Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star. Manchester, England, May 1840–March 1842; Liverpool, April 1842– March 3, 1932; London, March 10, 1932–December 1970.
132 v. 23 cm.
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The Millennial Star was the longest running Latter-day Saint (LDS) periodical, published continuously for 130 years until discontinued in 1970 with the overhaul of all the LDS magazines. It was inaugurated by the Twelve at the beginning of their great mission to England. Brigham Young and his fellow members of the Twelve landed in Liverpool on April 6, 1840, the tenth anniversary of the Church. Eight days later they began a series of meetings in Preston in which they resolved to publish a monthly periodical to be called the Latter-day Saints Millennial Star. The prospectus, also reprinted in the first number of the Star, announces that the magazine “will stand aloof from the common political and commercial news of the day.—Its columns will be devoted to the spread of the fulness of the gospel.”
Parley Pratt served as the founding editor until mid-July 1840, when he went back to the United States to get his family. Brigham Young and Willard Richards then took charge of the Star, with Richards doing most of the work. Parley resumed the editorship when he returned in October, laboring alone until April 1842 when he was joined by a British convert, Thomas Ward. Ward became editor and publisher in November 1842, serving until October 1846 when he was replaced by Orson Hyde, president of the British Mission. Thereafter, the British Mission president assumed the editorship of the Star.
When Parley Pratt left England in October 1842, leaving Ward as editor, the Star came close to losing its life. On November 21, 1842, in Nauvoo, the Twelve agreed to terminate the magazine, apparently because they felt its circulation was too low, and on January 3, 1843, they wrote to Ward informing him of this decision. After numerous letters between Ward and Brigham Young, Young wrote Reuben Hedlock, who had replaced Ward as British Mission President, that he was at liberty to print as many copies as he could sell, and the survival of the Star was assured.
Initially the Star was a monthly. With the issue of June 15, 1845 (vol. 6, no. 1), it was changed to a semimonthly and continued as such until April 24, 1852 (vol. 14 no. 9) when it was issued weekly.
Even though the Star was published primarily for the members of the Church in England, it is an important record of the progress of the whole of Mormonism, especially of the nineteenth century Utah church. Hence, it is difficult to overestimate the value of the Star. “But for this publication,” notes H. H. Bancroft, “it would be impossible to fill the gaps which occur in the record of the Mormon people.” (History of Utah, 407).
Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley and Chad J. Flake,
A Mormon Fifty: an exhibition in the Harold B. Lee Library in conjunction with the annual conference of the Mormon History Association. (Provo, Utah, Friends of the Brigham Young University Library, 1984). Item 14, p. [13–14]; and Peter Crawley,
A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]). Item 71, p. 108–13.
Used by permission of the authors and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University.
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY