Frank Rooke Ley (1867-1942) took over the ownership and management of the Weekly Register from Robert Dell. As editor, Robert Dell had been a willing supporter of the emerging group of modernist sympathisers in England but his enthusiasm tended to outrun his sense of editorial responsibility and the Register was in danger of forfeiting sympathy even from those best disposed to it. Under pressure, Dell handed the paper over to Frank Rooke Ley, who was, like Dell, a sympathiser with the new thinkers, and a close and lifelong friend of George Tyrrell, but also one more measured in his approach to the sensitivities of the times. Of his correspondence with the principal figures in the modernist movement only a small fragment survives, most of it being in this collection, and virtually all of it related to his attempts to secure the financial future of a journal with a very low circulation. These attempts failed and the Weekly Register was refounded as the Monthly Register, but circulation figures did not improve and, with Cardinal Vaughan firmly ranked amongst the journal's critics, it foundered.
The Rooke Ley correspondence and papers reveal the fortunes of the two papers, and related concerns, over the period 1899 to 1902 when the Monthly Register finally collapsed.
From the guide to the Papers of Frank R Rooke Ley, 1899-1902, 1913-1922, 1926-1930, (University of St Andrews)
