By Sanjana Vijayabaskar and Priyanka Giri
The mid-17th century Renaissance saw more people interested in art, culture and literature, which paved the way for the spread of printed material when the printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg, in Europe.
The word “magazine” derives from the words, “magasin” (Middle French), “magazzino” (Italian) and “makhzan” (Arabic), all of which refer to a warehouse or storehouse kind of structure. The word was used to refer to a collection or storage facilitation of information, especially for travellers and sailors.
Few of the earliest magazines, then referred to as “essay periodicals” were The Review (1704-13), The Tatler (1709-11) and The Spectator (1711-12, briefly revived in 1714), which were more like newspapers due to their frequency, but resemble the contents of a magazine. Officially, the term ‘magazine’ first appeared in 1731, when the Gentleman’s Magazine was founded in London, by Edward Cave.
On the other side of the world, 10 years later, Andrew Bradford came up with the American Magazine, the first of its kind, only to be followed by Benjamin Franklin’s General Magazine, 3 days later.
India, however, was slightly late to the game, starting in 1785 with the Oriental Magazine or the Calcutta Amusement, started by the English colonisers. The first one in Hindi was started by Pundit Jugal Kishore Shukla and was named Udant Martanda in 1826,…
