{"id":169,"date":"2024-08-02T17:21:45","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T17:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.matthewstephens.org.uk\/?p=169"},"modified":"2024-08-02T19:57:05","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T19:57:05","slug":"where-is-the-zig-zag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.matthewstephens.org.uk\/?p=169","title":{"rendered":"Where is the Zig-zag?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Kevin Gordon, obtained from Wikimedia Commons, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/Category:Zigzags#\/media\/File:Zig-Zags_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1161095.jpg<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As this cleverly-captured image demonstrates, we find zig-zag or alternating patterns all around us. They can be used to warn \u2013 of an approaching pedestrian crossing as part of road safety. They can be used to improve stability, in structures such as fences or screens. Zig-zags can also be metaphors for unreliability or inability to stick to a chosen course \u2013 as with U-turns, these are viewed negatively. Zig-zag has also been the title of two periodicals, published around a hundred years apart. One was a late-1960s magazine devoted to British rock music, started by Pete Frame \u2013 who became especially famous for his genealogical charts of rock band members and iterations. You can read a bit about Zig-zag here: https:\/\/www.beatchapter.com\/zigzag-magazine-105-c.asp<\/a> The earlier one, which was only in print for a few months in 1872, has proved much more difficult to track down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It exists in a list of British Museum newspaper holdings published in 1905, but not in the current newspaper catalogues. I presumed it must have been lost to the collections between then and now. It is notably absent from the British Library\u2019s extensive index of British and Irish newspaper titles. This itself is hardly a surprise \u2013 by the time the British Newspaper Library moved from Colindale to Boston Spa, some of the archived volumes had deteriorated beyond use, and Zig-zag may have been one such. (See this article amongst many others about the relocation: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/media\/2010\/jan\/11\/british-library-colindale-final-chapter<\/a>. This does not, though, explain its absence from the catalogue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given that my research project concerns the most ephemeral of ephemera \u2013 the short-lived papers that individually seem insignificant but which, collectively, comprise a huge proportion of nineteenth-century newspapers \u2013 this matters. It is the final and rather unusual stage in a marriage story, one in which a newspaper that ran for some seventeen years (the Illustrated Times<\/em>, which Henry Vizetelly launched as a competitor to Herbert Ingram\u2019s Illustrated London News<\/em>) absorbing a rival, Picture Times,<\/em> within its first year in print. This followed a well-established pattern of two periodicals starting out around the same time, one being absorbed into another which continues for a relatively long time in print. What is unusual is that, in its final number on 2nd<\/sup> March 1872, the Illustrated Times<\/em> prints a note \u2018to our readers\u2019 on the front page, stating \u2018This is the last number of the ILLUSTRATED TIMES (as the ILLUSTRATED TIMES), which has been absorbed by its younger and cheaper rival \u2013 ZIG-ZAG<\/em>, \u2018Tis the way of the world that the young should push the elders from their stools.\u2019[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I want to know, in order to corroborate this version of events and complete the circle of knowledge, is what (if any) reference was made in the young periodical Zig-Zag<\/em> to this situation. And this is where I come back to the problem; it does not appear in the British Library\u2019s newspaper catalogue. As it had such a brief span, it\u2019s unlikely to have appeared anywhere else and was not listed in 1905 as having been incorporated into another title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what I have here is a fairly unusual example of a quite long-running (therefore conventionally \u2018successful\u2019) publication being absorbed into a new, untried one that, in the event, was very short-lived. To examine this story to its logical end, I need to know more about Zig-Zag<\/em>, That seemed to be impossible – until one of my fantastic supervisors read the original version of this blog and was able to put me on its track. It turns out that, probably during the major move from Colindale to Boston Spa noted above, some titles were reclassified. In this case, Zig-zag<\/em> is now listed with journals, not newspapers. Just like that line from the film Raiders of the Lost Ark: <\/em>I was looking in the wrong place! Such are the frustrations of historical research and the abrupt changes of direction that mirror the zig-zag pattern! In this case, I have now zig-zagged back into a more hopeful place. Although I can’t immediately access the title, I know it’s there and can be found. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[1]<\/a> Illustrated Times<\/em>, 02\/03\/1872, p.1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by Kevin Gordon, obtained from Wikimedia Commons, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/Category:Zigzags#\/media\/File:Zig-Zags_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1161095.jpg As this cleverly-captured image demonstrates, we find zig-zag or alternating patterns all around us. They can be used to warn \u2013 of an approaching pedestrian crossing as part of road safety. They can be used to improve stability, in structures such as fences or screens. Zig-zags … <\/p>\n

Read more “Where is the Zig-zag?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewstephens.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewstephens.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewstephens.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewstephens.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewstephens.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewstephens.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":175,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewstephens.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions\/175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewstephens.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewstephens.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewstephens.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthewstephens.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}