You don't have to wade through the lot to get the flavour. In its opening pages, Benn's helpfully lists publications which have made their debut on the newsagent's shelf over the past 12 months, and those which have vanished. Encouragingly, the births outnumber the deaths. Some of 1998's newcomers reflect the year's crazes, which may or may not last: Teletubbies (BBC Magazines) for instance, or Maximum Mountain Bike. Some evoke cloistered scholarship: Jewish Culture and History; Microscopy and Imaging News; International Journal of Children's Spirituality. Others sound decidedly steamier: Sexualities, for example, listed under Sex and Erotica. (Surprisingly, perhaps, there is only one page, which runs from The Boss to Sporty Girls in Uniform, devoted to sex and erotica in the main directory. Those of a puritan disposition may be encouraged to note that Journal of Sex has changed its name to Journal of Love.)
Some new titles are simply mysterious. What precisely is Private Address Book of Lady Millionaires, whose publisher's name is given as Lord de Chanson? He also crops up as proprietor of Address Book of the British Establishment (listed here under Social Sciences), the UK Wealth Directory, and the World's Richest Families? Why is a new publication from Reed Computer Group, aimed at the market trade, called The Var? And what kind of alley - dark and dangerous, marble, or skittle? - features in Alley Magazine (local and regional interest)?
But it's sad to see what's been lost. Go Magazine has gone, for instance, along with Let's Go Coarse Fishing, and even - just at the moment that women have made the breakthrough to membership of the MCC - Women Bowlers. (But Women Bowlers may have been targeted not at them but at women on bowling greens.) Among reference publications, one can no longer refer to the Handbook of Fluid Flow Metering; The Main Guide (Turkish edition); Multimedia Services - the Market Potential (perhaps it lacked market potential?); Spon's Contractors' Handbooks: Minor Works, Alterations and Repairs; and Scotland: More than 1001 Things to See. Nor can we any longer enjoy Enjoy, a consumer magazine, which has breathed its last, in common with The Polish Gazette, and Recruitment Now. We shall hear no more from The Acoustician; Electronics Cooling; Managed Derivatives; Organizational Excellence (a surprise that their marketing people didn't tell them to dispose of that old-fashioned Z); Print and Converting Matters; Quality News; or The Ship Supplier.
Some of those that have been lost were, I imagine, simply no longer in tune with their times. Vogue Patterns - Fine Sewing may have been sunk by the same social/commercial forces that are closing down all the wool shops. In such a disobedient age, there could not have been much of a future left for Obedience Competitor. It does seem a curious moment though to have lost the Genetic Engineer and Biotechnologist: on the basis of the news on that front since Christmas, this might have been a boom year. Others - The European Journal of Disorders of Communication, perhaps - may have simply failed to get through to their market. It's surprising to note What Personal Computer among the casualties; likewise Netgamer. Elsewhere the list achieves a kind of mournful poetry. Loot - Stoke and Staffordshire. Wound Management (never a pretty sight, I am told). The Ship Supplier. The Owl.
Like all such directories, this one is out of date by the time it has published. It would come as no surprise to find that someone, Lord De Chanson perhaps, had launched a new magazine called The Millennium. If so, one can no doubt mark it down with some confidence for a place on Benn's list of casualties in its 2001 edition.
