Billed as ‘The Country Gentleman’s Newspaper’, The Field was first published in 1853 by editor Mark Lemon as a weekly paper and is presently the longest-running country and field magazine in the world. The current editor is Jonathan Young.
The motivation behind the paper’s founding came from novelist R. S. Surtees, who spotted an opportunity for an illustrated journal aimed at the likes of sportsmen, landowners, farmers, hunters, and generally those “country gentlemen” outside of London’s bloated urban industrialist market. The illustrated angle could explain why Lemon – chief advisor at The Illustrated London News at the time - was hired as founding editor, although in truth the early editions scarcely held more illustration than contemporary papers.
Over the decades, The Field has influenced the sporting world in a variety of ways, such as testing the seats of rowing boats, campaigning against salmon netting, formulating designs for the modern golf ball, and even field testing rifles which would eventually lead to the invention of the hammerless shotgun.
Today, in addition to its strong online presence, The Field remains in print as a glossy with a monthly circulation of 28,294 (as of 2013) and is still considered one of the leading country and field magazines in the world.
For this newspaper, we have the following titles in, or planned for, our digital archive:
- 1853–2009 Field (London, England : 1853)
