Good Words

*Good Words*
	Vol 1 title page, 1860.
Editor	Norman Macleod
Frequency	Monthly
Founded	1860
Final issue	1910
Language	English

Good Words was a 19th-century monthly periodical established in the United Kingdom in 1860 by the Scottish publisher Alexander Strahan.^[1] Its first editor was Norman Macleod. After his death in 1872, it was edited by his brother, Donald Macleod,^[2] though there is some evidence that the publishing was taken over at that time by W. Isbister & Co.^[3]

Intended readership and content

Good Words was directed at evangelicals and nonconformists, particularly of the lower middle classes. It included overtly religious material, but also fiction and non-fiction articles on general subjects, including science.^[4] The standard for content was that the devout should be able to read it on Sundays without sin.^[5] It became known as a "fireside read", which could be shared and enjoyed by adults, servants and masters.^[6]

Good Words was known for illustrations by such artists as John Everett Millais and Arthur Boyd Houghton, engraved by the Brothers Dalziel.^[6]

Circulation

In 1863, Norman Macleod wrote that the magazine had a circulation of 70,000.^[1] In the following year, it advertised a monthly circulation of 160,000, but the number is probably exaggerated.^[7]^[8]

In 1906, Good Words was amalgamated with the weekly Sunday Magazine, and published in that format until 1910.^[9]

References

^ ^a ^b R. H. Super (1990). The Chronicler of Barsetshire: A Life of Anthony Trollope (University of Michigan Press) pp. 150–155.
^ Eyre-Todd, George. "Donald Macleod" in Who's Who in Glasgow in 1909. Retrieved 1 June 2011.
^ "William Isbister Collection, circa 1860-1906". Finding Aids - Princeton University. Retrieved 2023-05-11.
^ Judith Wittosch Malcolm. "Good Words", The Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope (R. C. Terry, ed., Oxford University Press, 1999) pp. 219–221.
^ James Pope-Hennessy (1978). Anthony Trollope (Phoenix Press paperback ed., 2001) pp. 261–263.
^ ^a ^b Simon Cooke, PhD. [1] "Good Words", The Victorian Web. Retrieved 27 March 2020.
^ Sutherland, John (1987). "Review of Alexander Strahan: Victorian Publisher.; The Common Writer: Life in Nineteenth-Century Grub Street.; The Literature of Labour: Two Hundred Years of Working-Class Writing.; The Servant's Hand: English Fiction from Below". Nineteenth-Century Literature. 42 (1): 120–126. doi:10.2307/3044923. ISSN 0891-9356. JSTOR 3044923.
^ Gray, Donald (1987). "Review of The Yearbook of English Studies, Volume 16: Literary Periodicals Special Number; Alexander Strahan: Victorian Publisher". Victorian Studies. 31 (1): 141–144. ISSN 0042-5222. JSTOR 3828090.
^ The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, ed. by George Watson. Cambridge University Press, 1969. Vol. 3, column 1849.