Anecdotes about Authors, and Artists

by John Timbs

THE FIRST MAGAZINE.

The Gentleman’s Magazine unaccountably passes for the earliest periodical of that description; while, in fact, it was preceded nearly forty years by the Gentleman’s Journal of Motteux, a work much more closely resembling our modern magazines, and from which Sylvanus Urban borrowed part of his title, and part of his motto; while on the first page of the first number of the Gentleman’s Magazine itself, it is stated to contain “more than any book of the kind and price.”