The Queen was a magazine that was launched in 1861 by English publisher Samuel Beeton. Together with his wife, Isabella, they also published the best-selling Victorian ladies’ manual Mrs. Beeton’s Guide to Household Management. The success of this volume led to the creation of a whole line of other guides on various topics including needlework, folk remedies, flora and fauna, culinary arts, gardening and history. Other publications under his imprint included The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine (which we also hold) and The Boy’s Own Magazine, which was one of the first influential magazines aimed at adolescents. At the age of 22, he was the first British publisher to put out Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, concurrently with its first publication in the US.
Beeton was forced to sell most of his copyrights to avoid bankruptcy in the 1870s, after the death of his wife, who was a creative partner and writer for many of his projects. At this time, The Queen was sold to a handful of publishing entities and continued to run as a high society magazine with in depth coverage of British aristocracy until the late 1950s when it was acquired by Jocelyn Stevens. Stevens dropped “The” from the title and reconceived the magazine for a younger, hip audience who was embodied by an imaginary reader named Caroline—a pretty, red headed high school dropout who was more interested in casual sex than she was in pursuing an education or a traditional path of marriage and children. At this point, Queen became a voice for swinging London’s youth-driven underground culture. The small Chelsea boutiques run by “Youthquake” fashion designers such as Mary Quant were regularly featured among its pages and the magazine ran early photographs of the model/icon of the era Twiggy, which were shot by legendary fashion photographer David Bailey.
Stephens’ liberal views translated into the political realm as well. When the British government issued a report condemning the future of commercial broadcasting—both radio and television¬—Stephens helped to fund an off-shore, ship-based radio station that blasted the type of young, hip programming which was all but banned from British radio at the time. Named Radio Caroline, after the Queen’s imaginary muse, the pirate radio station’s target audience was much the same as the magazine’s and initially Radio Caroline’s offices operated out of the Queen’s. Radio Caroline, and other pirate radio stations like it, reached an estimated 20 million Brits and were a critical platform for the rock ‘n roll revolution as many bands such as the Stones received their first airtime via these pirate radio stations, which were the subject of the 2009 feature film, Pirate Radio.
In 1970 interests in Queen were sold to the UK edition of Harper’s Bazaar, which was then issued as Harper’s & Queen until 2006 when Queen was dropped from the title to bring the British edition in line with its sister publications from around the globe, which are titled, simply Harper’s Bazaar.
