The easing of censorship policies during the reign of Joseph II gave a great boost to book-printing. By 1790, approximately fifty presses operated in the Kingdom of Hungary, and eight bookshops in Pest and Buda. After the French Revolution, and especially after the exposure of the Hungarian Jacobin Conspiracy in 1794, however, strict limitations were imposed on public life, press rights were constricted, and censorship was reinforced. The surge of political pamphlets came to an end, and by 1805 the number of newspapers had dropped to four. The first Hungarian-language newspapers included the twice-weekly news service Magyar Hírmondó (“Hungarian messenger”), edited in Pozsony/Pressburg between 1780 and 1803 for 300 subscribers; the twice-weekly Magyar Kurír (1786-1834), edited in Vienna between 1786 and 1834; Hazai és Külföldi Tudósítások (“Domestic and foreign news”) from 1806 to 1839, with the cultural supplement Hasznos Mulatságok (“Useful entertainment”) from 1817.
The Egyetemi Nyomda (“University printer”) in Pest had obtained a monopoly on textbooks from Maria Theresa in 1779 and published in sixteen languages (both classical and vernacular), with a widespread bookselling network. This provided a publication outlet for all ethnic groups regardless of genre. Other publishers and printing houses in Hungary were mostly family businesses run by German dynasties. The catalogues of the Trattners, the Landerers, and the Hartlebens included mainly German titles: the bestselling genres were almanacs, prayer books, and international tales of crime and adventure. Their Hungarian publications were typically restricted to popular genres of Trivialliteratur for the educated gentry, such as the ponyva and kalendárium with anecdotes, sages, trivia, and tales. Following the trend set in Austria, series of entertaining fiction were beginning to be launched: the Rózsa Szín Gyűjtemény (“Pink collection”) between 1798 and 1803, and the Téli és Nyári Könyvtár (“Winter and summer library”) between 1805 and 1813. Ventures to publish serious literature by Hungarian authors mostly failed commercially, and the increase in Hungarian titles did not match that of the reading public. Hungarian-language literature was cherished by a small, nationally motivated elite audience; commercial viability was only reached in the 1830s.
Even so, publication ventures, constricted though they were, provided scope and a platform to national efforts of various kinds. The publisher and bookseller Johann Trattner (1789–1825), a supporter of Kazinczy, was an exceptionally devoted promoter of Hungarian-language scholarship and literature. Between 1817 and 1825 he published 310 titles in Hungarian, compared to 259 in Latin, 127 in German, and 11 in Slavic languages.
Apart from some short-lived ventures in the 1780-90s (Magyar Museum, Orpheus, Urania), the early 1800s lacked the infrastructure for a Hungarian-language criticism. Reviews by and on Hungarian authors were published in German journals based in Vienna (Annalen der Literatur) or Jena (Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung). The periodicals that were published within Hungary were in Latin (Ephemerides Budenses) or German: the Literärischer Anzeiger für Ungern (1798-99) and the Zeitschrift von und für Ungern (1802-04), edited by Ludwig/Lajos Schedius (Professor of aesthetics at the University of Pest); they reviewed works in German, Hungarian, and the Slavic languages, along with publishing maps of the Kingdom of Hungary.
Criticism in Hungarian found a forum after 1817, with the start of Tudományos Gyűjtemény (“Learned miscellany”). Published by Trattner and edited by, among others, István Horvát and Mihály Vörösmarty, it remained in circulation until 1841, attracting around 600-800 subscribers. In contrast to the encyclopedic scope of Tudományos Gyűjtemény, which covered topics from linguistics, philosophy, geography, literature, and criticism, the almanac Aurora (1822-37) was dedicated to national literature and the ideas of Romanticism. Initially edited by the poet, playwright, and painter Károly Kisfaludy, then by the “Romantic triad” of Vörösmarty, József Bajza, and Ferenc/Franz Toldy/Schedel, Aurora focused on publishing “original Hungarian works” with themes preferably from national history for “leisure-hours entertainment”. Marking a Romantic turn in content and outlook, Aurora introduced new genres or Romantic versions of classical ones (historical ballad, novella, folk song, saga, epic, etc.), while its lavish illustrations (the copper plates were usually engraved by the editor Kisfaludy) shifted from textual accompaniments to picturesque scenes. The Romantic trend was intensified in a more ironic vein by Élet és Literatúra (“Life and literature”, 1826-29), playfully and whimsically edited by Pál Szemere and Ferenc Kölcsey. After winding down Aurora, Bajza, Vörösmarty, and Toldy/Schedel set up the twice-weekly literary magazine Atheneaum, with a review supplement Figyelmező (“Observer”). In circulation until 1841, Athenaeum propounded the liberal thought of the age, covering language issues, philosophy, political science, ethnography, statistics, law, natural sciences, and industrial innovations in an encyclopedic scope.
During the 1830-40s the fashion biweeklies (divatlap) and their literary supplements came to rule the literary scene. The Hungarian-language ones competed with their German counterparts like Der Spiegel (from 1828), which could draw on a larger readership. Still, divatlap like Regélő (1833), Rajzolatok (1835-40), Pesti Divatlap (1844-48), Életképek (1843-48), and Honderű (1843-48) became influential forums of national thought, especially by propagating national styles in fashion. After 1848, the fashion weeklies came to the fore: Hölgyfutár (1849-64), Délibáb (1853-54), Divatcsarnok (1853-63), Napkelet (1857-62). While fiction (in the shape of the feuilleton novel) worked its way into the political dailies, more ambitious literary magazines, such as Szépirodalmi Figyelő (1860-62) and Koszorú (1863-65), both edited by the leading poet of the age János Arany, failed to gain a wider audience.
The most significant political venture of the Romantic-liberal era was Országgyűlési Tudósítások (“Parliamentary reports”, 1832-36), a clandestine handwritten journal edited by Lajos Kossuth, which covered the events of the Diet and provided a slightly wider publicity for political movements. Imprisoned for this between 1837 and 1840, Kossuth later took over the editorship of Pesti Hírlap, and made it the most influential forum of liberal nationalism in the 1840s, attracting some 5000 subscribers.
After 1849, publishing quickly regained momentum and reached ever-widening audiences with an increasing speed. The further expansion of the reading public reflected both the growing impact of the Hungarian language and the continuity of multilingualism. During the 1850s nearly a hundred Hungarian-language novels were published, compared with some thirty in the preceding three decades, and by the end of the decade Pest-Buda had 44 periodicals: 31 Hungarian, 11 in German, and 1 in Slovak. The Vereinigte Ofner-Pester Zeitung (est. in 1799) came to an end in the 1850s, but the Pester Lloyd, which came to replace it as the leading German-language newspaper, remained active until the 1940s.
One of the most remarkable publishing enterprises of the era was “The Society for the Dissemination of Good and Cheap Books”, later the “St Stephen’s Society”, launched by the Catholic Church in 1848; with more than 1000 active members/subscribers, it came to play a significant role in popular education.
The leading scholarly periodical in the second half of the century was Budapesti Szemle (“Budapest review”, founded in 1857), modelled after British and French counterparts. Its editorial board and most of its contributors came from what later became known as the “Deák-party”: a loosely connected group of intellectuals and politicians gathering around Ferenc Deák, a former minister in the 1848 government and the informal head of the Hungarian political opposition. Its first general editor was Antal Csengery; from the 1870s, under the editorship of Pál Gyulai, the Szemle increasingly turned into the voice of conservative politics and aesthetic Academicism (remaining so until 1944).
The most significant publishing venture from the fin de siècle was the 22-volume encyclopedia from the Pallas publishing house. Compiling a magnificent synthesis of 19th-century liberal-national thought, the Pallas-Encyclopedia appeared in 1898 for 22,000 subscribers.
