With a few such exceptions it was not, it seems, until the ‘fifties that the magazine idea achieved in the juvenile world what ought honestly to be called a firm commercial value ---that is, a good, steady popularity with an average intelligent public. Indeed, one of the first original ventures in this mode failed, in all probability, just because it did not pay close enough regard to the general average, but was above it. It came from the “Felix Summerly” camp in the form of a magazine already mentioned, the Charm. This ran from 1852 to 1854, and contained among much that was solid but not stolid, a very good proportion of imaginative matter, and illustrations by such serious but not crude artists as Wenhert and Harrison Weir. But the time was not quite ripe for it.
The sort of thing The Charm was really intended (by anticipation) to offset was publiccations like The Boys’ and Girls’ Companion for Leisure Hours (No. I, Apirl 4, 1857), edited by John and Mary Bennett. They provided, as they claimed, “tales of interest and moral purpose”, and “pastime that, while it entertains, cannot fail to instruct”. Equally moral, down to its very title, was the youth’s Instructor, which , after a nine months’ run in 1858, was merged in the rather older, far livelier, and much longer-lived Boy’s Own Magazine (1855-74), published by the well-known and almost omniscient Beetons.