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Information about Ally Sloper's Half Holiday

Ally Sloper's Half Holiday is a British comic, first published on 3 May 1884. It has a legitimate claim to being the first comic magazine named after and featuring a regular character. Star Ally Sloper, a blustery, lazy schemer often found "sloping" through alleys to avoid his landlord and other creditors, had debuted in 1867 in the humor magazine Judy — created by writer and fledgling artist Charles Henry Ross and inked and later fully illustrated by his French wife Emilie de Tessier under the pseudonym "Marie Duval" 1 (or "Marie DuVal"; sources differ).

The "half holiday" referred to in the title was the practice in Victorian Britain of allowing the workers home at lunchtime on a Saturday, a practice that also established the kick-off times of football matches.

Publication history

Enlarge picture
19th-century issue of the British comic magazine Ally Sloper's Half Holiday
The black-and-white weekly comic paper Ally Sloper's Half Holiday, typically of eight tabloid pages and priced one penny 1, was first published on 3 May 1884, a short time after Ross, had sold the rights to the character to Gilbert Dalziel, an engraver and the publisher of Judy. Initially launching the paper with proprietor W. J. Sinkins, Dalziel was soon in full control, publishing it from "The Sloperies", 99 Shoe Lane, EC. Alongside the strips featuring Sloper, the magazine also featured prose stories and cartoons and strips of other characters.2

Sales of the magazine have been estimated as being as high as 350,000, the magazine describing itself as "the largest selling paper in the world". The paper found a mixed audience: aimed at adults it captured both a loyal working class, male base, as well as attracting a cult following amongst the middle class of the time. 3

Although the weekly initially ceased publication on September 9 1916, after 1,679 issues, it was later revived between November 5 1922 and April 14 1923 4, again from 1948 to 1949, and finally from 1976 to 1977, each attempt failing to capture the imagination of the British public as the original once had.5

Contributors

William Giles Baxter 6 took over art duties for the Sloper character with issue 13. 7

William Fletcher Thomas 8 became the artist on the Ally Sloper strips following Baxter's death in 1888.9

James Gibbins contributed his expertise in the field of handwriting, a skill he put forward to the police at the time of the Jack the Ripper murders, offering to analyse items thought to be authored by the ripper. 10

Thomas Burke contributed stories. 11

Influence

The weekly comic paper is widely cited as being the first comic book or magazine to feature a regular character, and is also often cited as the first comic as well. Half Holiday helped established the financial viability of the medium and codified the British form to an extent visible many years later in publications such as Viz.

Footnotes

External links

A British comic is a periodical published in the United Kingdom that contains comic strips. It is generally referred to as a comic or a comic magazine, and historically as a comic paper.
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May 3 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

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18th century - 19th century - 20th century
1850s  1860s  1870s  - 1880s -  1890s  1900s  1910s
1881 1882 1883 - 1884 - 1885 1886 1887

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Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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Alexander "Ally" Sloper is one of the earliest fictional comic strip characters. Red-nosed and blustery, an archetypal lazy schemer often found "sloping" through alleys to avoid his landlord and other creditors, he was created for the British magazine Judy
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Judy is most commonly a female given name, as well as a shorten form of Judith. It may also refer to:
  • Judy (ship's dog)
  • Yokosuka D4Y - Japanese dive bomber
  • Judy, the pet chimpanzee on the television show Daktari

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Isabelle Emilie de Tessier (born 1850 in Paris) who worked under the pseudonym Marie Duval, was a French cartoonist, known as co-creator of the seminal cartoon character Ally Sloper.
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A pseudonym (Greek: ψευδόνυμον, pseudo + -onym: false name) is an artificial, fictitious name, also known as an alias
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Victorian era of the United Kingdom marked the height of the British Industrial Revolution and the apex of the British Empire. Although commonly used to refer to the period of Queen Victoria's rule between 1837 and 1901, scholars debate whether the Victorian period—as defined
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Motto
"Dieu et mon droit" [2]   (French)
"God and my right"
Anthem
"God Save the Queen" [3]
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Association football, commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players. It is the most popular sport in the world.
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A British comic is a periodical published in the United Kingdom that contains comic strips. It is generally referred to as a comic or a comic magazine, and historically as a comic paper.
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penny (pl. pence or pennies) is a coin or a unit of currency used in several English-speaking countries.

Value

The penny is among the lowest denomination of coins in circulation.
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May 3 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

Events


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Working class is a term used in academic sociology and in ordinary conversation.

In common with other terms relevant to social class, it is defined and used in many different ways, depending on context and speaker.
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middle class, in colloquial usage, consists of those people who have a degree of economic independence, but not a great deal of social influence or power. The term often encompasses merchants and professionals, bureaucrats, and some farmers and skilled workers.
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September 9 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

Events

  • 1000 - Battle of Svolder, Notable naval battle of the Viking Age.

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November 5 is the feast day of the following Roman Catholic Saints:
  • St. Domninus
  • St. Galation
  • St. Magnus
  • St.
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    • April 14 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

    Events

    • 43 BC - Battle of Forum Gallorum.

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    worldwide view of the subject.
    Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page.
    Penmanship or handwriting is the art of writing with the hand and a writing instrument.
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    Jack the Ripper is an alias given to an unidentified serial killer active in the largely impoverished Whitechapel area and adjacent districts of London, England in the latter half of 1888.
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    Thomas Burke (November, 1886 – September 22, 1945) was a British author. He was born in the Eltham neighborhood of London.

    His first successful publication was Limehouse Nights
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    A comic book is a magazine or book containing sequential art in the form of a narrative. Comic books are often called comics for short. Although the term implies otherwise, the subject matter in comic books is not necessarily humorous, and in fact it is often serious and
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