[1] At one point the largest publishing company in the world,[2] AP employed writers such as Arthur Mee, John Alexander Hammerton, Edwy Searles Brooks, and Charles Hamilton.
At its height, AP published over 70 magazines and operated three large printing works and paper mills in South London.
At first the stories were high-minded moral tales, reportedly based on true experiences, but it was not long before these papers started using the same kind of material as the publications they competed against.
[4] Beginning in 1894, the Harmsworth brothers dove into the newspaper business, first acquiring The Evening News and the Edinburgh Daily Record.
[3] By this time, combined weekly sales of the company's publications exceeded one million copies, more than any other magazine publisher in the world.
[3] In 1902, the company opened offices in Manchester, also setting up a system of codes and telegraphs that streamlined the layout and printing process.
[3] Expanding his newspaper empire, Harmsworth initiated the Daily Mirror during 1903, and rescued the financially desperate The Observer and The Times during 1905 and 1908, respectively.
[7] AP story papers faced tougher competition in the 1930s with the rise of DC Thomson's line, including The Hotspur (launched in 1933).
The onset of World War II, in the years 1940–1942, brought the merger and cancellation of a number of long-running AP comics titles, including Butterfly and Puck (both launched in 1904), Jester (launched in 1912), Tiger Tim's Weekly (1919), Sunbeam (1922), The Joker (1927), Larks (1927), Bubbles (1921), Chicks' Own (1929), and Funny Wonder series 3 (dating back to 1914).
The group was renamed the International Publishing Corporation in 1963,[12] although the component companies continued to use their own names until 1968 when they were reorganised into the unitary IPC Magazines.