''England and America Against the World'': Empire and the USA in Edwin J. Brett's Boys of England, 1866-99

Recent decades have witnessed a sharp increase in interest over how the possession of an empire impacted upon the society and culture of Britain itself. Boys' periodical literature has been acknowledged as one of the cultural forms upon which the effects of imperialism were most evident. Consequently, the British empire has become the single most developed theme of study in the historiography of Victorian boys' periodicals. Within this avenue of enquiry, debate has lately begun to emerge over the way one paper in particular, Boys of England, portrayed the empire.

Boys of England was the leading boys' periodical of the nineteenth century. It was issued weekly from 1866 to 1899 by publisher and former Chartist Edwin J. Brett, initially from the Fleet Street offices of the Newsagents' Publishing Company, and later from Brett's own 'Boys of England Office'. It was the first boys' periodical of its kind. It boasted a heady mix of exciting fiction, informative non-fiction, vivid illustrations, and free gifts and competitions, all delivered with refreshing conviviality. The paper was large, and a full 16 pages long, yet cost only one penny. It proved enormously popular, chiefly amongst working-class boys. Fellow publisher John Allingham later recalled that "when [Boys of England] first made its appearance in 1866, it went with such a rush that it was difficult for newsagents to get their supplies."¹ Within a few short weeks of its debut Boys of England had achieved a weekly sale of 150,000. This increased to a remarkable 250,000 during the 1870s. The paper began a publishing revolution. Hundreds of periodicals imitating it were issued by rival publishers over the following decades, although none matched its success.

Traditionally, scholarly opinion has not deemed empire to have been a particularly significant factor within Boys of England, nor within most boys' papers published in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s. Historians, such as Patrick Dunae and John Springhall, have argued that for these periodicals empire was "simply a bizarre backdrop for . . . quixotic escapades" and "never really more than a colourful backcloth to . . . tales of ethnocentric adventure."² The exception to this rule was The Boy's Own Paper, launched by the Religious Tract Society in 1879, whose authors and readers embraced empire from the outset. It was not until the 1890s that publishers, most notably Alfred Harmsworth, began to launch a glut of periodicals preoccupied with empire. They offered wild adventure, staunch patriotism and strong racism, timed to exploit growing popular enthusiasm for imperialism, and attracted a large sale amongst eager boys. In the wake of these new periodicals the popularity of Boys of England began to wane, and soon the paper was discontinued.

However, recent studies, particularly Kelly Boyd's Manliness and the Boys Story Paper: a Cultural History, 1855-1940 (2003), have begun to challenge some of these established ideas. Dedicating more attention to periodicals of the type published by Brett, Boyd argues that Boys of England's attitude towards imperialism was actually quite complex. Far from trivialising empire, "publishers like Edwin J. Brett celebrated empire with characters who roamed the globe carrying British ideas and arrogance in their baggage."³ The unrestricted wandering of these characters, Boyd claims, reflected Britain's favour for free trade imperialism.

Notwithstanding recent reappraisals of Brett's output, the historiography of boys' periodical literature has yet to recognise the true nature, and depth, of the relationship between Boys of England, the British empire and the wider world. Although Boys of England was less preoccupied with empire than many of its rivals, it was more sensitive to the contemporary spirit of imperialism than has hitherto been acknowledged; furthermore, its relative inattentiveness towards empire played only a small part in its demise.

Moreover, it appears that empire has proved too constraining a concept for historians of boys' papers. In the wider historiography of the British empire two concepts are becoming increasingly important: the "British world" and the "Anglo world." Each offers an alternative to traditional interpretations of the composition and workings of the British empire...