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Page:Studies of a Biographer 1.djvu/75

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THE EVOLUTION OF EDITORS
61

was not properly a newspaper. But when Wilkes fought his later campaign, and was backed by Junius, we have at last a genuine example of a newspaper warfare of the modern kind. The Public Advertiser had a significant history. It was the new form of The Daily Post started in 1719 by (or with the help of) Defoe. The Woodfall family, well known till the end of the century, came to have the chief share in it; and in 1752 gave it a new name and form, when Fielding seems to have acted more or less as sponsor. Upon dropping a periodical of his own, he advised his subscribers to transfer their favours to this paper, to which, moreover, he sent all his own advertisements, one as Justice of the Peace. Probably the recommendation means that it had somehow been made worth Fielding's while to let the paper have a monopoly of these notices. It seems that fifteen years previously, the value of the paper was about £840. By the Junius period, twenty years later, this had considerably increased. The property was held in shares, chiefly by wellknown booksellers and printers. A tenth belonged to Henry Sampson Woodfall, who took the management from 1758, when his father died, and acted as editor for thirty-five years. The