The Penny Magazine was an illustrated British magazine aimed at the working class, published every Saturday from 31 March 1832 to 31 October 1845. Charles Knight created it for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in response to Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, which started two months earlier. Sold for only a penny and illustrated with wood-engravings, it was an expensive enterprise that could only be supported by very large circulation. Though initially very successfulwith a circulation of 200,000 in the first yearit proved too dry and too Whiggish to appeal to the working-class audience it needed to be financially viable. Spine badly damaged, writing on cover, marks to several pages.