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Language Variants

Zeitungsausgabe; Nummer; Numero; Tema.

Usage Notes

The term “issue” is applied in academic and contemporary accounts to the newspaper as a physical item, as a conceptual unit, and for additional issues (i.e. the special issue). In contemporary Victorian accounts, the distinction between the verb and the noun is less distinct, and as such we have references to “the first week of [the newspaper’s] issue” [Vizetelly, 1.10] or the discontinuation of “the issue of the paper” [Yates, 1.324]. The term “number” was more commonly used in the nineteenth century and, as such, “special issue” does not appear commonly in the literature.

Examples:

As a physical object

Masthead, with issue number above, of Het Niews van den Dag, 13 June 1870: 1. Delpher.

“The last issue in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, is marked, ‘Vol. xl., No. 4503,’ and dated ‘October 20, 1842.’ It was:–’Printed and Published by Richard Sanderson, Proprietor, at The Sydney Gazette Office, Lower George-street, New South Wales.’ There is no intimation in this number that it is the last nor that it was about to cease publication.” [Ferguson, Foster and Green, 69-70]

“It may well have been at her father’s suggestion that Charlotte sent for the files of the Mercury to aid in her research; certainly Mr. Brontë would have recalled those old issues of Baines’s paper, both on the grounds of his own contributions, and because of its detailed reporting of the Luddite disturbances near Hartshead, where he was curate from 1811 to 1815.” [Rosengarten, 591]

“The paper’s liberalism showed itself even in the second half of each issue, that is, in the part devoted to reviews of literature and the fine arts.” [Jump, 42]

“he had an inveterate propensity for starting newspapers, magazines, and weekly periodicals, usually without the requisite capital for carrying out those publications to a successful issue.” [Sala 1895, 1.198]

“he had great pleasure in accepting the poem, which would appear in an early number of the magazine.” [Yates, 1.222]

A conceptual unit

“However, other jokes printed in the same issue appeared in the US as early as the previous September” [Nicholson 2012, 281]

“To interact with a periodical, particularly a nineteenth-century periodical, is immediately to confront the question of transfer: should the reader apply knowledge gained in one context (say, an article or an issue) to a different context (say, a subsequent article, a subsequent issue, or even ‘real life’)?” [Droge, 39] 

“Speaking of the ‘Familiar Epistle from a Parent to a Child’ at the start of the March issue, in which Dickens facetiously addresses Bentley’s as a toddler once, but no longer, in his care, the Examiner comments that ‘every sorrow has a “sunny side”,’ for ‘Mr Dickens is succeeded in his late office by Mr Ainsworth—whose opening of the ‘romantic legend’ of Jack Sheppard has already, under circumstances ominous of a certain and speedy decline, infused new promise into Bentley’s Miscellany.’” [Droge, 41]

“No issue of a serial ever exists on its own but calls up the memory of its predecessors while projecting its successors into the future.” [James Mussell, “Repetition,” 345, qtd. in Droge, 45]

“An assignment to do a double-page spread, with illustrations, for the Sunday issue of the Globe brought him into close relationship with the art department.” [Kwiat, 112] 

“Within every newspaper issue some elements can be found which are not directly part of the content but are only included for providing some basic information to the user.” [Europeana Newspapers 2015, 13]

“Lehden vuosikerta, numero, osa, sivu, päiväys/vuodenaika (painettu lehti, journaali)”

A special issue

Special issue of The Sportsman, 3 November 1884: 1. Special “Cup” edition. Trove.

“… the first account of his activities does not appear in the Mercury until its special issue of January 9, 1813, devoted to the proceedings of the special commission at York.” [Rosengarten, 596] 

“it continued to grow, hitting a new record in 1863 when its special issue marking the wedding of the Prince of Wales sold no less than 310,000.” [Cranfield, 171]