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The world's oldest continually published English language newspaper...
The world's oldest continually published English language newspaper...
Item # 722958
March 04, 1666
THE LONDON GAZETTE, England, March 4, 1666 (1667 by today's calendar)
* One of the earliest of English newspapers to be had
* Hold something in your hands from the 17th century
* Back during the Great Plague & pre London fire era
This is the world's oldest continually published English language newspaper, having begun in 1665 and is still printing in London to this day.
There are various news reports of the day from cities throughout Europe, each report with its own dateline.
Complete as a single sheet issue, 6 3/4 by 11 inches, some foxing, nice condition.
background: In 1666, the London Gazette functioned as the crown’s clinical and authoritative voice during England’s most turbulent year, characterized by its transition from the Oxford Gazette back to the capital as the court fled the tail end of the Great Plague. Physically, the paper was a slim, single-leaf folio printed on both sides in a revolutionary two-column layout that favored brevity and clarity over the rambling, partisan "newsbooks" of the previous era. Its content during this Annus Mirabilis served as a grim ledger of national survival, documenting the "Bills of Mortality" as the plague waned, the tactical maneuvers of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, and most famously, the scorched-earth progression of the Great Fire of London in September. Because it was the official government organ, the Gazette avoided the flowery or sensationalist rhetoric common at the time, offering instead a dry, stoic record of royal proclamations and naval victories that established it as the "journal of record"—a status it maintains to this day as the oldest continuously published newspaper in the UK.
Category: British
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$87.00
