Colburn and
Frederic Shoberl established
The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register as a "virulently
Tory" competitor to
Sir Richard Phillips'
Monthly Magazine in 1814. "The double-column format and the comprehensive contents combined the ''
Gentleman's Magazine with the Annual Register''". In its April 1819 issue it published
John Polidori's
Gothic fiction The Vampyre, the first significant piece of prose
vampire literature in English, attributing it to
Lord Byron, who partly inspired it. In 1821 Colburn recast the magazine with a more literary and less political focus, retitling it
The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal. Nominally edited by the poet
Thomas Campbell, most editing fell to the sub-editor
Cyrus Redding. Colburn paid contributors well, and they included
Sydney Morgan,
Thomas Charles Morgan,
Peter George Patmore,
Mary Shelley,
Charles Lamb,
Leigh Hunt,
Stendhal,
Thomas Noon Talfourd,
Letitia Elizabeth Landon,
Felicia Hemans,
Ugo Foscolo,
Richard Lalor Sheil,
Mary Russell Mitford,
Edward Bulwer,
James and Horace Smith, and
William Hazlitt. Hazlitt's "
Table-Talk" essays, begun in the
London Magazine, appeared in the
New Monthly from late 1821, his essay "The Fight" appeared in 1822, and his series "The Spirits of the Age'" was later republished, with essays from other sources, in the book
The Spirit of the Age (1825).
Charles Knight's
London Magazine merged with the
New Monthly in 1829, and in that year
Richard Bentley became Colburn's business partner. After Redding resigned in 1830, Campbell found himself unable to edit the magazine on his own and
Samuel Carter Hall became editor for a year. In 1831 the novelist
Edward Bulwer became editor, turning "the essentially apolitical, slightly Whiggish, literary journal into a vigorous radical organ shouting 'Reform' at the top of its lungs." Hall, a political Conservative, had remained as sub-editor, and resisted Bulwer's efforts: Bulwer resigned in 1833, with Hall taking up the editorship once more. Contributors now included
Catherine Gore,
Anna Maria Hall,
Letitia Elizabeth Landon,
Felicia Hemans,
Caroline Norton,
Thomas Haynes Bayly, and
Theodore Edward Hook. In 1837 the magazine was retitled
The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist, to meet the challenge of ''
Bentley's Miscellany''. Now edited by
Theodore Hook, In 1845 Colburn sold the magazine for £2500 to
William Harrison Ainsworth, who had earlier edited ''Bentley's Miscellany
and who now edited his own Ainsworth's Magazine
. Ainsworth edited the New Monthly'' with his cousin
William Francis Ainsworth as sub-editor. From 1871–79 William Francis Ainsworth was editor. ==Titles==