The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two.
§ 18. The Hour
Why one newspaper succeeds and another fails, even the most experienced journalist will (as already hinted) hesitate to decide. The Constitutional, issued in 1836, had for its editor Laman Blanchard, with Thornton Hunt, afterwards editor of The Daily Telegraph, as his assistant. Thackeray’s Paris Sketch Book is reminiscent of the fact that he was Paris correspondent for the paper, in which his step-father and he had unfortunately invested money; and among its constant contributors were Bulwer Lytton, Douglas Jerrold and Sir William Molesworth. It existed only seven months. Another was The Hour, issued in 1873 with captain Hamber as its editor. Hamber, who had been at Oriel college when lord Robert Cecil, afterwards third marquis of Salisbury, was also at Oxford, served in the Crimean war, and then turned to journalism. During several years, he edited The Standard with signal ability, but, eventually, quarrelled with its proprietor, who desired less independence of official conservative party control. Thereupon, The Hour was started as an ultra-protestant conservative paper, independent of the recognised party leaders. It never found a sufficient public, and, in 1876, Disraeli “heard with a pang that The Hour was no more.”