J. S. Wood

Joseph Snell Wood (4 January 1853 – 20 December 1920), usually known as J. S. Wood, was a business man and journalist in London. For some twenty-five years he was the editor, chairman, and managing director of The Gentlewoman, a prominent illustrated paper for women which he had founded in 1890, and he was also chairman of Press Printers Limited.

Life

Born in Stepney,[1] the first son of another Joseph Wood, by his marriage to Elizabeth, a daughter of Andrew Snell, of Sandford, Devon,[2] Wood's early work was connected with a variety of charitable hospitals in London. From 1888 to 1916 he was Deputy Chairman of the Royal Irish Industries Association, which helped people working in cottage industries in Ireland.[3]

In 1890, Wood established a new illustrated paper for women, The Gentlewoman, which he managed.[4] This became the focal point of Wood's publishing career, and The Gentlewoman was successful in attracting many well-known writers of the day.[5] At the very outset, he showed an innovative touch by serialising a novel in the paper's first twenty issues, unusual in two ways: not only was it written by readers of the paper, instead of professional writers, but a different reader wrote each chapter. In 1891 this notion was developed further when he commissioned a serial novel called "The Fate of Fenella",[6] for which twenty-four writers including Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, and Mrs Trollope each produced one chapter "without any plan or collaboration".[7][8]

In 1894 Wood founded the Society of Women Journalists, which only two years later had more than two hundred members.[9] A Conservative in politics, he was a member of the Carlton Club[10] and of the Grand Council of the Primrose League,[3] of which Douglas Sladen called him "one of the real founders".[4]

To celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, Wood wrote and published The Gentlewoman's Record of the Glorious Reign of Victoria the Good.[11]

In 1902, the novelist Marie Corelli wrote to Wood as editor of The Gentlewoman to complain that her name had been left out of a list of the guests in the Royal Enclosure at the Braemar Highland Gathering. Wood replied that her name had been left out intentionally, because of her own stated contempt for the press and her past objections to the snobbery of those who liked to appear in the "news puffs" of society events. He printed both letters in full in the next issue of The Gentlewoman.[12]

Voluntary work

Between 1886 and his death in 1920 Wood was a member of the Council of the Chelsea Hospital for Women and for five years was Honorary Secretary of the Foundation of the Bolingbroke Hospital. He also served on the visiting committee of King Edward VII's Hospital and was a member of the Council of the Hospitals Association. In 1890 he founded the Children's Salon, a charitable organisation which endowed cots in children's hospitals around the country.[3] Wood stated in Who's Who that he had initiated and organised schemes which had raised almost half a million pounds for a variety of philanthropic bodies,[10] which at that time was a gigantic sum.

Wood's family motto was Non sibi sed aliis ("not for self but for others").[2]

Family and death

In 1875, Wood married Elena Maria Umiltà Ambuchi of Florence, a daughter of the sculptor Torello Ambuchi,[2] described by Sladen as "his pretty Italian wife".[4] They had one son, Harold Charles Putney Wood (born 1881), and three daughters, Florence Elena Elizabeth, Ethel Violet Elise, and Mabel Fanny Louise.[2] Wood sent his son to Uppingham,[13] and in 1911 they were both directors of The Gentlewoman Illustrated Limited.[14] In 1918, H. C. P. Wood was a director of the Newspaper Press, from which his father had retired.[15] H. C. P. Wood was chairman of The Gentlewoman Illustrated Limited in April 1927 when the company was wound up.[16]

Wood died on 20 December 1920, aged 67, after a long illness, still chairman and managing director of The Gentlewoman and of Press Printers, Limited. He died at 26 Kensington Court, London.[17] The funeral was at Holy Trinity Church, Prince Consort Road, on 23 December.[3] His wife had died in 1919.[18]

Notes

  1. ↑ England & Wales Birth Index, 1837–1915, vol. 1c for 1853, p. 504: "Wood, Joseph Snell, [Registration District] Stepney, Jan–Feb–Mar 1853"
  2. 1 2 3 4 Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, Armorial Families: A Directory of Gentlemen of Coat-Armour (1905), p. 1492
  3. 1 2 3 4 'Death of Mr. J. S. Wood' (obituary) in The Times, issue 42600 dated 22 December 1920, p. 13
  4. 1 2 3 Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen, Twenty Years of My Life (1915), p. 201: "J. S. Wood, the founder and managing director of the Gentlewoman, and one of the real founders of the Primrose League, was often from the beginning at our at-homes, with his pretty Italian wife, and his daughters as they grew up. We used to meet them in the season at Ranelagh, too. Wood has been much more than a founder and editor of newspapers, for he has been connected with the management of several of our most important charities, and has himself been instrumental in raising a quarter of a million for them."
  5. ↑ Truth, vol. 44 (1898), p. 261: "The Gentlewoman has gained for itself a reputation and position of stability which is without parallel in the history of any similar Journal, having regard to the number of years it has been established. Its high tone and artistic and literary excellence have made it a popular weekly newspaper."
  6. ↑ Edward Jewitt Wheeler, ed., Current Opinion, vol. 9 (1892), p. 156: "An amateur novel appeared in the first twenty numbers of the Gentlewoman, each chapter of which was written by a different reader of the magazine; this proved so successful as to suggest to the editor the scheme of having a novel by professionals conducted on the same plan; the result has been a work of fiction called The Fate of Fenella"
  7. ↑ 'Christmas Numbers' in The Times, issue 33508 dated 15 December 1891, p. 6: "the Gentlewoman has... the beginning of a novel, produced under exceptional conditions, "The Fate of Fenella". Each chapter has been written by a different person, and that, we are officially assured, without any plan or collaboration. Miss Helen Mathers opens the ball, and will be followed, in the order they are named, by Mr. J. H. McCarthy, Mrs. Trollope, Mr. Conan Doyle, Miss May Crommelin, Mr. F. C. Phillips, "Rita", Mr. Joseph Hatton, Mrs. Lovett Cameron, Mr. Bram Stoker, Miss Florence Marryatt, Mr. Frank Danby, Mrs. Edward Kennard, Mr. Richard Dowling, Mrs. Hungerford, Mr. Arthur à Beckett, Mr. H. W. Lucy, Miss Jean Middlemass, Mr. F. C. Burnand, and Mr. Manville Fenn. The results of so peculiar an experiment will be awaited with some curiosity".
  8. ↑ The Fate of Fenella from The Spectator dated May 1892, at spectator.co.uk, accessed 21 February 2014
  9. ↑ F. Elizabeth Gray, Women in Journalism at the Fin de Siècle (2012, ISBN 1137001305), p. 18, footnote 25: "The Society of Women Journalists was founded in 1894 by Joseph S. Wood, editor of the Gentlewoman. By 1896 membership numbered more than 200."
  10. 1 2 'WOOD, J. S.', in Who Was Who 1916–1928 (London: A. & C. Black, 1929, p. 1,144; 1992 reprint, ISBN 0-7136-3143-0); online edition by Oxford University Press, December 2007, accessed 22 February 2014 (subscription site)
  11. ↑ National Union Catalog, vol. 672 (Mansell, 1980), p. 269
  12. ↑ Teresa Ransom, The Mysterious Miss Marie Corelli: Queen of Victorian Bestsellers (2013), p. 100
  13. ↑ Uppingham School Roll, 1824 to 1905 (Uppingham School, 1906), p. 191
  14. ↑ The Stock Exchange Year-book (1911), p. 2,489
  15. ↑ British and Colonial Printer and Stationer and Newspaper Press, vols. 82–83 (London: Stonhill: 1918), p. 543: "Newspaper Press. Cavell, H. C. P. Wood, J. P. Bailey, A. Edmonds, and A. Burr. Minimum cash subscription, preference shares. First directors — J. S. Wood, H. C. P. Wood, and E. C. Stewart."
  16. ↑ The London Gazette dated 15 April 1927, p. 2,504
  17. ↑ The Publisher, vol. 114 (1921), p. 6: "J. S. Wood: The death took place on Monday, at 26, Kensington Court, after a long illness, of Mr. Joseph Snell Wood, chairman and managing director of The Gentlewoman Illustrated, Limited, and of the Press Printers, Ltd."
  18. ↑ Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, Armorial families : a directory of gentlemen of coat-armour, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: T. C. & E. C. Jack), p. 268
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