Novelist and Man of Letters

Sala’s first real sustained attempt at novel writing came just after the repeal of the Stamp Duty in 1855 that led to a flourishing of penny daily newspapers and cheap periodicals. The Daily Telegraph became the first penny daily newspaper in British history in this year, and Sala began his 30-year association with the Telegraph two years later in 1857, the same year as his first novel, The Baddington Peerage, was published in the weekly newspaper, the Illustrated Times. Crime was the great focus of pictorial news in Britain and the Illustrated Times reporting of the sensational Dr. William Palmer poison murder case was a ‘landmark in press history’, because of its use of the interview and ‘human interest’ narration. ¹ Henry Vizetelly claimed that the complementary pamphlet hastily cobbled together by the newspaper about the poisonings was written by ‘half a dozen young literary ghouls’, and Sala would almost certainly have been one of them. ² Thomas Boyle described press coverage of the poisons as a ‘representative cause of a new journalism.’ ³