10-450: Tit-Bits from all the interesting Books and Newspapers of the World , more commonly known as Tit-Bits and from 1973 as Titbits , was a British weekly magazine founded by George Newnes , a founding figure in popular journalism, on 22 October 1881. In 1886, the magazine's headquarters moved from Manchester to London where it paved the way for popular journalism – most significantly,
20-419: A number of other inexpensive weeklies to ape its format, some short-lived and others, such as Answers becoming major successes in their own right. Within the first six months of its existence, Tit-Bits had inspired twelve imitators, growing to 26 within a year of its debut. Examples of papers said to be imitators include: In All Things Considered by G. K. Chesterton , the author contrasts Tit-Bits with
30-635: The Daily Mail was founded by Alfred Harmsworth , a contributor to Tit-Bits , and the Daily Express was launched by Arthur Pearson , who worked at Tit-Bits for five years after winning a competition to get a job on the magazine. Their first offices were at 12 Burleigh Street, off the Strand. From the outset, the magazine was a mass-circulation commercial publication on cheap newsprint which soon reached sales of between 400,000 and 600,000. By
40-621: The Times , saying: "Let any honest reader... ask himself whether he would really rather be asked in the next two hours to write the front page of The Times , which is full of long leading articles, or the front page of Tit-Bits , which is full of short jokes." Reference to the magazine is also made in James Joyce 's Ulysses , George Orwell 's Animal Farm , C. P. Snow 's The Affair , James Hilton 's Lost Horizon , Virginia Woolf 's Moments of Being , H. G. Wells ' The First Men in
50-659: The Moon and Kipps , A. J. Cronin 's The Stars Look Down and P. G. Wodehouse 's Not George Washington . It has been also mentioned in Stanley Houghton 's play The Dear Departed . Wells also mentioned it in his book Experiment in Autobiography . The magazine is parodied as "Chit Chat" in George Gissing 's New Grub Street . In the closing scene of the film Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949),
60-460: The beginning of 1973, Tit-Bits lost the hyphen from its masthead. In 1979 Reveille (a weekly tabloid with a virtually identical demographic) was merged into Titbits , and the magazine was briefly rebranded as Titbits incorporating Reveille . This, however, was dropped in July 1981. Following a wage dispute at owner IPC Magazines , publication ceased on 9 June 1984 and its closure was announced at
70-469: The end of June. At the time, Titbits was selling only 200,000 copies per issue. A final issue was published on 18 July 1984 under its last editor Paul Hopkins. It was taken over by Associated Newspapers ' Weekend . At the time, the Financial Times described Titbits as "the 103-year-old progenitor of Britain's popular press". Weekend itself closed in 1989. The success of Tit-Bits inspired
80-723: The paper in 1890, at the age of eight, but it was turned down. The first humorous article by P. G. Wodehouse , "Men Who Missed Their Own Weddings", appeared in Tit-Bits in November 1900. During the First World War Ivor Novello won a Titbits competition to write a song soldiers could sing at the front: he penned Keep the Home Fires Burning . Pin-ups appeared on the magazine's covers from 1939, and by 1955, circulation peaked at 1,150,000. At
90-561: The protagonist Louis Mazzini ( Dennis Price ) is approached by a journalist ( Arthur Lowe ) from Tit-Bits . The magazine was mistakenly referenced alongside Playboy and The Sun 's Page 3 in Tom Robinson 's 1978 song " Glad to Be Gay ", as Robinson had misinterpreted the magazine's title and assumed its content to be more salacious. The magazine name survived as a glossy adult monthly, Titbits International . George Newnes Too Many Requests If you report this error to
100-586: The turn of the century, it became the first periodical in Britain to sell over one million copies per issue. Like a mini-encyclopedia it presented a diverse range of tit-bits of information in an easy-to-read format, with the emphasis on human interest stories concentrating on drama and sensation. It also featured short stories and full-length fiction, including works by authors such as Rider Haggard and Isaac Asimov , plus three very early stories by Christopher Priest . Virginia Woolf submitted her first article to
#267732