A History of American Literature

A Ticknor and Field publication; one of the numerous “eclectic” mid-century periodicals made up of selected materials chiefly from English magazines. It is of interest partly as a type and partly because Thomas Bailey Aldrich was editor for the nine years of its life. In 1874 it was merged with Littell’s Living Age(see p. 493).

Galaxy, The, 1866–1878. A New York monthly.

“An illustrated magazine of entertaining reading.” The first volume illustrated the practice of the day in featuring English authors with a leading serial by Anthony Trollope. The American contributors include Bayard Taylor, Howells, Stedman, and William Winter. Later Charles Reade was accompanied by Henry James, John Burroughs, E. R. Sill, and Paul Hamilton Hayne. With contributors of this substantial secondary rank, later still supplemented by Sidney Lanier and Joaquin Miller, the Galaxy completed and died with its twelfth year.

Gentleman’s Magazine, Burton’s (1837–1841). A Philadelphia monthly.

Founded by William E. Burton, the actor. Poe was an early, important contributor and in the second year the editor. Although he and Burton separated in 1839, the proprietor saw to it that Poe was reëmployed when in 1841 George R. Graham bought out its circulation of 3500 and merged it with Atkinson’s Casket as Graham’s Magazine.

Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1830–1898. A Philadelphia monthly.

Founded by Louis A. Godey, July, 1830, and managed by him as a monthly until 1877. In 1837 it absorbed the Boston Lady’s Magazine and took over its editor, Sarah J. Hale. Its chief distinction and highest circulation (150,000) came under its first manager. It printed much early work of Longfellow, Holmes, Poe, Bayard Taylor, Mrs. Sigourney, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In its last years it was renamed Godey’s Magazine. In 1898 it was absorbed by the Puritan.

Graham’s Magazine, 1841–1859. A Philadelphia monthly.

Founded by George R. Graham by combining his Atkinson’s Casket with his purchase of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine. Within a year, largely through Poe’s editorial work, the circulation rose from 5000 to 30,000. By 1850 it had reached a circulation of 135,000. Among the later editors were R. W. Griswold, Bayard Taylor, and Charles Godfrey Leland, and among the contributors, Cooper, Longfellow, Poe, Hawthorne, Lowell, N. P. Willis, E. P. Whipple, the Cary sisters, William Gilmore Simms, Richard Penn Smith, and Thomas Dunn English. In January, 1859, Graham’s became the American Monthly (see “Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors,” A. H. Smyth, 1892, and the Critic, Vol. XXV, p. 44).

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 1850 – . A New York monthly.

Founded by Harper Brothers in order “to place within the reach of the great mass of the American people the unbounded treasures of the periodical literature of the present day”; thus it was an “eclectic” magazine, and in the early years it supplemented this borrowed magazine material with serials by the most popular English novelists. Within four years it had a circulation of 125,000. During the 1860’s it became more American in content, and in the 1870’s it included a notable series on the transformed South. In the last thirty years it has drawn on the best-known American authors for single articles and serials: Aldrich, Howells, Lowell, Wister, Mrs. Deland, Mark Twain, James, Harte, Mrs. Wharton, Tarkington, Allen; and it has shared in the publication of recent significant poetry by Cawein, Le Gallienne, Untermeyer, Bynner, and the Misses Thomas, Teasdale, Widdemer, and Lowell. (See “The House of Harper,” J. H. Harper, 1912, and “The Making of a Great Magazine,” Harper & Brothers, 1889.)

Home Journal, The, 1847 – . A New York monthly.

Jointly founded and conducted by George P. Morris and N. P. Willis as a continuation of their National Press (founded 1845). Both remained with it till death – Willis, the survivor, till 1865. “It was and is,” wrote H. A. Beers in his Life of N. P. Willis (1885), “the organ of ‘japonicadom,’ the journal of society, and gazette of fashionable literature, addressing itself with assiduous gallantry to ‘the ladies.’”

Independent, The, 1848 – . A New York weekly.

A periodical “Conducted by Pastors of Congregational Churches”; Leonard Bacon, the first editor; Reverend George B. Cheever and Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, contributing editors. Its purpose was to be a progressive religious journal, particularly for Congregationalists, who protested against conservatism in theology and proslavery politics. Eventually it became an open forum for the liberally minded of all sects, being carefully nonpartisan in politics. From 1870 to 1890 it printed good verse, notably poems by Joaquin Miller and Sidney Lanier. The religious and political viewpoints broadened out from 1873. By 1898 an evident attempt was made to popularize the magazine. Since 1914 it has absorbed the Chautauquan, the Countryside, and Harper’s Weekly.

Knickerbocker Magazine, The, 1833–1865. A New York monthly.

The first editor was Charles Fenno Hoffman. From 1839 to 1841 Irving wrote monthly articles for a salary of $2000. Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow, Holmes, Halleck, and most of the secondary writers contributed. The second editor, from 1841 to 1861, was Lewis Gaylord Clark. In its later years the magazine declined, chiefly because it was carrying the tradition of polite and aimless literature into Civil-War times. During its period it stood in the North for the same interests that its contemporary, the Southern Literary Messenger, did in the South (see “The Knickerbocker Gallery,” 1855, and Harper’s Magazine, Vol. XLVIII, p. 587).

Liberator, The, 1831–1865. A Boston weekly.

The most famous and effective abolition journal, founded and edited throughout by William Lloyd Garrison. It was proscribed in the South and denounced in the North. Wendell Phillips and Henry Ward Beecher praised it, but Mrs. Stowe criticized and Horace Greeley misrepresented it. The financial straits it passed through were augmented by the rivalry of other abolition papers. After the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln’s second Inaugural, announcement of discontinuance was made. The last issue appeared December 29, 1865.

Lippincott’s Magazine, 1868–1916. A Philadelphia monthly.

One of three magazines founded near 1870 – the others Scribner’s Monthly and the Galaxy– that made an active market for American writers. Lippincott’s, “a magazine of literature, science, and education,” made an unpretentious start and throughout its career published little prose of distinction. Its poetry, however, was excellent. Bayard Taylor and Paul Hamilton Hayne appeared in the first and following numbers. Margaret Preston, Emma Lazarus, Thomas B. Read, George H. Boker, Thomas Dunn English, and Christopher P. Cranch contributed frequently. Whitman, rare in the magazines, wrote in prose, and, most important of all, Lanier found here a channel for much of his verse from 1875 on. In later years a feature of many issues was a complete short novel. In 1916 Lippincott’s was absorbed by Scribner’s Magazine.

Littell’s Living Age, 1844 – . A Boston monthly.

This is the longest-lived of the eclectic, or “scissors and paste-pot,” magazines. It has been made up of reprints from foreign periodicals, sometimes quoting from English apparent sources articles which had been borrowed there from original American publications. In 1874 it absorbed Every Saturday (see p. 491) and in 1898 the Eclectic Magazine. It still survives.

McClure’s Magazine, 1893 – . A New York monthly.

S. S. McClure publisher and editor. Fiction and poetry have been the dominant features. Contributors (fiction): Kipling, Stevenson, Arnold Bennett, Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Booth Tarkington, Robert Chambers, O. Henry, Jack London; (verse): Wordsworth, Browning, Walt Whitman (reprints), Kipling, Witter Bynner, Edgar Lee Masters, Hermann Hagedorn, Louis Untermeyer. It was the first magazine to sell at the popular price of fifteen cents. The nonliterary articles on affairs of the day were prepared on assignment by expert writers such as Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, and Lincoln Steffens, years sometimes being spent on a single series. In 1905 these three assumed control of the American, but the policy has been continued to the present.

Mirror, The New York, 1823–1846. A New York weekly.

Founded by George P. Morris and Samuel Woodworth (remembered respectively for “Woodman, Spare that Tree” and “The Old Oaken Bucket”). In 1831 the Mirror absorbed the Boston American Monthly together with its editor, Nathaniel Parker Willis. In the next year Willis wrote for it the first of his travel series, “Pencillings by the Way,” continuing with weekly letters for four years. In 1839 Hawthorne became a contributor. In 1844–1845 Poe was subeditor and critic, his most famous contribution being “The Raven,” January, 1845. In 1845 the weekly became a daily – the Evening Mirror– and in 1846 it was discontinued.

Nation, The, 1865 – . A New York weekly.

Publishers: Joseph H. Richards, 1865; Evening Post Publishing Co., 1871; E. L. Godkin Co., 1874; Evening Post, 1881; New York Evening Post, 1902; Nation Press, Inc., New York, 1915. Editors have changed frequently, the most famous being the first, E. L. Godkin, who was in the chair from 1865 to 1881. Oswald Garrison Villard, present editor. It has been devoted to discussions of politics, art, and literature and to reviews of the leading books in these fields. Representative contributors have been Francis Parkman, T. R. Lounsbury, B. L. Gildersleeve, J. R. Lowell, Carl Schurz, James Bryce, William James, Paul Shorey, and Stuart Sherman. (See “Fifty Years of American Idealism,” edited by Gustav Pollak. 1915. Also the “Semicentenary Number,” 1915.)

New England Courant, The, 1721–1727. A Boston weekly.

Founded by James Franklin and carried on by him and a group of friends known as the Hell-Fire Club. The Courant represents a violent and somewhat coarse reaction against the domination of the New England clergy. It was written after the manner of the Spectator with frequent paraphrased and a few quoted passages. After the imprisonment of James the paper was carried on by the youthful Benjamin Franklin, who had already contributed the fourteen “Do-Good Papers.” The Courant gave evidence of much wit and enterprise, but quite lacked the urbanity of its English model.

New England Magazine, The, 1831–1835. A Boston monthly.

Founded by Joseph T. Buckingham, former editor of the Polyanthus,1805–1807 and 1812–1814, the Ordeal,1809, the New England Galaxy,1817–1828, and the Boston Courier,, a daily, 1814–1848. The New England Magazine, superior to any of these, was the project of Edwin, a son, who gave it distinction in a single year of editorship before his death, at the age of twenty-two. The father continued in charge for eighteen months, relinquishing it for the final year to Charles Fenno Hoffman and Park Benjamin. These latter took the magazine to New York in January, 1836, renaming it the American Monthly Magazine. The younger Buckingham showed enterprise in enlisting well-known contributors and acuteness in securing copy from Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Hawthorne before they were widely known. It was in the New England that Holmes originated “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” in two numbers of 1832, reviving the theme in his first Atlantic series twenty-five years later; and here also Hawthorne printed many stories now in “Twice-Told Tales” and “Mosses from an Old Manse.” (See “The First New England Magazine and its Editor,” by George Willis Cooke, New England Magazine (N. S.), March, 1897.)

New York Evening Post, The, 1801 – . A New York daily.

A Federal paper at first. Alexander Hamilton and John Jay aided in its establishment. William Coleman, first editor. Bryant began to write for the Post in 1826. He was editor from 1829 to 1878.

New York Review and Athenæum Magazine, The, (?) -1827. A New York monthly.

A type of the short-lived magazine which rose and then combined with or absorbed others in a succession of changes. This was first the Review, then in March, 1826, it was merged with another periodical into the New York Literary Gazette or American Athenæum, and a little later it combined with Parson’s old paper, the United States Literary Gazette, to form the United Stales Review and Literary Gazette. It is mentioned because of Bryant’s contributions and his editorship from 1826 until its discontinuation.

New York Tribune, The, 1841 – . A New York daily.

Started by Horace Greeley as a reform newspaper in support of President Harrison. In 1847 Greeley enlisted the support of several of the Brook Farm group – George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, Charles A. Dana, and George William Curtis – and secured as later contributors Carl Schurz, John Hay, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Bayard Taylor, Whitelaw Reid, E. C. Stedman, and others. The Tribune made much of its literary side, not only in book reviews and discussions of contemporary art and letters but in the inclusion of much significant verse. The Tribune was an important ally in securing the election of Lincoln and supporting his policies. It has continued to be one of the leading New York dailies, but its great days were concluded with the resignation of Greeley in 1872.

New Republic, The, 1914 – . A New York weekly.

A “journal of opinion” founded with the assistance of Mr. Willard Straight by Herbert Croly and associates. As its subtitle indicates, it is chiefly concerned with problems of national and international import, but, in addition to the articles by editors and contributors on affairs of the day, it includes papers on the art, music, and literature of the present and the recent past, occasional light essays, discriminating book reviews, and verse. Representative contributors have been John Graham Brooks, John Dewey, William Hard, Elizabeth Shipley Sargent, Louis Untermeyer, Robert Frost, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and, from England, Norman Angell, H. M. Brailsford, and H. G. Wells.

North American Review, The, 1815 – . A Boston and New York quarterly.

Successor to the Boston Monthly Anthology, 1803–1811, being founded by an editor, William Tudor, and several contributors who had been members of the Anthology Club. After three years as a general literary bimonthly it became a quarterly review. Among early contributors, besides well-known leaders in political thinking, were George Ticknor, George Bancroft, Bryant, and Longfellow. Until the founding of the Atlantic it was the leading organ of conservative thought in New England. For the decade from 1864 it was under the joint editorship of James Russell Lowell and Charles Eliot Norton. Since 1878 it has been in New York, changing in editorship and periods of publication. It became settled as a monthly under George Harvey. The more purely literary American contributors of the last few years have been Howells, Mabie, Matthews, Woodberry, Miss Repplier, Miss Teasdale, Miss Lowell, Hagedorn, Robinson, Mackaye, and Ficke. (See North American, Vol. C, p. 315, and Vol. CCI.)

Outlook, The, 1870 – . A New York weekly.

Founded in 1870 as the Christian Union, an undenominational paper, by Henry Ward Beecher. In 1876 he shared his duties as editor with Lyman Abbott, present editor. In 1884 Hamilton Wright Mabie was added as associate editor. Title was changed to The Outlook in 1893. Mabie secured contributions from men like James Bryce and Edward Dowden, translations from the works of Daudet and François Coppée. Recent American literary contributors: Ernest Poole, Vachel Lindsay, Cawein, Oppenheim. New political impetus came with contributions from Theodore Roosevelt, beginning 1909. The paper has had more or less of ecclesiastical character all along, but at present may be characterized as seeking to mold public opinion and interpret current events. One number of each month is enlarged to contain special departments; called Illustrated Magazine Number from 1896 to 1905.

Pennsylvania Gazette, The, 1729–1821. A Philadelphia weekly.

The new name and new periodical founded by Benjamin Franklin when he purchased Samuel Keimer’s Universal Instructor in October, 1729. The news element was slight and unreliable, but the literary, Addisonian essays gave the paper character at once. These gave way later to essays more distinctly peculiar to Franklin’s own point of view and kind of humor. The book advertisements supplemented this essay material in contributing to the broader culture of the readers. After Franklin’s personal withdrawal the traditions of the Gazette were continued. In 1765 Franklin sold out to his partner David Hall. With the death of his grandson, also David Hall, the paper passed into the hands of Atkinson and Alexander and was renamed the Saturday Evening Post (p. 498).

Poetry, 1912 – . A Chicago monthly.

A magazine of verse. Harriet Monroe, editor. Ralph Fletcher Seymour Co., Chicago, publishers. Advisory committee: H. B. Fuller, Edith Wyatt, and H. C. Chatfield Taylor. It was guaranteed for five years by endowment fund and contained no advertisements at the beginning. It has been a vehicle for poetry from all parts of the world by poets with or without fame. Now it contains book-list awards, reviews, and poetry announcements and advertisements. The original staff is almost unchanged. It seems to be on a sound financial footing.

Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1733–1748.