Founded by Clement Shorter, a former editor of The Illustrated London News, The Sphere was published weekly between January 1900 and June 1964. Designed as a direct rival to both the ILN and The Graphic at the height of the Boer war, The Sphere sated the public thirst for highly decorative images and illustrations bringing the theatre of current events to the very hearths of ordinary individuals.

Featured artists included Montague Dawson, with illustrators including Fortunino Matania, Edmund Blampied and Henry Matthew Brock. The Sphere also featured renowned Scottish photographer Christina Broom and writers Michael Wolff and Thomas Hardy. 

Comprising nearly 3,500 issues, The Sphere is a wonderful and fully indexed pictorial historical resource for students of early twentieth century Britain, the World Wars and international conflict as well as those with an academic interest in societal attitudes to empire in an ever changing century. 

Click here for a moving snapshot of the of The Sphere from 100 years ago.