Why The Spectator is the world's oldest weekly magazine (2024)

Founded in 1828, The Spectatorhas been proud to describeitself as ‘the oldest continuously-published weekly in the English language’. But this is rather modest, for it is both the oldest weekly magazine in the world, and the oldest general-interest magazine continuously in print. Yes, the internet is full of claims and counter-claims in this most competitive of fields, but the facts prove to be unambiguous.

First things first. The oldest cultural and literary magazine that is still on the go is the Serbian monthly Letopis Matice srpske,which first appeared in 1825, three years before The Spectator. However, this magazine has had a number of breaks in publication: it didn’t appear in 1835-6, 1849 and 1942-5, a total of some six years. On three other occasions publication was significantly held up: all volumes for 1867-70 appeared in 1871, for 1877-8 in 1879, and for 1915-20 in 1921. It has therefore been printed (variously as Serbske letopisi, Srbskij letopis, Novij serbskij letopis, and Letopis Matice srpske) in 187 years, two fewer than The Spectator.

What, then, of The Scots Magazine, which proclaims itself not just ‘the oldest popular periodical’ but also ‘the oldest magazine in the world’? It is nothing of the sort. Although the original magazine was founded in the venerable year of 1739, it disappeared two centuries ago. After merging with the Edinburgh Magazine, or Literary Miscellany in 1804, and adopting that name in 1817, it collapsed in 1826 – coincidentally the year in which Robert Rintoul, founder of the Spectator, headed from Scotland to London to further his journalistic career. The title was not resurrected for sixty years: in 1887 The Scottish Church (founded two years earlier) changed its name to The Scots’ Magazine. Yet, far from this being a continuation of its namesake, it was a simple rebranding: as its editor put it, ‘nomen non animum mutamus’ (we change our name but not our spirit).