 Davies had established his own newspaper in preference to taking a post offered with the "Gloucester Chronicle".Initially, the "Looker-On" was a literary periodical professing itself to be "A Note Book of the Sayings and Doings of Cheltenham".It quickly established a reputation as a weekly fashionable and literary paper, the "Gentleman's Magazine" in 1837 crediting the editor "whose talents as an essayist and editor have been honourably displayed".