The Graphic sought to bring awareness to prevailing issues in the British empire such as poverty, homelessness, and public health.

In its first year, it described itself to advertisers as "a superior illustrated weekly newspaper, containing twenty-four pages imperial folio, printed on fine toned paper of beautiful quality, made expressly for the purpose and admirably adapted for the display of engravings".

The premature death of co-founder Lewis Samuel Thomas in 1872 "as one of the founders of this newspaper, [and who] took an active interest in its management" left a marked gap in the early history of the publication.

Holt Thomas founded The Bystander and later Empire Illustrated before abandoning newspapers in 1906 and making a greater name for himself in the aviation industry.

On 15 August 1932, Time magazine reported the name change to The National Graphic and that editor William Comyns Beaumont of The Bystander had taken over, replacing Alan John Bott.

To this end it employed some of the most important artists of the day, making an immediate splash in 1869 with Houseless and Hungry, Luke Fildes' dramatic image of the shivering London poor seeking shelter in a workhouse.

Improvements in process work and machinery at the end of the 1880s allowed Thomas to realize a long-cherished project, a daily illustrated paper.

[12] Artists employed on The Graphic and The Daily Graphic at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century included Helen Allingham, Edmund Blampied, Alexander Boyd, Frank Brangwyn, Randolph Caldecott, Lance Calkin, Frank Cadogan Cowper, Léon Daviel, John Charles Dollman, James H. Dowd, Godefroy Durand, Luke Fildes, Harry Furniss, John Percival Gülich, George du Maurier, Phil May, George Percy Jacomb-Hood, Ernest Prater, Leonard Raven-Hill, Sidney Sime, Snaffles (Charles Johnson Payne), George Stampa, Edmund Sullivan, Bert Thomas, F. H. Townsend, Harrison Weir, and Henry Woods.