Cheap Magazine


The Cheap Magazine, subtitled "The Poor Man's Fireside Companion", was a fourpenny Haddington monthly published from 1813 to 1815 by George Miller (1771–1835), an East Lothian printer. As "one of the first attempts to diffuse a pure and useful literature among the less educated portion of Scotland", this effort foreshadowed later publications such as Chambers's Edinburgh Journal and the Penny Magazine.[1] Yet a cheap price required a large circulation, and Miller's attempt to sustain a large readership without taking any definite religious position ended in financial failure.[2]

  1. ^ Timperley, Charles Henry, A Dictionary of Printers and Printing, 1839, p. 845
  2. ^ Altick, Richard D., The English Common Reader, 2nd ed., 1998, p. 320