Temple Bar was founded a year after the first publication of
William Thackeray's
The Cornhill Magazine, by one of
Charles Dickens' followers, Sala, who promised his readers that the periodical would be "full of solid yet entertaining matter, that shall be interesting to Englishmen and Englishwomen…and that Filia-familias may read with as much gratification as Pater or Mater-familias", appealing to a solid, literate middle-class. A rather congratulary review of the arrival of the impending publication appeared in the
New York Times in October 1860 saying that it promised "The name is a happy one; pregnant with good things and seasoned with the promise of Attic salt". It sold for about one shilling, and was one of the leading literary magazines of the era. 553 issues were published – up to 1906, about one a month. It published work by writers such as
Amy Levy,
Jane Austen,
Wilkie Collins,
Charles Reade,
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Anthony Trollope,
Arthur Conan Doyle,
E. F. Benson and
Jessie Fothergill. Initially the magazine achieved a circulation of some 30,000 which eventually settled at around the 13,000 mark in the late 1860s. In 1868 ''
Bentley's Magazine'' was merged into it. By 1896 circulation had dropped to about 8,000. Arthur Ransome also started his career as publisher there. It should not be confused with a
bi-monthly published in
Dublin,
Ireland of the same name published in the first decade of the 21st century. ==References==