The Daily Telegraph & Courier was first published as a daily broadsheet in 1855 by Colonel Arthur B. Sleigh, who used it as an outlet to broadcast a personal grievance against the Duke of Cambridge. This didn’t make for a great business model, however, and Sleigh was soon unable to pay his printing bills to Joseph Levy, the owner of The Sunday Times, who had agreed to print Sleigh’s new paper.
Levy decided to take over ownership, with the goal of making it a more affordable competitor to London’s top newspapers without sacrificing editorial quality. Through the changes he implemented, it became known as The Daily Telegraph and relaunched as “the largest, best, and cheapest newspaper in the world".
Since then, The Daily Telegraph has become known for consistency and high editorial standards, blending opinionated features with investigative journalism. In 1874, it co sponsored Henry Morgan Stanley’s expedition to Africa with the object of, among other things, mapping out the remaining unknown geography of the continent.
Though The Daily Telegraph wasn’t founded on any political basis, it has since become a conservative-leaning paper and remains to this day one of the largest broadsheets in circulation within the UK.
For this newspaper, we have the following titles in, or planned for, our digital archive:
- 1855–56 Daily Telegraph & Courier.
- 1856–1920 The Daily Telegraph.
