The Boy's Friend was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 story paper of the early 20th century.

Overview

The Boy's Friend was a large, tabloid-sized storypaper priced one penny (later 2d). It was produced by Amalgamated Press, and was part of Alfred Harmsworth's campaign to put the Penny Dreadfuls

Penny Dreadful

A penny dreadful was a type of British fiction publication in the 19th century that usually featured lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing an penny...

 out of business.

The paper generally contained 4-5 serial story installments, printed in very small text (the paper was 16 pages long). A 10,000 word complete story was also presented in each issue. The order of stories would be rotated so that each serial had an instalment on the cover (with accompanying large title and illustration). At other times the complete story would feature on the cover.

The stories where typical of the "Boys Own" fare of the era, with adventure, detective and western stories predominating. Several Amalgamated Press characters such as Sexton Blake

Sexton Blake

Sexton Blake is a fictional detective who appeared in many British comic strips and novels throughout the 20th century. He was described by Professor Jeffrey Richards on the BBC in The Radio Detectives in 2003 as "the poor man's Sherlock Holmes"...

, Nelson Lee

Nelson Lee

Nelson Lee is a Taiwanese born Canadian actor who co-starred in the only season of Blade: The Series as Shen, Blade's sidekick and technical support. He also starred in Oz , as inmate Li Chen, and in some episodes of Law & Order.-Selected filmography:-External links:* *...

, Jack, Sam & Pete and Buffalo Bill

Buffalo Bill

William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody was a United States soldier, bison hunter and showman. He was born in the Iowa Territory , in LeClaire but lived several years in Canada before his family moved to the Kansas Territory. Buffalo Bill received the Medal of Honor in 1872 for service to the US...

 appeared, in either serials or complete stories. Later issues featured stories of Jimmy Silver of Rookwood School, written by Charles Hamilton

Charles Hamilton (writer)

Charles Harold St. John Hamilton , was an English writer, specializing in writing long-running series of stories for weekly magazines about recurrent casts of characters, his most frequent and famous genre being boys' public school stories, though he also dealt with other genres...

, creator of Billy Bunter

Billy Bunter

William George Bunter , is a fictional character created by Charles Hamilton using the pen name Frank Richards...

.

The paper would also run an editorial page, mostly given over to the editor answering questions from readers, other short articles appeared in the paper, primarily concentrating on tips and facts revolving around sport, particularly football

Football (soccer)

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...

 and cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

. Other articles on emigration to parts of the British Empire, and about life at sea, appeared frequently

The Boy's Friend was the companion to The Boys' Herald

The Boys' Herald

The Boys' Herald was a magazine published in England from 1877. It mostly ran adventure stories and sold for 1d...

 and The Boy's Realm. It was printed on paper with a slight green tint, and was therefore referred to by collectors as "The green 'un".