Walter Ruddiman

Who was Walter Ruddiman?

Walter Ruddiman was a Scottish printer, publisher and newspaper proprietor based in Edinburgh. Born in Alvah, near Banff, in the North-East of Scotland, he was the youngest son of the farmer James Ruddiman and nephew of the printer, scholar and librarian Thomas Ruddiman whose business was also based in Edinburgh. Walter Ruddiman moved to Edinburgh sometime shortly after 1745 and was eventually admitted as a burgess of the city on 11 September 1754. Around the same time he also married Janet Bradefute with whom he had four children, Thomas, John, Walter and Janet.

Ruddiman's most important publishing venture was his Weekly Magazine, established on 7 July 1768. It was a weekly broadsheet which commercially described itself as a digest of "all the Magazines, Reviews, Newspapers, &c. published in Great Britain [...] being a Register of the Writings and Transactions of the Times"; a description that allowed Ruddiman to avoid the stamp duty carried at that time by newspapers but not by literary periodicals. The magazine was a great success in Edinburgh and further afield with a circulation of around 3000 copies per week throughout the 1770s.