Geographical magazines, 1994-2014
We were delighted to receive three large boxes of Geographical magazine from our friend Serena down south. These amounted to about 250 issues, making up almost all of the copies between 1994 and 2014. We already had a few hundred copies going back to 1937, so these complement our collection very nicely.
Geographical magazine is the official monthly publication of the Royal Geographical Society. It started up in 1935 and is still in print now. It’s a full-colour glossy publication, dedicated to exploration, research and the ‘promotion of geographical knowledge’. These findings are then published in accessible and beautifully illustrated articles.
The collection also came with scattered copies of World, BBC’s monthly glossy ‘magazine of mankind’, covering 1992 and 1993; and about a dozen copies of Wanderlust from between 1998 and 2008, a glossy every-other-monther.
In all fairness, there’s a high editorial content in Geographical, so not so many ads. As the magazine bulked out from the 1990s, more editorial meant more ads. For our early issues Iceland (Iceland tourist board and Icelandair) were advertising, and we find ads for adventure abroad, outdoor clothing, fieldwork abroad and so on. Big names advertising then, and still with us now, were, for example, Nikwax, Lloyds Bank, Rolex and Karrimor. By 2004 the travel and tourism industry was so much bigger, leading to much more and much broader advertising. Consequently we find ads for the Botswana, Rwanda and Wales tourist boards, Canon cameras, snow sports equipment, Sigma lenses, sleeping bags, outdoor clothing, and studying Geography at Aberystwyth University. More prominent names this time round are Lonely Planet, the Children’s Society, Olympus cameras and Petzl lights.
A quick word of thanks too to the Royal Geographical Society. Serena had approached them to ask if they would like the magazines, and the RGS pointed her to us – thank you RGS!
