The world's oldest Sunday paper started life as a government-subsidised mouthpiece
The Observer's founder launched it in December 1791 expecting riches and quickly ran up debts of nearly 1,600 pounds. When the government declined to buy the title, it paid a subsidy instead in exchange for influence, and the young paper duly attacked reformers such as Thomas Paine and Joseph Priestley.
W. S. Bourne published the first issue on 4 December 1791. After his failed attempt to sell it to ministers, his wealthy brother struck the subsidy deal. The brothers gave up editorial control in 1807, appointing Lewis Doxat, and sold to the proprietor William Innell Clement seven years later. Government money kept flowing: in 1819 roughly 10,000 of the 23,000 weekly copies were handed out free by postmen paid to leave them with lawyers, doctors and gentlemen.
Later owners shaped it in turn. The businessman Julius Beer bought it in 1870 and his editor Edward Dicey revived circulation. In 1891 Rachel Beer, of the Sassoon family, took the editor's chair and held it for thirteen years, from 1893 also editing The Sunday Times, which she had bought. After Lord Northcliffe acquired the paper in 1903, a quarrel with his editor James Louis Garvin over imperial trade policy led to its sale to William Waldorf Astor in 1911.
The Astor era defined its modern reputation. David Astor became editor in 1948 and stayed 27 years, converting it into a trust-owned title and hiring writers including George Orwell. The photographer Jane Bown worked for it from 1949 until her death in 2014, capturing subjects from The Beatles to the Queen. By 1977 the paper was struggling, and the Astors sold it to the American oil company Atlantic Richfield, which passed it to Lonrho in 1981.
In June 1993 it joined the Guardian Media Group, beating a rival bid from The Independent, and in January 2006 it followed The Guardian into the narrower Berliner format. The British Press Awards of 2007 crowned it the best national paper. Its archive back to 1791 went online in November 2007. In December 2024, despite 48 hours of strikes by journalists, the Scott Trust agreed to sell it to Tortoise Media, whose first print edition appeared on 27 April 2025.
Source: The Observer
