from 1879 to 1967 and The Boys' Friend from 1895 to 1927. Another magazine with a comparatively long life was Chums, which started in 1892 and survived until 1941. It had stories about animals and sports as well as many about young people. In 1908 Chums sought to gain Baden Powell's support, and create its own brand of Scouts supporting the Chums paper. Baden-Powell was committed by contract to support the Pearson periodical The Scout, and gave no support to Chums, which became derisive about the Boy Scouts. In 1909 however it became the official journal for the British Boy Scouts, a break-away group from Baden Powell's Scout movement. Early 20th century As the youth market established itself as an important part of the publishing industry, demand was perceived to exist for fiction which featured boys themselves in a leading role. This demand was to be met by stories about the public schools, a world where adults could be relegated to the background and where youths could be presented as having a degree of independence not possible elsewhere. The publisher who took the lead in this period was Trapp Holmes with magazines such as Smiles, Funny Cuts and Vanguard. This last paper was a short lived paper, published from 1907 to 1909 and was a pioneer of the school stories genre. Amalgamated Press soon entered the market in started to two of the most famous boys' papers, The Gem and The Magnet. The main writer for both was Charles Hamilton who was to be an important figure in schools fiction until his death in 1961. Inter-war period In between the two world wars there appeared in Britain a number of weekly magazines or papers aimed at boys between the ages of 8 and 16. Their price was 2d (two pence) and they were consequently known as the "tuppenny bloods". They were printed on newsprint, with a coloured front cover. Inside there were short stories, with illustrations and often in a serial form. Some factual articles were included. They were published by DC Thomson and known as the "Big Five." Meanwhile, The Magnet and Gem continued to publish school stories, along with newcomers like Nelson Lee and spinoffs such as The Schoolboy's Own Library which reprinted earlier stories. Such papers, however, were continually losing circulation. During the same period, comics publications like Amalgamated Press' Comic Cuts and Illustrated Chips, along with