The Examiner was a weekly paper founded by Leigh and John Hunt in 1808. For the first fifty years it was a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles, but from 1865 it repeatedly changed hands and political allegiance, resulting in a rapid decline in readership and loss of purpose.

Early history

While the Examiner was in the hands of John and Leigh Hunt, the sub-title was 'A Sunday paper, on politics, domestic economy, and theatricals', and the newspaper devoted itself to providing independent reports on each of these areas. It consistently published leading writers of the day, including Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...

, John Keats

John Keats

John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...

 and William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. Yet his work is...

. The Hunt brothers failed in their initial aspiration to refuse advertisements in order to increase impartiality. In the first edition, the editor claimed The Examiner would pursue 'truth for its sole object'; and the paper's radical reformist principles resulted in a series of high-profile prosecutions of the editors. A tradition of publishing accurate news and witty criticisms of domestic and foreign politics was continued by Albany Fonblanque

Albany Fonblanque

Albany William Fonblanque was a celebrated English journalist and by his own example a reformer of that profession.-Family:Albany Fonblanque was descended from a noble French Huguenot family, the de Greniers of Languedoc, and was born in London....

 who took over the paper in 1828.

Until Fonblanque sold The Examiner in the mid-1860s, the newspaper took the form of a sixteen-page journal priced at 6d, designed to be kept and repeatedly referred to.

Later times

Albany Fonblanque, the journal's political commentator since 1826, took over the Examiner in 1830, serving as editor until 1847. He brought in such contributors as John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...

, John Forster, William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...

, and most notably Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

. Fonblanque also wrote the first notice of Sketches by Boz

Sketches by Boz

Sketches by "Boz," Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People is a collection of short pieces published by Charles Dickens in 1836 accompanied by illustrations by George Cruikshank. The 56 sketches concern London scenes and people and are divided into four sections: "Our Parish",...

 (28 February 1836) and of The Pickwick Papers

The Pickwick Papers

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is the first novel by Charles Dickens. After the publication, the widow of the illustrator Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any...

 (4 September 1836). Forster became the magazine's literary editor in 1835, and succeeded Fonblanque as editor from 1847 to 1855. Forster himself was succeeded by Marmion Savage

Marmion Savage

-Life:He was son of the Rev. Henry Savage. He matriculated as a pensioner on 6 October 1817 at Trinity College, Dublin, obtaining a scholarship in 1822, and graduating B.A. in the autumn of 1824...

.

The Examiners reputation was undermined when the new owner, William McCullagh Torrens, halved the price of the publication in 1867. Although its tradition of radical intellectual commentaries was revived in the 1870s under the editorship of William Minto

William Minto

William Minto , Scottish man of letters, was born at Auchintoul, Aberdeenshire.He was educated at the University of Aberdeen, and spent a year at Merton College, Oxford...

, The Examiner was repeatedly sold until the final edition appeared in February 1881.

The magazine ceased publication in 1886.