Brash Young Giant

At first glance, last week's announcement by Britain's tiny Stevens Press Ltd. seemed scarcely worth noticing. To the two little magazines it now owns, Stevens had just added a third--New Career Girl (circ. 23,000), a weekly for stenos--and next month it will introduce Ten Pin Express, a sixpenny tabloid for Britain's bowling buffs. But on Fleet Street, Stevens' modest expansion stirred extravagant attention. In just five years, its tall, slim proprietor, Jocelyn Stevens, 30, has clearly demonstrated that he is a young man who knows how to make publishing pay.

On His Own. Rarely has a newcomer arrived on Fleet Street with fewer visible credentials. Fresh out of Cambridge in 1955, Stevens was admirably equipped--and apparently disposed--to live the life of a man-about-Mayfair. Thanks to a rich and titled uncle, Sir Edward Hulton, and to a background of wealth and all the right schools, he had access to the highest palace circles and the means to cut a proper swath. To Stevens, blond and dashing, that meant throwing lavish soirees and slewing recklessly about in one Aston Martin after another (a shaken passenger insists that Stevens holds the record for long-distance skidding).

But after going to work for his uncle, shrewd and successful proprietor of the Hulton Press (Picture Post, Lilliput, Housewife), Stevens discovered that there is more to life than staying up till dawn.

Suddenly ashamed of his playboy past, he toured newspaper libraries, surreptitiously destroying all unflattering clips about himself. He traded his Aston Martin for a Mini-Minor, and he got married to Jane Sheffield, a dark-haired, lissome girl from his own set. Intent on a thorough grounding in the publishing trade, he enrolled in London's School of Printing and Graphic Arts, crammed a three-year course into twelve months (''One couldn't spare more than that"). When Sir Edward closed down Picture Post in 1957, Stevens struck out on his own.

His first move was to buy Queen, a hoary fortnightly that had begun life in 1861 as a "Ladies' Newspaper and Court Chronicle" and had never altered course.

When pneumatic tires and jazz came along, Queen dismissed them both as passing fads. It stood so remote from life that all it found to say of Adolf Hitler was to praise his kindness to animals. Stevens changed all that.

He converted Queen into a magazine for "Caroline," an imaginary young woman whom he conceives of as his audience: "An ambitious, intelligent bachelor girl--or the same girl married to a young executive on the way up--who wants all the material things in life." To reach Caroline and her husband, Stevens filled his magazine with avant-garde photography--some of it from the camera of Antony Arm strong-Jones -- and appealed shrewdly to the intellectual and social interests of the smart crowd. Queen has profiled New York Times Washington Bureau Chief James .Reston, explored British slums, considered the impact of religious faith in an age of materialism, dissected London's sewer-level gossip columnists with such devastating effect that some of the specimens got fired by their papers. On almost every page, the magazine is a melange of eye-catching typography, impressive illustration and imaginative makeup.

Surrounded. At first, Fleet Street scoffed at the young amateur. Said the Lon don Sunday Times of the rejuvenated Queen: "As a guide to the top for those who are never going to get there, it succeeds tremendously." But Queen prospered, grew so thick with ads that last month Stevens turned the fortnightly into a weekly. Circulation is still modest, however, having gone from 45,000 in 1957 to 60,200 today. Encouraged by Queen's success, Stevens next bought a travel monthly, Go, in 1959, is giving it much the same treatment he gave Queen, and with similar results.

Inevitably, Stevens has caught the eye of Britain's press lords, who gobble publications in job lots. They were particularly impressed when he bid against Roy Thomson last November for Illustrated News papers Ltd., a glossy collection of maga zines. Thomson won (for $3,920,000), but he has not forgotten his audacious young competitor. Jocelyn Stevens is gloomily aware that his little publishing house is surrounded by huge appetites. "In this age of giants," said he last week, "it is hard to survive. We could be squeezed out of business by the big monopolies, or we could be offered so much money that it would be ridiculous to refuse. One often wonders if one will be working for oneself by the end of the year."

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