The idea for the publication was first raised in 1878 by the Religious Tract Society, as a means to encourage younger children to read and to instill Christian morals during their formative years.

The final issue, a "Special Souvenir Edition, Price 2/-", was dated February 1967 and was published on 27 January 1967.

It had a panel on the front cover giving a very brief history and stating that it would "appear in future as the BOY'S OWN ANNUAL, edited by Jack Cox".

[1] The contents usually included adventure stories and stories about public school life; notes on how to practise nature study, sports and games; instructions for how to make items including canoes; puzzles and essay competitions.

One of the stories in the opening issue was "My First Football Match", the first of many by Talbot Baines Reed set in public schools (Reed, who had not in fact attended such a school, later became the paper's first assistant editor); and the first volume's serials included "From Powder Monkey to Admiral, or The Stirring Days of the British Navy".

In its first decade the paper promoted the British Empire as the zenith of civilisation and reflected the attitudes towards other races which were taken for granted in Britain at the time.

In 1885, for example, it described its vision of "the typical negro": Readers frequently wrote in with questions to the paper: answers to these letters to the Editor were included in each edition although the original letter was never printed, leaving the reader to guess what the original question might have been.

W. G. Grace wrote for several issues, as did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne and R. M. Ballantyne.

Less well-known writers included E. E. Bradford, W. E. Cule, Sid G. Hedges, William Gordon Stables and Hugh Pembroke Vowles.

1 contained the first instalment of a serial by Mrs Eiloart, and over eighty named female authors followed over the years, contributing short stories, serials, poems, practical articles ('Taming Baboons' for example),[4] and accounts of personal adventures in many different parts of the world.

A number of the monthly coloured plates were by female artists such as Hilda Annetta Walker and Winifred Austen.

"[7] There was even an element of positive discrimination, as witnessed by this crushingly acerbic response to "Squirrel": "Don't ask so many questions again, please.

"[8] Editors of Boy's Own Paper:[1] The weekly issue was priced at 1d but the coloured plates had to be purchased separately for 2d per month.

[10][11] Another was an American publication named The Boys' Own, published by Charles F. Richards in Boston, Massachusetts from October 1873 through December 1876.

[12] In British popular culture, improbable or daring endeavours are often described as "Boy's Own stuff", in reference to the heroic content of the magazine's stories.

In the 1989 book Great Work of Time, dealing with an alternative history of the British Empire, writer John Crowley depicts Cecil Rhodes as avidly reading Boy's Own Magazine when he was no longer a boy but at the peak of his empire-building career.

[13] Former British Prime Minister David Cameron was described as a "Boy’s Own robot made of ham" in The Guardian in 2024.