University of Virginia Library

While there has never been anything like a complete bibliography of Leigh Hunt's journalism, scholars have often attempted to identify the periodicals to which he contributed with some regularity. However, it does not appear that any of Hunt's bibliographers has noticed a significant group of signed essays in the early numbers of the Guide, a cheap weekly newspaper that ran from 22 April 1837 to 1 April 1838. Only one complete run of this threepenny radical weekly is known to exist,[1] but marked file copies of the first nine numbers are preserved—along with various letters, documents, and accounts relating to the Guide—among the papers of its first editor, Henry Cole, in the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum.[2]

In his autobiographical Fifty Years of Public Work, Cole devotes only two sentences to his brief editorship and part ownership of the Guide, treating it mainly as a learning experience that he subsequently turned to good account in the campaign for uniform penny postage:

One would never guess from this account that the first nine numbers of the Guide, edited by Cole, contained writings by John Stuart Mill and Thomas Love Peacock as well as regular contributions by Leigh Hunt.

The idea for the Guide seems to have originated with Charles Buller and Henry Cole in the spring of 1837, when Cole was temporarily unemployed as a result of his controversy with the Record Commission. On 9 March, Cole noted in his journal that he “called at Buller's and remained with him for two hours discussing the feasibility of starting a 2nd newspaper.”[4] The refer-

ence to “a 2nd newspaper” suggests that the project may have been related in some way to an earlier plan by Sir William Molesworth, John Arthur Roebuck, and John Temple Leader to start a radical Sunday paper in March 1836.[5] Having obtained Buller's approval of the scheme, Cole spent the next six weeks studying the business of newspaper publishing as well as soliciting potential investors and contributors. The total capital raised for the venture was £425: Buller provided £100, while Molesworth and Leader each provided £50, as did both Cole and his brother Frederick Lindsay Cole; Edwin Chadwick, John H. Elliott, Thomas Duffus Hardy, William Edward Hickson, and Henry Hooper, the paper's publisher, each put in £25.[6]

The new paper was announced in two prospectuses, the larger of which, printed in the same format as the first two numbers, describes the Guide as “A New Weekly Newspaper, giving the Latest Intelligence of Public Events, and full Information upon all subjects of General Interest.” The smaller prospectus, on a single octavo sheet, lists the following heads under which the contents are to be arranged: Political Guide, Parliamentary Guide, Foreign Guide, Colonial Guide, Gossip, Amusement Guide, Literary Guide, Scientific Guide, Judicial Guide, Commercial and Housekeeper's Guide, Miscellany, Sunday Guide, and Births, Marriages, and Deaths. Although such headings were used fairly regularly in the paper, the actual arrangement proved more flexible than this listing might suggest. The one political issue with which the prospectuses clearly identified the paper was the campaign to eliminate the newspaper tax. The price of each eight-page issue was to be 3d., of which 1d. was for the tax, 1d. for distribution, and 1d. for editorial and printing costs.[7] Financially this was a bold experiment at a time when most weekly papers cost 6d.

Despite the low price and the generally high quality of the writing, sales of the Guide appear to have disappointed expectations from the start, prompting early changes in both the format and the day of publication. Beginning with No. 3 the format was expanded from approximately 10 inches by 12½ inches with three columns per page to approximately 14 inches by 20 inches with five columns per page, and beginning with No. 5 the day of publication was changed from Saturday to Sunday. Although the circulation more or less doubled within the first eight weeks, it did not increase fast enough to make the paper a paying proposition before the initial capital was exhausted. On 15 June, Cole recorded in his journal that the Guide was sold for £100—a sum that was insufficient to clear the paper's debts.[8] No. 9, published on 18 June, was the last to appear under Cole's editorship. Two days later he noted in his journal that he was “introduced to the new pro-

prietor of the Guide who very little predisposed me to cooperate in its management.” On 7 July 1837, Thomas Carlyle explained in a letter to his brother John in Italy: “The Guide was a Paper set up by Buller and some of that set, in which Hunt was engaged as a writer: it was spreading and succeeding but did not yet pay, and their money was done; so they sold it, and a quite new management has it.”[9] Although the Guide continued for another nine months under its new owners, the later issues are devoid of literary interest.

Cole's annotated copies of the Guide identify the authorship of many articles in the first nine numbers. As Cole's political mentor and the paper's principal investor, Charles Buller not only wielded considerable editorial influence but also wrote most of the important political articles as well as a weekly “Journal of a Liberal M.P.” Other contributors included Edwin Chadwick, Joseph Clayton, John H. Elliott, Joseph Henry Garnier, Horace Grant, Thomas Duffus Hardy, William Hardy, William Edward Hickson, Richard Hengist Horne, John Mitchell Kemble, and John Robertson. John Stuart Mill produced one short article for the Guide and allowed Cole to print an extract from a longer article prior to its appearance in the London and Westminster Review. [10] Cole himself wrote a good many articles and obtained Thomas Love Peacock's permission to publish the poems that were later privately printed as Paper Money Lyrics, and Other Poems (1837).[11] But whereas Peacock's poems appeared anonymously, Leigh Hunt's name was prominently attached to his eight weekly essays.

Leigh Hunt's engagement to write for the Guide was apparently arranged through the paper's printer, Charles Reynell, of 26 Little Pulteney Street, whose family was connected by marriage to Hunt's. On 17 April 1837, five days before the publication of the first number of the Guide, Cole wrote in his journal: “Met Leigh Hunt by appt at Reynells—He agreed to write weekly for £2.”[12] Hunt's essays were obviously an important feature of the new paper, but they were by no means his only contributions. Cole's manuscript note at the head of Hunt's first essay indicates that he was paid a total of £2.5.3 for No. 1—£2.2.0 for the essay plus 3.3 for a “Para[graph].” Although Cole did not mark Hunt's paragraph in No. 1, his notes in subsequent issues serve to identify seven of Hunt's unsigned contributions in Nos. 3-7, four of which relate to his friend Carlyle's current series of lectures on German literature.[13] There is also a short poem signed with Hunt's initials in No. 3.

Hunt's involvement with the new paper was not limited to his original writing. As a veteran editor, he apparently gave Cole or Reynell some advice that caused problems on 20 April, when Cole noted in his journal that he

returned home late becuase he was “engaged in remedying the mistakes [altered from miscalculation] of Mr Hunt abt paper.” When the size of the Guide was increased with the third number, Cole may have turned to Hunt for further assistance. An unpublished letter from Hunt to Cole, dated from Reynell's on 7 June, reveals that he had been supplying extracts for the paper's “chat” and that he had been receiving the Morning Herald for that purpose: