Union Jack (magazine)

The Union Jack was a story paper of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There were two story papers called Union Jack. The first appeared in the 1880s but was only very short-lived. The name was then used by Alfred Harmsworth in 1894 for a new halfpenny storypaper intended as a companion to the successful Halfpenny Marvel.

Harmsworth considered it his moral duty to put the Penny Dreadfuls out of business, though some considered his papers to simply be "halfpenny dreadfullers". The first issues of the Union Jack stated that it was a "Library of high class fiction". The editorial at the end of the very first issue stated "there will be nothing of the 'dreadful' type in our stories. No tales of boys rifling their employers' cash-boxes and making off to foreign lands, or other such highly immoral fiction products".

The paper claimed to be offering good value by "securing the very best authors" but only presenting their stories on cheap paper, rather than "wasting" money on colourful bindings and high-quality paper. However, the actual quality of the stories, especially in the early years, could be variable. Also many writers used pseudonyms to make it appear that more people were writing for the paper than actually were.

The paper initially focused on Boy's Own type adventure stories, set mainly around the British Empire and at sea. The very first story was entitled "The Silver Arrow" and featured the many trials of the hero across mountains and jungles in Mexico to rescue his wife-to-be from red Indians. Another type of story featured in the early days was the detective story, with the second issue featuring a tale of Sexton Blake. This was, in some sources, quoted as the first ever Sexton Blake tale, however, earlier ones had been published in the Halfpenny Marvel in 1893, so it was actually the fourth.

Even by issue 7, the editorial page announced a system of voting for the story that was liked best, to allow the writers to provide more of the type of story the readers wanted. Issues beyond this tended to concentrate on westerns (though set in British territories in South America and Canada rather than the United States) and detective stories, including another Sexton Blake story in issue 15.

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