The Globe, a London evening newspaper founded by Christopher Blackett in 1803, was a booksellers’ trade journal. It offered more prominent advertising than other daily newspapers and included ministerial communications.
In 1824, The Globe absorbed The Traveller and became The Globe and Traveller.
At the start of its publication run, The Globe was in support of the Whig faction and often featured letters to and from leading Whig politician Lord John Russell. However, in 1866 under the ownership of reactionary Conservative Dudley Docker, The Globe adopted a Conservative stance and presented itself as a literary paper for London’s ‘educated class’. To illustrate this change in tone, one letter writer lamented the downfall of the theatre by writing the following: ‘What we want is to get the educated classes, whose attendance can alone make actors and actresses, to visit the theatre habitually, instead of going once, out of curiosity, to see a new piece, and then leaving the house to the less cultivated folk, the “railway people,” and the rest who are pleased with anything’.
As an advertising platform for booksellers, The Globe voiced concerns over international copyright law. In 1838, the newspaper reported on an on-going debate at the House of Commons regarding upcoming international copyright laws; the newspaper was of the opinion that one solution to this difficult issue would be ‘a limited period of absolute copyright, and then a right to a payment for every subsequent edition, proportioned to the price and the number of copies’. The Globe was generally, and cautiously, in favour of international copyright law but argued both for and against the new law, stating, ‘[we are not] ignorant of the national advantages which a cheap diffusion of literature may produce – but [we do not support or oppose international copyright law] because we can see no sufficient ground for sacrificing the interests of authors on the altar of public convenience. If a man has a property in anything, surely he has in the fruits of his intellect, the products of his imagination’.
In 1921, The Globe merged with the Pall Mall Gazette and became The Pall Mall and Globe.
For this newspaper, we have the following titles in, or planned for, our digital archive:
- 1804–22 The Globe.
- 1822–1921 The Globe and Traveller.
