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.