000 copies at sixpence. It makes pictures the main attraction.

15. 1880
    Format

    Halftone photograph in a newspaper

    The New York Daily Graphic prints a photograph with a full range of tone on 4 March. Halftone screens later let magazines print photographs on the same page as type.

16. 1888
    Landmark

    National Geographic

    Launched as a scholarly publication for the members of the National Geographic Society. Full-page photographs of Tibet in 1905 and a first colour photograph in 1914 turn it into a picture magazine.

17. 1892
    Landmark

    Vogue

    Arthur Turnure founds the title in New York in December. It is now published in many national editions.

18. 1922
    Format

    Reader's Digest

    DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace start a pocket-sized digest of articles from other publications. A UK edition follows in 1938 and ends in 2024.

19. 1923
    Format

    Time

    Briton Hadden and Henry Luce publish the first issue on 3 March, the first weekly news magazine in the United States, built around brevity.

20. 1936
    Format

    Life relaunched as a photo weekly

    Henry Luce buys the name of an 1883 humour magazine and issues a picture magazine on 23 November, with Margaret Bourke-White's photograph of Fort Peck Dam on the cover. The weekly stops on 29 December 1972.

21. 1962
    Landmark

    The Sunday Times Magazine

    The first colour supplement attached to a British newspaper appears on 4 February under editor Mark Boxer, with David Bailey's photograph of Jean Shrimpton and an unpublished Ian Fleming story.

When was the first magazine published? A short history before 1731

When was the first magazine published? If the question means a regularly issued periodical for readers beyond one profession, the answer in most reference works is 1663, with Rist’s monthly in Germany. If it means a periodical with a general public and a lasting format, the answer is nearer 1731. And if the question means any periodical that appears on a schedule and is still going, then 1665 is the earliest, with Paris two months ahead of London.

The Italian Giornale de’ Letterati followed in 1668 in Rome, and by the end of the century learned periodicals existed in several languages. Those early titles were written by scholars for scholars and mostly reviewed books. Subscription and advertising came later.

What happened between 1665 and 1731 is the part of the history that most summaries skip. It happened largely in London’s coffee houses. John Dunton’s Athenian Mercury ran twice weekly from 1691 to 1697 and invited readers to send in questions by penny post, which a society of experts answered in print. It is credited with the first advice column, and Daniel Defoe’s Review took up the format in 1704. Dunton’s circle also produced the Ladies’ Mercury in 1693, often described as the first periodical for women, though it did not last.

Then came the essay papers. Richard Steele, writing as Isaac Bickerstaff, launched The Tatler on 12 April 1709, three times a week, and it ran until 2 January 1711. Two months later, on 1 March 1711, Steele and Joseph Addison began The Spectator, a daily of about 2,500 words an issue. The first run reached 555 numbers and ended in December 1712, with 80 more in 1714. Paid sales were around 3,000 copies, small by any later standard, but Addison reckoned each copy was read by many more in the coffee houses. These papers were not magazines by name, yet they fixed a voice: an invented observer, light on politics, aimed at the middle classes and at women. Every lifestyle title since owes them something.

Why the definition decides the answer

Four tests keep turning up, and a title that passes one often fails another.

The first test is regularity: does it appear on a schedule? Rist’s monthly and the 1665 journals pass. The second is audience: is it for the general reader or only for members of a trade or a learned circle? The 1665 titles fail, The Spectator of 1711 passes. The third is the name: does the title itself say magazine? Only Cave’s, from 1731, begins the line. The fourth is continuity, and this is the one that sinks most age claims, because a title can be sold, merged, suspended or revived, and still print the old date under its nameplate.

Apply them in order and the list thins fast. When was the first magazine published, then, in the sense a newsagent would recognise? On balance 1731, if you accept the name and the general audience as the two tests that matter; 1663, if you accept regularity alone. Readers who prefer the earlier date are not wrong, but the 1663 monthly had no successors of its own and no circulation to speak of, which is a fair reason to treat it as a precedent and not as the start of a trade.

The Gentleman’s Magazine and the case for 1731

Cave’s monthly set the pattern that later magazines used. It was general-interest, it gathered material from elsewhere and it came out on a schedule that readers learned to expect. Its pages included commodity prices and Latin verse in the same issue. It ran in more or less its original form into the early twentieth century, ceasing general publication in 1907, with a few issues surviving to 1922.

If you want the beginning of the magazine as a commercial product, this is the strongest choice. Rist’s monthly was a personal venture and the Paris and London journals were tied to learned circles, while Cave’s was an enterprise with a printer behind it, a pen name for a brand and a rival in The London Magazine, which followed in 1732. The word spread because the format was profitable. Within a few years the term was applied to anything that bundled varied matter.

The oldest magazine still in print: Scots, Spectator and a Franklin story

The Scots Magazine was first issued in 1739, with an issue dated 9 February, and it states that it is the oldest magazine in the world still in publication. The record complicates that. It was withdrawn by 1826 after sales fell against the literary reviews, and attempts to revive it in 1828 and 1832 failed. It came back in December 1887, was withdrawn again in 1893 and appeared in 1922 to 1924 as The Scottish Church. The St Andrew’s Society of Glasgow revived it in 1924, and D. C. Thomson has published it without a break since 1927. A strict reader will say that an unbroken run is shorter than the date on the masthead suggests, and a generous one will say that the title, the nameplate and the editorial purpose survived. Both are reasonable; the first is the safer sentence to write.

The Spectator has an easier case, but a different one. It was founded on 6 July 1828 by Robert Stephen Rintoul, who deliberately took the title of Addison and Steele’s earlier paper. It is therefore commonly called the oldest weekly magazine in the world, which is a narrower claim and a better one: weekly, continuous and on sale. It belongs to the same family as the political titles covered in magazines about politics.

Two other candidates tend to appear in these arguments. Lloyd’s List began in 1734 as shipping intelligence from Lloyd’s Coffee House in London, printed daily until its final paper issue, number 60,850, in 2013, and it is now digital only. Whether it counts is a matter of taste, because it was always a trade sheet; its claim to be the oldest continuous publication of its kind is disputed. And The Saturday Evening Post links its history to Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette, though the Post itself first appeared on 4 August 1821, and the Gazette stopped in 1800. Some sources print 1728 as its founding year. Treat any date that belongs to a title’s ancestor, rather than the title, with suspicion.

From wood engraving to the photograph

Early magazines were text. The turn came with pictures. Punch started on 17 July 1841, founded by Henry Mayhew and Ebenezer Landells, and in 1843 it used the architectural word “cartoon” for its satirical drawings; the new meaning stuck. It closed in 1992, was revived in 1996 and ended again in 2002. A year after its launch, Herbert Ingram published the first number of The Illustrated London News on 14 May 1842: 16 pages, 32 wood engravings, 26,000 copies at sixpence, and by the end of the year around 60,000. It switched to photographs from about 1890, shrank to monthly in 1971 and published its last number in 2003.

Photography needed a way to print tone. A photograph with a full tonal range appeared in the New York Daily Graphic on 4 March 1880, using the halftone principle of dots of varying size. That technique, which is still the basis of printed images today, made it possible to put photographs on the same page as type and eventually transformed the picture magazine. National Geographic shows the shift: it began in 1888 as a plain scholarly publication for the members of a society, ran full-page pictures of Tibet from January 1905, had photographs on more than half its pages by 1908 and printed a first colour photograph in 1914. Its history is covered separately.

Fashion went the same way. Vogue was founded in New York in 1892 and is now published in national editions; its covers have their own guide, Vogue magazine, and the covers that defined an era are discussed in famous magazine covers.

Mass circulation, the weekly photo magazine and the Sunday supplement

By the 1920s the question had changed from what a magazine was to how many people read it. Reader’s Digest began in 1922 under DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace, a pocket-sized selection of articles taken from other publications, which is a storehouse in Cave’s sense if ever there was one. Time followed on 3 March 1923, founded by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce as the first weekly news magazine in the United States, with a promise of brevity. In November 1936 Luce bought the name of an 1883 humour magazine and relaunched Life as a picture weekly, with Margaret Bourke-White’s photograph of Fort Peck Dam on the first cover. The weekly ended on 29 December 1972, undone by costs and television.

In Britain the format found another route: the newspaper supplement. The Sunday Times Magazine appeared on 4 February 1962 as the first colour supplement attached to a British newspaper. Mark Boxer edited it. The first issue carried a David Bailey photograph of Jean Shrimpton in a Mary Quant design and an unpublished Ian Fleming story, “The Living Daylights”. Papers and magazines had overlapped before; this made the overlap a weekly habit. Its art director for three decades, Michael Rand, summed up the formula as grit plus glamour: fashion set beside war photography and pop art. Don McCullin and Diane Arbus were among the photographers it ran.

Survival rates in this period were not kind. Reader’s Digest opened a UK edition in 1938 and closed it in April 2024, 86 years later. Life went from a quarter of the American population reading it in its prime to a monthly in 1978 and then to occasional special issues. Age, in other words, is not the same as health, and the oldest magazine is not necessarily the one with most readers.

One more complication: The Economist, founded in September 1843 by James Wilson to campaign against the Corn Laws, still calls itself a newspaper, though almost every reader treats it as a magazine. If you are collecting “oldest” claims, remember that the label a publisher chooses is part of the evidence, not proof.

How the dates were checked

The figures above come from the publications’ own histories where those exist and from reference works where they do not. The Wikipedia article on magazines summarises the main candidates, and Etymonline gives the word history with dates. The first-issue dates of the 1665 journals and of The Gentleman’s Magazine are well documented; the age claims are the part that varies with who is asking. The pages on the Gentleman’s Magazine, the Scots Magazine and the Illustrated London News give the fuller record, and the guide to magazine covers shows how the format changed once the pictures arrived.

The Scots Magazine gives 1739, the record shows the lapses, and one reference work puts the gaps at more than ninety years in total. A claim that survives that arithmetic is a claim about the name, not about the paper.