On this date in 1881 the first edition of the British magazine Titbits was published. 10 things you might not know about it:
The magazine was founded by George Newnes, who, a couple of months earlier had read a story about a runaway train in the Manchester Evening News. He owned a restaurant at the time and thought stories like this would give his customers something interesting to read while they were eating. ‘Why not start a weekly journal made up of similar pieces from ‘all the most interesting books, periodicals and newspapers in the world’? he thought.
Nobody was prepared to fund the idea, so Newnes put together the Money for a modest print run himself.
On its first day of publication, 5,000 copies of his magazine had been sold. By the turn of the century, it had became the first periodical in Britain to sell over a million copies per issue.
As well as interesting news stories, the magazine also featured short stories and full-length fiction, written by some of the big names in the literary world, including Isaac Asimov, Arthur Conan Doyle and PG Wodehouse.
Virginia Woolf, aged eight, submitted her first article to the paper in 1890. They turned it down.
During the First World War Tit-Bits (the hyphen was dropped in 1973) ran a competition to write a song soldiers could sing at the front. It was won by Ivor Novello with Keep the Home Fires Burning.
Newnes read every issue from cover to cover and removed anything he considered unduly lurid, sensational or equivocal. No doubt he turned in his grave, then, when in 1939, pin-ups replaced advertisements on its front cover.
In Ulysses, James Joyce has his protagonist reading Tit-Bits on the Toilet, and wishing he could publish a story in it. This is one of many mentions the magazine gets in literature. Other authors who mention it include George Orwell (Animal Farm), C. P. Snow (The Affair) Virginia Woolf (Moments of Being) HG Wells (The First Men in the Moon) and P. G. Wodehouse (Not George Washington). It gets a nod in the movies, too. In the final scene of Kind Hearts and Coronets, Arthur Lowe plays a Tit-Bits reporter who asks the Duke of Chalfont to print his memoirs, in which he confesses to mass murder.
The last issue was published on 18 July 1984, and the editor at the time was Paul Hopkins. There had been a merger with another magazine called Reveille, and a wage dispute but what probably saw it off was falling circulation. Titbits was then selling only 200,000 copies per issue.
A word about the word. The first recorded use of the word “titbit” was in 1649, although it was at the time spelled “tyd bit” and was defined as “a speciall morsell reserved to eat at last”.
NEW!!
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
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