CHRONOLOGICAL CHART III.
LEADING PERIODICALS ESTABLISHED SINCE 1800
WHICH HAVE SERVED AS VEHICLES FOR AMERICAN WRITINGS
[(Transcript)]
INDEX TO LEADING NINETEENTH-CENTURY PERIODICALS
The following list of periodicals represents a small fraction of those which were established and throve for longer or shorter periods in the United States between 1800 and the present time. The basis of selection has been to include only those which published a generous amount of literature which is still remembered or those of which leading men of letters were editors.
It was intended at first to make the list identical with the periodicals mentioned in the text, but this proved not to be practical. On some of the earlier ones it was not possible to secure exact data concerning length of life, editors, and contributors. Some others mentioned in the text were not of importance enough to justify inclusion. Still others, though not mentioned in the text, were too important to be omitted. The list as it stands, therefore, represents the judgment of the author and would not coincide with that of any other compiler of a list of equal length. It will serve, however, as a fairly representative list and will, perhaps, move some other student of American literature to what is greatly needed—a relatively complete and compact “Who’s Who” of American periodicals.
As yet such material is very meager and unsatisfactory. The great number of magazines and the bewildering consolidations, changes of editorship, title, form, period of publication, and place of publication have apparently discouraged anyone’s attempting a definitive piece of work. On this account and with this explanation the following brief appendix has been prepared.
American Magazine, The, 1875——. A New York monthly.
Founded in 1875. From 1884 to 1888 the Brooklyn Magazine, then resumed its own name, continuing without important developments till it entered on its present régime in 1905. This came with the absorption of Leslie’s and the assumption of control by Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and Ida Tarbell, all former staff writers for McClure’s. In this latter period it has been specially successful in recognizing younger authors. It has printed much by Bynner, O. Henry, Lindsay, Whitlock, and Poole; by Eaton and Hamilton on the drama; by F. P. Dunne (“Mr. Dooley”), George Ade, and Irvin Cobb; and, among foreign authors, by Wells, Bennett, Kipling, and Locke. It is popular in policy and content.
Atlantic Monthly, The, 1857——. A Boston monthly.
Founded in 1857, Francis H. Underwood the prime mover, with the intention of setting new standards for a literary magazine of American authorship. Lowell was first editor; the first notable essay series Holmes’s “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table”; the first popular serial story, Mrs. Stowe’s “Dred.” The field has been consistently divided among fiction, essay, and poetry, and the book reviewing has always been scrupulous. The editors have been Lowell, James T. Fields, W. D. Howells, T. B. Aldrich, Horace Scudder, W. H. Page, Bliss Perry, and the present editor and chief owner, Ellery Sedgwick. Early important contributors were Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow, Lowell, Thoreau, Whittier, Hawthorne, Wendell Phillips. Later issues have included Lafcadio Hearn, Edith Wharton, Frank Norris, Agnes Repplier, Gerald Stanley Lee, S. M. Crothers, William Vaughn Moody, Richard Hovey, and most of the contributors to the best traditions in American literature. (See “The Atlantic Monthly and its Makers,” by M. A. De Wolfe Howe.)