In a sense, placing The Sun newspaper, which has a forty-year publication history, alongside those truly obscure tabloids is a bit insulting to this paper, which once ranked as the second largest in circulation across Britain.
As one of the earliest penny papers in Britain, The Sun and The Times were once hailed as the twin stars of the British press in the early 19th century, with The Times dominating the morning papers, while The Sun was the leader among the evening papers.
But it is well known that due to the existence of stamp taxes, advertisement taxes, and paper taxes, most of these self-proclaimed low-priced newspapers had issues with tax evasion. The Times could maintain its long existence because they were very clean on tax matters and they did not take a low-price route.
When The Sun was founded, apart from effective and timely news reports, it relied on the low-price advantage derived from not paying stamp taxes.
