New York had literary publications other than the six-cent papers. The Knickerbocker Magazine was founded in January of 1833, with Charles Hoffman, assistant editor of the American Magazine, as editor. Among the contributors engaged were William Cullen Bryant and James K. Paulding. The subscription-list, it was proudly announced, had no fewer than eight hundred names on it. The Mechanics’ Magazine, the Sporting Magazine, the American Ploughboy, the Journal of Public Morals, and the Youth’s Temperance Lecturer were among the periodicals that contended for public favour.
Bryant was a busy man, for he was the chief editor of the Evening Post as well as a magazine contributor and a teacher. Fame had come to him early, for “Thanatopsis” was published when he was twenty-three, and “To a Water-fowl” appeared a year later, in 1818. Now, in his thirties, he was no longer the delicate youth, the dreamy poet. One April day in 1831 Bryant and William L. Stone, one of the editors of the Commercial Advertiser, had a rare fight in front of the City Hall, the poet beginning it with a cowskin whip swung at Stone’s head, and the spectators ending it after Stone had seized the whip. These two were editors of sixpenny “respectables.”
THE FIRST HOME OF “THE SUN,” 222 WILLIAM STREET
(Under the Arrow)
THE SECOND HOME OF “THE SUN”
Nassau Street, from Frankfort to Spruce, in the Early Forties. “The Sun’s” Second Home Is Shown at the Right End of the Block. The Tammany Hall Building Became “The Sun’s” Fourth Home in 1868.
Irving and Cooper, Bryant and Halleck, Nathaniel P. Willis and George P. Morris were the largest figures of intellectual New York. In 1833 Irving returned from Europe after a visit that had lasted seventeen years. He was then fifty, and had written his best books. Cooper, half a dozen years younger, had long since basked in the glory that came to him with the publication of “The Spy,” “The Pilot,” and “The Last of the Mohicans.” He and Irving were guests at every cultured function.
Prescott was finishing his first work, “The History of Ferdinand and Isabella.” Bancroft was beginning his “History of the United States.” George Ticknor had written his “Life of Lafayette.” Hawthorne had published only “Fanshawe” and some of the “Twice Told Tales.” Poe was struggling along in Baltimore. Holmes, a medical student, had written a few poems. Dr. John William Draper, later to write his great “History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,” arrived from Liverpool that year to make New York his home.