The woman responsible for The Daily Courant, Britain's first daily newspaper in 1702.
The launch issue of The Daily Courant was published on 11 March 1702 and its editor was a woman, as was its publisher and its proprietor.
Walks available for booking
For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks, please click here.
These walks include Groundbreaking Women in the City, which tells the story of Elizabeth Mallet and many other pioneering women.
Elizabeth Mallet held all three positions, the first person to play any of these roles on a daily newspaper.
Just three days after Queen Anne had become only the second woman to rule as sole monarch, it fell to a woman to breathe life into the nation’s first ever daily newspaper.
Elizabeth produced the paper from a house at the bottom of Ludgate Hill, next door to The King's Arms Tavern by the Ditch-Side near Fleet Bridge. The Bridge linked Ludgate Hill with Fleet Street when the River Fleet still flowed above ground at this point in its course (although it was by now referred to as the Fleet Ditch).
The Daily Courant consisted of just one sheet. It contained digests of foreign news on the front page, with advertisements on the back page.
Reporting domestic news could still be risky, in spite of the 1695 expiry of the Licensing of the Press Act, which had been passed in 1662 to prevent the "seditious treasonable and unlicensed Bookes and Pamphlets and for regulating of Printing and Printing Presses."
However, the authorities were still not slow to fine or imprison those who published anything they didn't like.
Moreover, the cessation of pre-publication censorship seven years earlier had led to a mushrooming of partisan publications with an agenda to push. The public had become suspicious of what might today be called fake news.
Elizabeth Mallet judged that publishing foreign news was both safer and a better judgment commercially.
The job title 'newspaper editor' did not yet exist, but Elizabeth Mallet fulfilled that role, compiling and summarising foreign news from other sources, as well as owning and publishing The Daily Courant.
She made clear to readers what her sources were for the foreign news she published and that they were approved by their respective governments. She also reassured them that she would stick to facts and not offer her own opinions.
The public did not know that the first editor of a daily newspaper was a woman. In print, Elizabeth referred to herself simply as ‘E. Mallet’ and used the male pronoun in reference to 'the author’ in the first issue.
Under the heading ‘Advertisement’, she set out the paper's approach in a paragraph at the bottom of the front page:
ADVERTISEMENT. IT will be found from the Foreign Prints, which from time to time, as Occasion offers, will be mention'd in this Paper, that the Author has taken Care to be duly furnish'd with all that comes from Abroad in any Language. And for an Assurance that He will not, under Pretence of having Private Intelligence, impose any Additions of feign'd Circumstances to an Action, but give his Extracts fairly and Impartially; at the beginning of each Article he will quote the Foreign Paper from whence 'tis taken, that the Publick, seeing from what Country a Piece of News comes with the Allowance of that Government, may be better able to Judge of the Credibility and Fairness of the Relation: Nor will he take upon him to give any Comments or Conjectures of his own, but will relate only Matter of Fact; supposing other People to have Sense enough to make Reflections for themselves.
A footnote below this read as follows:
This Courant (as the Title shews) will be Publish'd Daily being design'd to give all the Material News as soon as every Post arrives: and is confin'd to half the Compass, to save the Publick least half the Impertinences, of ordinary News-Papers.
The Daily Courant must have been a success, as Elizabeth Mallet very soon sold it to Samuel Buckley, either nine or 40 days later (sources differ on this). Buckley published it at the sign of The Dolphin in Little Britain, a street a few minutes walk to the north east of Ludgate Hill. Under different owners it continued to be published until 1735.
Little is known of Elizabeth Mallet's life and no pictures of her have survived (if there ever were any). However, she knew the printing and publishing business very well before establishing the Courant in 1702.
By then, she was 19 years a widow, and had been running the printing business she and her husband Edward had managed together from their marriage in 1672 until he died in 1683.
Elizabeth and Edward, the son of a printer and stationer, made a living printing and publishing the speeches given by condemned prisoners before being executed at Tyburn (the site of the gallows, roughly where Marble Arch is today). Their business was very close to Fleet Street, the centre of the printing trade since the early 1500s.
After Edward's death in 1683, Elizabeth ran their two presses, with their son David as an apprentice. It might have been expected that David would take over the business, but, whether for the lack of aptitude or of interest, he did not. Elizabeth Mallet was a rare example of an independent businesswoman.
Under Queen Anne, England (and the United Kingdom, created five years into her reign) enjoyed a period in which writing and publishing flourished, with writers including Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, Richard Steele and Joseph Addison.
Their fame has endured, while Elizabeth Mallet is all but forgotten. Even the plaque close to where she published the nation’s first daily newspaper does not mention her name.
Elizabeth Mallet is one of the women whose stories are the subject of the London On The Ground walk, Groundbreaking Women in the City. This walk is next scheduled on 1 March 2025, to mark the start of Women's History Month.
This will be followed on 8 March 2025 (International Women's Day) by a brand new walk, Groundbreaking Women of Islington.
Walks available for booking
For a schedule of all forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks, please click here.
Comments