The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two.
§ 14. The Daily Telegraph
Of those who took a leading part in the production of The Daily Telegraph, the first lord Burnham died while this chapter was passing through the press. To his constant care and unrivalled experience of affairs, the paper has owed much of its success. It was launched in 1855, and, in the course of a few months, passed into the hands of the Levi-Lawson family, who issued it as the first penny newspaper published in London. It was edited by Thornton Hunt, a son of Leigh Hunt, and early obtained celebrity for its enterprise and somewhat flamboyant style. Matthew Arnold scoffed at it; and a grandson of the first proprietor says that, when at Oxford, his tutor admonished him to “try not to write like Sala.” To borrow a simile from the art of painting, the writers who gained reputation for The Daily Telegraph were, of choice, colourists. During many years, among the leading members of its staff was Sir Edwin Arnold, one of the brilliant Oxonians of the newspaper press, who is reported (by J. M. Le Sage) to have said that
Its musical and dramatic criticisms by E. L. Blanchard, Joseph Bennett and Clement Scott were always read by the chief members of the professions affected.
Another morning newspaper established successfully during the century is The Daily Chronicle. Its founder, Edward Lloyd, was already the prosperous owner of Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper. In 1842, intending to compete with The Illustrated London News, he published Lloyd’s Illustrated London Newspaper, unstamped. The authorities intervened, and, in 1843, he rearranged his publication without illustrations, calling it Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper. In this form, it competed with other Sunday publications, such as The News of the World, Reynolds’s Weekly Newspaper, The Weekly Times, The Weekly Dispatch. Of these papers, The Dispatch was long the most prominent. Its owner had been in the front of the fight against the stamp duty; but Lloyd’s Weekly soon became well established, especially under the short editorship of Douglas Jerrold from 1852 to 1857, and, thereafter, under that of his son Blanchard, who had among his coadjutors Hepworth Dixon, better known as editor of The Athenaeum, from 1853 to 1868.
In 1877, Edward Lloyd purchased a daily paper which had been started as The Clerkenwell News, but had expanded its name to The London Daily Chronicle and Clerkenwell News. He reduced the title to The Daily Chronicle, and adopted an independent radical policy. The venture prospered, and has latterly become one of the leading halfpenny morning papers.