The Imperial Weekly Gazette was a Saturday weekly, printed and published between 1804 and 1823. Its precise start date is uncertain, as none of the early issues survive, but an advertisement placed in the London Courier of 10 February 1804, announced the publication of the _Imperial Weekly Gazette _from Saturday 18 February. It claimed that the newspaper would ‘…accommodate the public with the judicious and methodical arrangement of all the memorable Occurrences of the Week, both Foreign and Domestic…’

From January 1813 the Imperial Weekly Gazette was amalgamated with The Westminster Journal, a newspaper which had been published since 1741, to become the Imperial Weekly Gazette and Westminster Journal. By February 1823, the title of the newspaper was shortened to Imperial Gazette, and the paper was expanded from four to eight pages. It was one of several weekly titles in the period to include no illustrations.

From the tone of many articles, the paper saw itself as enlightened, but it was aimed at an upper class audience and took a politically conservative standpoint. It reported weekly foreign news and domestic crime in much detail, and the editorials, which were frequently on the front page, often focused on religious and moral topics, such as: ‘Effects of the Crusades on the Morals and Manners of Europe’ from November 1818, ‘On the Contemplation of the Supreme Being’ from April 1819, and ‘On the Fallacy of Human Enjoyment’ from July 1819. The newspaper was also a supporter of Queen Caroline, and her popularity was reflected in the many columns of coverage of her last illness and death on 11 August 1821, and of her funeral procession on 18 August 1821. One of the few occasions when the paper was critical of the church was when the clergy of Durham did not ring their church bells in respect for the death of the Queen.

Other key events that were covered by the Imperial Weekly Gazette included the arrest of Richard Carlile for seditious libel for publishing a pamphlet calling for justice for the Peterloo Massacre and the death of Napoleon, the news of which took two months to reach Europe, and which was reported on 7 July 1821.

While ostensibly a London weekly, the Imperial Weekly Gazette does appear to have had a circulation beyond the city. W.P. Pope & Co., General Newspaper and Advertising Agents, placed regular advertisements in regional newspapers, which listed (mainly London) newspapers for sale, and this included the Imperial Weekly Gazette. Their advertisements appeared in The Yorkshire Gazette; The Leeds Intelligencer; Northampton Mercury; Birmingham Chronicle; Hereford Journal; Durham County Advertiser; and the Southampton Herald, suggesting the potential for a wider readership.

Ed King, The British Library