The Original Edge Magazine

Description

The Edge was born in 1987 in Islington and in 1990 with a European Community and Islington grant as they were extremely keen in promoting the image of Islington as the "Real London". The Edge had then a circulation of 25 000 ex. The Edge used a special imported Kraft paper from France made out from 100% recycled textile with green and red ink. Whilst the magazine was not a commercial success the format changed to a normal white but recycled paper, with an A3 size foldedposter format with yellow pages of small ads inside. For three years 45 000 copies were mainly exported to the U.S. and the rest of the world whilst only a handful of selling points survived in Britain. During that intervening time The Edge collected a mine full of images, photography, artwork, graphics, stories, cartoons from various writers and artists and over 300 interviews (most saved on tape). By 1995, The Edge magazine was selling but wasn't commercially viable so it was time to pull the plug. A series of periodicals came after that published by The Edge Press; it showcased short novels and Art collections. The periodicals were published until 1999. Instead of a compendium or a ‘best of’ the magazine we decided to publish a series of scans, some rough some bare of the content, of some of the covers to bring an insight into how the magazine was printed and received, how it looked like and the random display of the scans demonstrates the chaos the Edge magazine was under. They were no defining rules and perhaps the only ones set out from the start have been broken after the 10th issue: we stopped using the special Kraft paper, the green and red ink and became more 'traditional'. But actually the content was anything but. 'As long as it was Art it didn't matter what it was'. We've only managed to hold on for as long as we did merely because we had generous sponsors and advertisers and a great and faithful American readership. Enter Tower record(s), which was one of the first U.S. retailers to contact us and successfully distributed the magazine. The book contains a full list of the publication dates, code numbers, staff and contributors from 1987-1999.

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