'My Fight With an Ostrich'

Apparently The Wide World wasn't just 'The Magazine for Everybody', but was also 'The Magazine For Our Soldier Boys'.  So I'm not sure that the cover story of this December 1918 issue would have been any comfort to 'soldier boys' who had survived to see the Armistice - having defeated the Germans, it would seem that mankind was now engaged in a war with large flightless birds.  Actually, The Wide World, (of which this is an American edition), was full of supposedly true tales of chaps doing daring things - like fighting ostriches.  The contents of this edition, for instance, also contains 'Hemmed in by Alligators' and 'My Lion Hunting Adventures'.  Alongside these are various stirring war stories and tales of adventure in the more exotic reaches of the British Empire.  Native rituals feature prominently in the latter type of stories, to simultaneously tittilate the stiff upper lips of British chaps while also reinforcing their sense of smug superiority with regard to these 'primitives'.

The Wide World was an extraordinarily long-lived British publication from George Newnes, who also published the likes of The Strand and Tit Bits, running from 1898 until 1965.  In terms of content and presentation, the magazine in this period comes over as a more sedate version of the later American men's magazines, with the emphasis upon adventure and exotic travel.  I've only a vague idea what the later issues were like, as examples of even the covers are difficult to find online - such is the nature of ephemeral media like print magazines: their preservation is usually accidental and quite random.  Judging by the examples I've found on eBay, like similar UK magazines that survived into the sixties, The Wide World changed little in subject matter, but adopted a more populist approach in terms of presentation.  Certainly, post war covers I've seen, (mainly on eBay), rebrand the publication as 'The Magazine for Men' and feature full size cover paintings, much in the style of US men's magazines, (often featuring marauding wildlife).   Like its US cousins the emphasis was upon travel and adventure, but with less sex - it was aimed at British men, after all and that sort of thing is best not talked about by a chap, eh?